With apologies to our many friends and posters outside the United States... it's time for another one of these! Culture war thread rules apply, and you are permitted to openly advocate for or against an issue or candidate on the ballot (if you clearly identify which ballot, and can do so without knocking down any strawmen along the way). "Small-scale" questions and answers are also permitted if you refrain from shitposting or being otherwise insulting to others here. Please keep the spirit of the law--this is a discussion forum!--carefully in mind.
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By way of personal anecdote, I do almost all of my grocery shopping at Costco, and have done so for my whole adult life, all the way back to when I was a teenager living at home. For pretty much that entire time, until around 2016, 2 gallons of fat-free milk was priced at $4. I suspect it may have been a 'loss-leader', but $4 for two gallons of skim milk was the standard for years. Around 2016 or so, the price suddenly shot up -- I think it was $4.50 or maybe $5, still quite cheap but compared to the baseline a shocking price hike, especially given the price changed all at once (it had been $4 during my previous Costco trip). There was another price hike in 2020, during the COVID year, and ever since it's been going up and up and up. I know that there have been supply problems for milk, so they discontinued fat-free entirely [EDIT: in my area] except for one specific store, and a month or so back they started selling individual gallons of milk (Costco milk has always come in a 2-pack).
I just came back from my latest Costco run. 2 gallons of 2% milk cost $7.50.
I'm aware that milk is a single commodity, that Costco milk is cheaper than expected, that there have been supply problems for a number of reasons, all that. I am well aware that the plural of anecdote is not data. My point is to contrast the top-level 'this is my experience of inflation' vs. 'this is how the government is reporting inflation'.
In the last decade, according to my personal experience, milk has practically doubled in price -- a near-100% inflation rate.
In the last decade, according to this graph, the price of milk has gone up by about 33% in nominal dollars, but stayed perfectly flat in inflation-adjusted dollars.
It would not surprise me in the slightest to learn that the government has been cooking the books for inflation.
For what its worth my experience mirriors yours. My eldest is 9 years old and i remember that when they first started eating solid food ground beef was something like 3 dollars a pound, today it's closer to 8.
My admittedly imperfect impression is that that the prices of food and gas have more than doubled since 2016. Yet the official line continues to be that inflation is minimal or an illusion.
Is anyone else here old enough to remember the 5 dollar foot-long promotion at Subway? What does a large Itallian BMT cost you today?
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