1) People were accustomed to low, almost imperceptible price increases for a couple of decades, and the massive inflation in 2021-23 still hurts. (I for one still notice it)
2) The cost of rent, mortgage borrowing, and home prices has exploded *even relative to everything else* - which selectively crucifies the younger and working-class folks who shifted so heavily to Trump in the recent election. The CPI doesn't capture this dynamic well, averaging out the effect across the entire population. In reality, that population includes millions of people with locked-in 2% mortgages who have enjoyed skyrocketing home equity, but also millions who have watched monthly mortgage payments double or triple out of reach in just a few years, or who are spending 50% of their income on rents which, until very recently, have been galloping ahead by 10% per year.
I agree. We took 5-6 years of normal inflation and crammed it into an 18 month period. It does still hurt, especially since we are still experiencing slightly above average normal inflation.
I also think there has been a certain amount of price gouging that stores are blaming on inflation. Grocery stores saw record profits, and if their costs went up as much as they want to say to justify the grocery store prices then the math doesn't add up.
Yes it does, but not necessarily in the most intuitive way. Rent goes in as rent but since rents change usually no more than once per year, any one month change in average rent paid for the "same" property is not representative of the people whose rent did NOT change this month or the ones whose did. Homeowners is worse as there BLS imputes a "rent" equivalent that the owner would pay if renting.
Good catch, looks like I was misinformed. Not sure where I remembered that wrong from. Thanks for correcting me! I’ll delete my comment so nobody else repeats that
Ensh*ttification. We bought 4 water kettles in 4 years, all of which broke in different ways through normal use. Different brands, styles and price-points, none of them super cheap. One worked fine except a tiny plastic mesh filter in the spout broke, which caused auto shut-off to stop working. I scoured the web and emailed the manufacturer, but it was not possible to purchase that filter, which looked like it would have cost about 25 cents to manufacture. The whole $100 kettle with all its stainless steel and glass and electric components went into the landfill.
As for your burgers and fries complaint, I've noticed something further: a side of fries in many otherwise cheap restaurants and pubs is now ludicrously expensive. Like $12, when a burger is, say, $15. I've noticed that this is true of almost all appetizers now: they are nearly the same price as the mains. Back in pre-ensh*ttification times you could meet a friend for a pint in the pub and maybe just order some fries or something to snack on for $4 or $5 if you weren't in the mood for a meal. Now, if you want any food you have little choice but to order a full meal. They don't want snackers hogging tables.
Within the last year I have discovered a helpful hack that helps to distinguish poor quality merchandise. I read all the purely negative reviews. Half of them say that the product never arrived or was damaged en route. If the remaining reviews focus on a recurring defect, then I do not buy the product. This has alerted me to defects that I should have been able to see simply by looking at the picture.
That's a great idea. We found our current kettle -- which has survived two years of daily use now -- by reading the NY Times "Wirecutter" recommendations. That's a similar technique, I guess, relying on the wisdom of the crowds, and it works fine until the manufacturers suddenly encheapen a previously reliable product without warning.
It's driven by nickel-and-diming customers rather than raising the most salient prices following inflation, but there's also a broader trend of enshittification that Cory Doctorow (among others) has talked about pretty extensively. As trust and institutional trust break down, there's also a (not entirely unjustified) creeping feeling that "everyone" is trying to trick you and cheat you--this causes people to be suspect of even honest deals and legitimate claims of high quality/service. Americans, generally, seem very happy (or at least consistently willing) to accept a trade of lower-quality for lower price. In many products/services, there's also less competition among providers than has historically been true so many firms feel pretty comfortable charging higher prices even if they move less product. There's a lot going on, and it's all interrelated. It generally feels like a lousy time to be a consumer, even though there has never been more to consume in human history.
Thinking about the light bulbs, a possible additional side effect of this inflationary situation is that the inflation of material objects and products (as a consequence of planned obsolesce, poor quality workmanship) in existence is having an impact on our waste cycles. While there certainly are capabilities of repurposing modern waste, the ascendance of quickly bought, quickly disposed items through internet shopping has inflated our landfills and dumps. Many of these can't be (or the buyer isn't aware of) repurposed effectively, and end up disposed of once its short lifespan has been fulfilled. So, whereas previously some objects could be recycled or scrapped, melted down etc., a good portion of goods are being sent to waste, which places a multitude of burdens upon society.
Indeed. Speaking of which, such shorter planned obsolescence has also inflated our cost of living in ways that are not captured by inflation (needing to buy an "equevlant" product more often).
I have been noticing a decline in quality for some decades. Although I would not have used this word when I was younger, I now call it enshittification. I always regarded such declines in quality as quite independent of inflationary cycles.
But it's not all one way— computers now deliver much more quality at a much lower price than they did in the 1980s. My guess is the problem you are having with online programs probably has to do with the lower computing power of smartphones—they could not possibly have the same resources as most desktops or laptops. Possibly, their programs must be simplified for them to run fast. Similarly, the average quality of American made automobiles declined dramatically for some decades but then improved again.
American manufacturers have always competed on price. The problem is that the average consumer cannot tell good enough quality from a useless but plausible substitute.
Within the last year I have discovered a helpful hack that helps to distinguish poor quality merchandise. I read all the purely negative reviews. Half of them say that the product never arrived or was damaged en route. If the remaining reviews focus on a recurring defect, then I do not buy the product. This has alerted me to defects that I should have been able to see simply by looking at the picture.
I'd actually argue the opposite for smartphones. The phones have a lot of resources now, or at least just enough that programmers can get lazy again and not optimize their code (or, more accurately, corporate can hire fewer programmers to do said code optimization). It's the companion law of Moore's Law. Increased computing power is inversely proportional to code efficiency.
That and I'd argue that touch screen interfaces are just inherently inferior, but I may be alone in that one.
As long as publicly traded companies are driven by "maximizing shareholder value", pricing and other 'levers' will be manipulated to maintain short term needs - meeting revenue and profit targets mostly. God forbid they miss a target/goal, most of which drive compensation of executives.
You have a wolf by the ears here. The annoyance of inflated prices, less product, sleight of hand, and disappearing quality makes comparison shopping the new mad world of adaptation. We don't feel like we are moving forward but being squeezed ever so exquisitely, expertly, and efficiently. I don't think we resent Joy Garden for shrinking the crispy California roll, but we take note and eat there less. A dollar is a dime now, maybe less.
Windshield wipers. First 20 years it has been impossible to get windshield wipers that last more than 6 months. And it's increasingly difficult to find them that work decently at all.
The ensh*tification of everything is very real. I honestly can't think of any product or service where quality has remained the same as it was 10 years ago, much less gotten better. Things have gotten CHEAPER in many cases, but at the price of them lasting half the time or simply not working as well.
Since you mentioned lighting, I recently discovered that some bathroom light fixtures do not have replaceable bulbs. You toss the whole fixture when the bulb dies. No thanks.
I appreciate this campfire, but tomorrow I'll be at the Korean discount mart looking for a bargain on bread, butter, oat milk, and cranberries. Inflation blinkers your eyes. You don't look at some items because your eyes revolt at the prices.
LED bulbs are a good example. They tend to last about one year. Fortunately I bought a huge supply of incandescents just before they were outlawed, and I'm reverting the LEDs to incandescents which last about 5 years. Now that I'm old and have trouble with ladders, the energy saving from LEDs doesn't begin to balance out the expense and difficulty of replacing them often.
The same manipulation of aggregate demand by the Fed that gave us inflation also gave us the recovery of incomes from the recession including the rise in nominal wages. But people naturally feel that their income is due to their own efforts/luck but that "inflation" is an outside force.
BLS could develop income-level (even age level) measures of Inflation but does that to a very limited extent.
In principle some of this DOES get picked up by "inflation" measures. BLS could compare the cost of 1burger + 1 fries this month to the (no longer avaiable) 1 burger with fries last month and the difference is inflation/deflation. It will not pick up annoyance (or pleasure) of making the choice instead of mindlessly getting the burger with fries.
I think there are two things going on here:
1) People were accustomed to low, almost imperceptible price increases for a couple of decades, and the massive inflation in 2021-23 still hurts. (I for one still notice it)
2) The cost of rent, mortgage borrowing, and home prices has exploded *even relative to everything else* - which selectively crucifies the younger and working-class folks who shifted so heavily to Trump in the recent election. The CPI doesn't capture this dynamic well, averaging out the effect across the entire population. In reality, that population includes millions of people with locked-in 2% mortgages who have enjoyed skyrocketing home equity, but also millions who have watched monthly mortgage payments double or triple out of reach in just a few years, or who are spending 50% of their income on rents which, until very recently, have been galloping ahead by 10% per year.
I agree. We took 5-6 years of normal inflation and crammed it into an 18 month period. It does still hurt, especially since we are still experiencing slightly above average normal inflation.
I also think there has been a certain amount of price gouging that stores are blaming on inflation. Grocery stores saw record profits, and if their costs went up as much as they want to say to justify the grocery store prices then the math doesn't add up.
Yes it does, but not necessarily in the most intuitive way. Rent goes in as rent but since rents change usually no more than once per year, any one month change in average rent paid for the "same" property is not representative of the people whose rent did NOT change this month or the ones whose did. Homeowners is worse as there BLS imputes a "rent" equivalent that the owner would pay if renting.
Good catch, looks like I was misinformed. Not sure where I remembered that wrong from. Thanks for correcting me! I’ll delete my comment so nobody else repeats that
On this medium, no one double checks everything they say. :) I probably did not explain, housing price inflation perfectly either.
Ensh*ttification. We bought 4 water kettles in 4 years, all of which broke in different ways through normal use. Different brands, styles and price-points, none of them super cheap. One worked fine except a tiny plastic mesh filter in the spout broke, which caused auto shut-off to stop working. I scoured the web and emailed the manufacturer, but it was not possible to purchase that filter, which looked like it would have cost about 25 cents to manufacture. The whole $100 kettle with all its stainless steel and glass and electric components went into the landfill.
As for your burgers and fries complaint, I've noticed something further: a side of fries in many otherwise cheap restaurants and pubs is now ludicrously expensive. Like $12, when a burger is, say, $15. I've noticed that this is true of almost all appetizers now: they are nearly the same price as the mains. Back in pre-ensh*ttification times you could meet a friend for a pint in the pub and maybe just order some fries or something to snack on for $4 or $5 if you weren't in the mood for a meal. Now, if you want any food you have little choice but to order a full meal. They don't want snackers hogging tables.
Within the last year I have discovered a helpful hack that helps to distinguish poor quality merchandise. I read all the purely negative reviews. Half of them say that the product never arrived or was damaged en route. If the remaining reviews focus on a recurring defect, then I do not buy the product. This has alerted me to defects that I should have been able to see simply by looking at the picture.
That's a great idea. We found our current kettle -- which has survived two years of daily use now -- by reading the NY Times "Wirecutter" recommendations. That's a similar technique, I guess, relying on the wisdom of the crowds, and it works fine until the manufacturers suddenly encheapen a previously reliable product without warning.
I found Wirecutter is helpful once too.
It's driven by nickel-and-diming customers rather than raising the most salient prices following inflation, but there's also a broader trend of enshittification that Cory Doctorow (among others) has talked about pretty extensively. As trust and institutional trust break down, there's also a (not entirely unjustified) creeping feeling that "everyone" is trying to trick you and cheat you--this causes people to be suspect of even honest deals and legitimate claims of high quality/service. Americans, generally, seem very happy (or at least consistently willing) to accept a trade of lower-quality for lower price. In many products/services, there's also less competition among providers than has historically been true so many firms feel pretty comfortable charging higher prices even if they move less product. There's a lot going on, and it's all interrelated. It generally feels like a lousy time to be a consumer, even though there has never been more to consume in human history.
More to consume from increasingly fewer producers, it should be noted.
Thinking about the light bulbs, a possible additional side effect of this inflationary situation is that the inflation of material objects and products (as a consequence of planned obsolesce, poor quality workmanship) in existence is having an impact on our waste cycles. While there certainly are capabilities of repurposing modern waste, the ascendance of quickly bought, quickly disposed items through internet shopping has inflated our landfills and dumps. Many of these can't be (or the buyer isn't aware of) repurposed effectively, and end up disposed of once its short lifespan has been fulfilled. So, whereas previously some objects could be recycled or scrapped, melted down etc., a good portion of goods are being sent to waste, which places a multitude of burdens upon society.
Indeed. Speaking of which, such shorter planned obsolescence has also inflated our cost of living in ways that are not captured by inflation (needing to buy an "equevlant" product more often).
I have been noticing a decline in quality for some decades. Although I would not have used this word when I was younger, I now call it enshittification. I always regarded such declines in quality as quite independent of inflationary cycles.
But it's not all one way— computers now deliver much more quality at a much lower price than they did in the 1980s. My guess is the problem you are having with online programs probably has to do with the lower computing power of smartphones—they could not possibly have the same resources as most desktops or laptops. Possibly, their programs must be simplified for them to run fast. Similarly, the average quality of American made automobiles declined dramatically for some decades but then improved again.
American manufacturers have always competed on price. The problem is that the average consumer cannot tell good enough quality from a useless but plausible substitute.
Within the last year I have discovered a helpful hack that helps to distinguish poor quality merchandise. I read all the purely negative reviews. Half of them say that the product never arrived or was damaged en route. If the remaining reviews focus on a recurring defect, then I do not buy the product. This has alerted me to defects that I should have been able to see simply by looking at the picture.
I'd actually argue the opposite for smartphones. The phones have a lot of resources now, or at least just enough that programmers can get lazy again and not optimize their code (or, more accurately, corporate can hire fewer programmers to do said code optimization). It's the companion law of Moore's Law. Increased computing power is inversely proportional to code efficiency.
That and I'd argue that touch screen interfaces are just inherently inferior, but I may be alone in that one.
There must be something wrong with my skin, but I have to touch a phone 5 times before it will do anything.
As long as publicly traded companies are driven by "maximizing shareholder value", pricing and other 'levers' will be manipulated to maintain short term needs - meeting revenue and profit targets mostly. God forbid they miss a target/goal, most of which drive compensation of executives.
You have a wolf by the ears here. The annoyance of inflated prices, less product, sleight of hand, and disappearing quality makes comparison shopping the new mad world of adaptation. We don't feel like we are moving forward but being squeezed ever so exquisitely, expertly, and efficiently. I don't think we resent Joy Garden for shrinking the crispy California roll, but we take note and eat there less. A dollar is a dime now, maybe less.
Windshield wipers. First 20 years it has been impossible to get windshield wipers that last more than 6 months. And it's increasingly difficult to find them that work decently at all.
The ensh*tification of everything is very real. I honestly can't think of any product or service where quality has remained the same as it was 10 years ago, much less gotten better. Things have gotten CHEAPER in many cases, but at the price of them lasting half the time or simply not working as well.
Since you mentioned lighting, I recently discovered that some bathroom light fixtures do not have replaceable bulbs. You toss the whole fixture when the bulb dies. No thanks.
I appreciate this campfire, but tomorrow I'll be at the Korean discount mart looking for a bargain on bread, butter, oat milk, and cranberries. Inflation blinkers your eyes. You don't look at some items because your eyes revolt at the prices.
LED bulbs are a good example. They tend to last about one year. Fortunately I bought a huge supply of incandescents just before they were outlawed, and I'm reverting the LEDs to incandescents which last about 5 years. Now that I'm old and have trouble with ladders, the energy saving from LEDs doesn't begin to balance out the expense and difficulty of replacing them often.
Two additional points:
The same manipulation of aggregate demand by the Fed that gave us inflation also gave us the recovery of incomes from the recession including the rise in nominal wages. But people naturally feel that their income is due to their own efforts/luck but that "inflation" is an outside force.
BLS could develop income-level (even age level) measures of Inflation but does that to a very limited extent.
In principle some of this DOES get picked up by "inflation" measures. BLS could compare the cost of 1burger + 1 fries this month to the (no longer avaiable) 1 burger with fries last month and the difference is inflation/deflation. It will not pick up annoyance (or pleasure) of making the choice instead of mindlessly getting the burger with fries.