Inflation

[JustSomeGuy]

It's not inflation it's price gouging. There are no checks in place to prevent companies from raising their prices. If it were inflation truly, wages would go up in step with the inflation.
Economics 101

The only way to dissuade them from raising prices is to stop buying/using those products & services.

It’s definitely also inflation, just in case you haven’t seen the entire country for the past 3-4 years…

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[MAGS1]

Just remember “contents sold by weight not by volume”.
Why not just use a smaller bag? Lol.

LOL I’d at least feel a little better if the bag was smaller. But to Shogun’s point, need all that space/air so that only half the bag is crushed to a fine powder LOL

 

[shogun32]

Why not just use a smaller bag? Lol.

for the same reason even though it's required by law to post the unit cost of every food item (eg. $/oz) people don't look at them and will buy the 'size' that appeals to them. Granted, I'm not sure I NEED that 5 gallon pail of pickles when the 2qt glass jar will suffice...

 

[MCS]

LOL I’d at least feel a little better if the bag was smaller. But to Shogun’s point, need all that space/air so that only half the bag is crushed to a fine powder LOL

I have considered starting world wars when I open up a bag of Dorritos on a Friday night all excited and I find orange powder where the chips should be.

 

[Crew4991]

When I see things like a bag of potato chips for $6 when half the bag is filled with air, I get really pissed off. I still pay it because I’m addicted to potato chips but come on already.

You must learn young grasshopper.

 

[wynand32]

I think the same thing all of the time, even though I still pay the ridiculously high prices for the parts that I want to modify my car. What it really is though, is American Greed!

Here's a question for you... I don't know what you do for a living, but have you set in your mind a ceiling on what your work is worth? That is, if your boss (or another company) came to you and offered you more, you'd say, "No, thanks. I'm paid as much as I'm worth"?

I kind of doubt it. I suspect you'd take the raise or the higher offer, and in fact, you'd probably take as much money as someone is willing to pay you. Would that make you "greedy"? I think not. In fact, whatever people are willing to pay you would seem to be the right wage to seek.

It's the same with products like these. Companies aren't "greedy" for charging prices that the market will bear. If they charge too high a price, they'll sell fewer units and will end up making less money. Ultimately, they'll go out of business. If they charge too little, they'll go out of business as well, only faster if their prices are less than their costs.

The beauty of even a semi-free economy like ours is that there's no amount of profit that some central authority deems to be "too much." The market establishes that amount. And no, a free market won't enable monopolies. If there's money to be made, companies will enter a market or establish alternatives. And if there isn't, then it's not a true monopoly. It's merely a niche market.

Only the government can establish monopolies, by law, a la cable TV and energy companies. And the beauty is that even then, unless the government steps in, alternatives are developed, such as streaming services run over the internet, eating the lunch of government-granted cable TV monopolies.

 

[Paul McWhiskey]

For all of the German car drivers;

Vell Hello! Ich bein Fritz. I am zee MB engineer. Vee do not sink in terms uf serviceability or ease of maintenance. Our marketing peoples have spent iene grosse amount of Euros marketing z fine Mertcedes Auto. We engineers have no concern for cost and zo ve over design alles auf de auto und zen ve sell zem to ze rich Americans und Viola! Dollars flow into our pockets und out of your country. Sanks you berry much!

 

[RazzaRossa]

I have for along time quit potato chips, I knew what they were doing. Pretzel rods, that's the ticket I'm telling you. Way better with a brewski too.

 

[NGOT8R]

@wynand32, I hear what you’re saying, but there are examples of companies taking advantage of people all around us. Look at the price of concessions for example (at movie theaters or amusement parks) just to name a couple.

What I do for a living now is take care of our home (now that I’m retired) and let me tell you, it is a lot of work because whatever I do, I do to the best of my ability and I’m very anal about it. I don’t say that to try and brag, it’s just the way I’m wired. Before that I spent 14.5 years as a police officer (patrolman), followed by 12 years as a detective. That job literally took all that I had in me to make it to retirement at the age of 50. Although the job really took a toll on me, I’m extremely grateful and thankful for the opportunity to help others and to have made it to retirement. Yes, the pay was decent, but when you factor in leaving home every singe day facing the unknown, how much is the appropriate salary for one willing to make the ultimate sacrifice if needed?

You may find this hard to believe, but I’ve never been a greedy person when it comes to making money. All I‘ve ever sought to do, was to make enough to help take care of my family and provide a reasonably comfortable life for us. As a police officer, I had the opportunity to moonlight my entire career, making $30-$40 per hour on my off time, performing security related work. During my 26.5 years of service, I only worked off-duty jobs a total of three separate days, for 4 hours on each of those days. Why? Because I always valued family time more-so than money and therefore, I chose not to make moonlighting a part of my life.

Now, I have done work for people whether it was working on a car or motorcycle, but because of my OCD, the quality of my work always was/has always been more important than how much I‘ve charged people. I can go on an on with plenty of examples of how I do things, but I’ll say this: I can’t see me going into business for myself for a couple of reasons: 1. Because I work slow and methodically. 2. Anything I would do to earn money as a business would eat up so much of my time, that I would be at a huge disadvantage and that would surely add even more stress to my life than what I am currently trying to manage (even as a retiree).

I have a really good friend that owns his own business in the packaging industry. He operates as a lone salesman. He’s been doing it for many years and he often tells me that he’ll never be rich because his conscience simply won’t allow him to take advantage of customers and he truly means it. He and I are cut from the same cloth and I absolutely have a great deal of respect for him or anyone else, who operates like that.

I’ll end with this: I believe businesses should be able to make a profit, but that profit should be reasonable and fair to customers IMO. Heck, most of the time businesses charge a premium for goods and services and they aren’t anywhere close to providing quality service because all they can see are dollar signs.

To the business owners out there, who understand this and strive to be a cut above the rest, who are only in business to make as much money as they can while charging ridiculous prices for goods or services, I say thank you for being business owners of integrity.

 

[Paul McWhiskey]

Capitalism is a fantastic system. Unfortunately, almost all do not know how to work in it and vote with their money every day. So many think that everything should be free, education, health care, and whatever the deal of the day is. The idea that everyone doing the same job should get the same pay seems ridiculous to me. If worker A produces 1XX dollars of product/day and worker B produces 1/10xx product per day WTF? They are getting the same pay? I like pay for performance and have it seen it motivate mediocre employees to produce more and sometimes even become the highest producers. And I have seen it cause lazy people look for greener and lazier pastures.

When unions get their members raises the only motivation for them is to get their members to pay more monthly dues. I have been both a Union Member and Management. Trust me, when contract time comes the Union guys and the management get together at the titty bars and the deals are made while they are spending your money and you are on the picket line.

I have a young guy neighbor who in 2018-19 could not but brag about his 5% pay increases with the insurance company that he works for. It has been pretty quite over there for the past 4 years. I told him to salt some of that money away cause some tough times were coming, but he has a BS in Finance! Ha! Finance that is what he did.

Anyway, the whole point of this diatribe is vote with your money every day. Pay attention to your investments and think seriously before you spend large amounts of cash or finance a big ticket item. If you don't believe in capitalism look up Larry H. Miller. Then find out what he did. I am sure that he did not do it by being pissed about the cost of things. If anyone gets gouged it is their responsibility to spread the word about who did it to them and cost that outfit a helluva lot of money. Think about it, when you go someplace and the product and service is good, how many people do you tell about it? When you go someplace and get screwed good, how many people do you tell about it? I just got the shaft from a Ford Dealership that I have done business with for 24 years. I am telling a lot of people about it. Especially those that I recommended them to.

Vote with your money and stop complaining. You know the saying a "Fool and his money... ".
Well, if you don't know it by now I guess I might be wasting my time.

 

[shogun32]

Look at the price of concessions for example (at movie theaters or amusement parks)

yeah but those are the VERY DEFINITION of captive audience. Still, nobody put a gun to your head so really it's more an "intelligence test" whether you allow yourself to get sucked into paying. Now charging you $3 to use the bathroom (or cut the line) would be more "interesting" use of price vs demand.

 

[MAGS1]

Capitalism is a fantastic system. Unfortunately, almost all do not know how to work in it and vote with their money every day. So many think that everything should be free, education, health care, and whatever the deal of the day is. The idea that everyone doing the same job should get the same pay seems ridiculous to me. If worker A produces 1XX dollars of product/day and worker B produces 1/10xx product per day WTF? They are getting the same pay? I like pay for performance and have it seen it motivate mediocre employees to produce more and sometimes even become the highest producers. And I have seen it cause lazy people look for greener and lazier pastures.

When unions get their members raises the only motivation for them is to get their members to pay more monthly dues. I have been both a Union Member and Management. Trust me, when contract time comes the Union guys and the management get together at the titty bars and the deals are made while they are spending your money and you are on the picket line.

I have a young guy neighbor who in 2018-19 could not but brag about his 5% pay increases with the insurance company that he works for. It has been pretty quite over there for the past 4 years. I told him to salt some of that money away cause some tough times were coming, but he has a BS in Finance! Ha! Finance that is what he did.

Anyway, the whole point of this diatribe is vote with your money every day. Pay attention to your investments and think seriously before you spend large amounts of cash or finance a big ticket item. If you don't believe in capitalism look up Larry H. Miller. Then find out what he did. I am sure that he did not do it by being pissed about the cost of things. If anyone gets gouged it is their responsibility to spread the word about who did it to them and cost that outfit a helluva lot of money. Think about it, when you go someplace and the product and service is good, how many people do you tell about it? When you go someplace and get screwed good, how many people do you tell about it? I just got the shaft from a Ford Dealership that I have done business with for 24 years. I am telling a lot of people about it. Especially those that I recommended them to.

Vote with your money and stop complaining. You know the saying a "Fool and his money... ".
Well, if you don't know it by now I guess I might be wasting my time.

I don’t disagree with most of what you said. I will say this though. Politicians on both sides of the aisle don’t give a rats ass about you or me. They care about the deep pockets that fund their campaigns (and who knows what else). I find it amazing that Senators on a $200k/year salary are multimillionaires. And almost all the campaign promises about cutting spending are never kept. We have a spending problem at the federal level. We’ve not had a federal surplus in 23 years. 23 years. All administrations in that time no matter the party have added to it (yes even DJT). So at least on the federal level, voting with your wallet means getting rid of every single person that is currently in office. And that just won’t happen no matter how much we want or need it to. Off my soapbox now.

 

[wynand32]

@wynand32, I hear what you’re saying, but there are examples of companies taking advantage of people all around us. Look at the price of concessions for example (at movie theaters or amusement parks) just to name a couple.

What I do for a living now is take care of our home (now that I’m retired) and let me tell you, it is a lot of work because whatever I do, I do to the best of my ability and I’m very anal about it. I don’t say that to try and brag, it’s just the way I’m wired. Before that I spent 14.5 years as a police officer (patrolman), followed by 12 years as a detective. That job literally took all that I had in me to make it to retirement at the age of 50. Although the job really took a toll on me, I’m extremely grateful and thankful for the opportunity to help others and to have made it to retirement. Yes, the pay was decent, but when you factor in leaving home every singe day facing the unknown, how much is the appropriate salary for one willing to make the ultimate sacrifice if needed?

You may find this hard to believe, but I’ve never been a greedy person when it comes to making money. All I‘ve ever sought to do, was to make enough to help take care of my family and provide a reasonably comfortable life for us. As a police officer, I had the opportunity to moonlight my entire career, making $30-$40 per hour on my off time, performing security related work. During my 26.5 years of service, I only worked off-duty jobs a total of three separate days, for 4 hours on each of those days. Why? Because I always valued family time more-so than money and therefore, I chose not to make moonlighting a part of my life.

Now, I have done work for people whether it was working on a car or motorcycle, but because of my OCD, the quality of my work always was/has always been more important than how much I‘ve charged people. I can go on an on with plenty of examples of how I do things, but I’ll say this: I can’t see me going into business for myself for a couple of reasons: 1. Because I work slow and methodically. 2. Anything I would do to earn money as a business would eat up so much of my time, that I would be at a huge disadvantage and that would surely add even more stress to my life than what I am currently trying to manage (even as a retiree).

I have a really good friend that owns his own business in the packaging industry. He operates as a lone salesman. He’s been doing it for many years and he often tells me that he’ll never be rich because his conscience simply won’t allow him to take advantage of customers and he truly means it. He and I are cut from the same cloth and I absolutely have a great deal of respect for him or anyone else, who operates like that.

I’ll end with this: I believe businesses should be able to make a profit, but that profit should be reasonable and fair to customers IMO. Heck, most of the time businesses charge a premium for goods and services and they aren’t anywhere close to providing quality service because all they can see are dollar signs.

To the business owners out there, who understand this and strive to be a cut above the rest, who are only in business to make as much money as they can while charging ridiculous prices for goods or services, I say thank you for being business owners of integrity.

Sure, everyone makes value judgments like you made, that family was more important than making extra money. But the point is that you were free to make those choices. The department you worked at set your salary based on the need to compete with other departments and with other jobs -- I recognize and appreciate that police officers take their jobs in part because of a desire to do that particular job -- but no police officer would work for less than a certain amount. You wouldn't have taken the job for minimum wage, I'll bet. And as you were promoted, you expected increases, right?

In addition, there were likely plenty of younger officers without families or who needed the money for whatever reason (say, putting a kid through college) who benefited greatly from being able to moonlight. Those jobs obviously paid whatever it took to entice police officers to take them -- no more and no less.

My wife grew up in the former USSR, while it was still communist. She had no options. She was a teacher, and the state dictated her salary. She was also shunted into the career, not literally forced to take it but given few enough options that she was compelled to go down that road. All teachers were paid the same salary, regardless of whether they were the best or the worst. There were no options to seek higher pay in other school districts, because they all paid the same state-dictated salary.

Also, working outside the state system was quite literally against the law. Even something as simple as doing clothing alterations on the side, for example, was illegal. My mother-in-law did so and constantly faced the very real possibility of arrest. Hem a pair of pants and get paid for it and risk going to prison.

Again, it's not "greedy" to want to make more money. The point is that in a free society, what determines salaries is what people freely agree upon. Even unions, properly organized (i.e., government confers no legal advantage to either companies or employees), are bound by the same basic economic rules. And people who do their jobs better can make more money than people who don't do as good of a job. That's real "economic justice."

Now, when it comes to businesses, you WANT them to make as much profit as they can, within those constraints. That's what drives economic progress and the immeasurably high standard of living we enjoy by historic standards. The more people who want something, the more money someone can make providing it. That's a good thing.

I don't accept the idea that any company, absent some government edict, makes any amount of money that isn't "fair" by the standards I've laid out. And the worst culprits, like the cable TV and energy companies I mentioned previously, often do get away with charging egregious prices. But that's because they have licenses from the state, and nobody can directly compete with them.

There will always be exceptions. Some car dealers, for example, get away with selling their cars at a premium because they get enough people who are willing to buy them. Are they "greedy"? Well, in a free society and absent force or fraud, I don't think that word has much meaning.

 

[wynand32]

I don’t disagree with most of what you said. I will say this though. Politicians on both sides of the aisle don’t give a rats ass about you or me. They care about the deep pockets that fund their campaigns (and who knows what else). I find it amazing that Senators on a $200k/year salary are multimillionaires. And almost all the campaign promises about cutting spending are never kept. We have a spending problem at the federal level. We’ve not had a federal surplus in 23 years. 23 years. All administrations in that time no matter the party have added to it (yes even DJT). So at least on the federal level, voting with your wallet means getting rid of every single person that is currently in office. And that just won’t happen no matter how much we want or need it to. Off my soapbox now.

Here's the thing: we should have a separation of state and business just like we do with state and religion. Lobbyists only exist because, like I said, we're only a semi-free society and economy. If the government didn't regulate business like it does, then businesses would have no reason to spend millions on lobbying.

If our government followed the Constitution, lobbyists wouldn't exist and politicians wouldn't make all that money. Yes, that would require getting rid of the vast majority of current politicians, and to have politicians waiting in the wings who would reverse things. But that won't happen until more people think and vote that way. But that sends us down another rabbit hole entirely.

 

[NGOT8R]

yeah but those are the VERY DEFINITION of captive audience. Still, nobody put a gun to your head so really it's more an "intelligence test" whether you allow yourself to get sucked into paying.

Fair point.

As for charging $3 to use the restroom or cut a line, if we live long enough, we may see that circle back around.

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