I just got back from the grocery store (a large chain where I shop early every Sunday morning), and is it possible that grocery prices have gone up in the one month I’ve been gone? Perhaps I’ve forgotten how high they were, but when a loaf of garden-variety generic bread costs $2 (it’s $1 at Aldi’s, but I’d have to drive a lot farther to get it), a smallish jar of brand-name but not fancy preserves (for my peanut-butter sandwiches) is six bucks, and as for toilet paper or paper towels, well, I’ll have to make more runs to Costco to buy in bulk (at least it’s the season when I can get one of their fantastic and humongous pumpkin pies). And as for the price of eggs, fuggedaboutit.
Now I am fortunate enough to be able to afford these things, though I took a pass on the preserves (I can order fancy Tiptree British preserves from Amazon at the same price). But I can understand why Americans pinched for cash are beefing about food, which is the one contact with the economy that the average person has on a weekly basis. Note too that while inflation is beginning to decrease, the cost of groceries has increased fully 25% in four years, outpacing the general inflation rate, which was 19% in the same period. To counteract this, Kamala Harris has proposed a ban on price-gouging when it comes to food. (Economists are dubious.)
I’m not blaming the current administration, as understanding these high prices is above my pay grade and there may be good reasons for this inflation, but I can understand now why people feel that the economy is going to hell.
Anyway, I’m not trying to incite a political discussion here, as I’m not blaming any politician or administration for food inflation. All I’m saying is that I’ve been gone a month and, restarting my weekly trips to the grocery store, I can see why people who are not flush with cash are complaining. If you have your own beefs about the prices of certain groceries, put them below.
BUT, see below. This alone is worth joining Costco for, as well as their huge $5 pre-roasted chickens:
A sad day when a week’s groceries for 2 with NO wine, NO meat, and No chocolate is $75!
Is signing up to Costco (or Sam’s Club) worth it given there are only two of us and space is limited in our house?
FYI, like Jerry my wife and I can afford the ever climbing grocery bill, and like Jerry, the wife comes back from the grocery store pissed with more generics and micro-size brand name products.
My only victory is getting her to quit buying cheap, recycled paper towels that shred off the spool…and yes, I hear about it.
Well, you might lose a bit of money, but I think I come out about even. They have good stuff for just me, so for two people I think it’s worth checking out. I think they’ll let you into the store to look around and decide for yourself. Their customer service is excellent beyond belief, too.
And check out the pies, roast chicken, and $1.50 hot dog/endless soft drink deal, which they’ll never change.
I also really like the soft serve vanilla 😄
Things I buy at Costco (in Texas) paper towels & toilet paper in bulk (store them in the garage) ciabatta rolls and palmiers and Bibigo wontons (store in freezer) and the occasional bottle of new & interesting wine. They have a pharmacy, optometrist, hearing aid center.
Rick if you live near a Kroger (they’re called Fry’s where I live, but it’s the same thing), tell your wife the “good ones” that are Kroger house brand, they come in 2-packs for $4.99 out here (Tucson) and they’re THE BEST paper towels. Better than the fancy brands. They’re 2-ply, thick and not fuzzy like some brands are. Try ’em, you’ll like ’em, ha ha.
In the UK if you live near a Costco it more than pays for itself in fuel for your car.
US fuel prices start much lower so even if Costco is cheaper (I don’t know in the US) there may not be material savings.
My personal experience with Costco is that it’s cheaper for some items, not for others, and you have to shop there regularly to save enough to justify the expense. If you hold a lot of parties or can do shopping for family then that may be enough.
On a non-Costco topic, food price inflation in the UK has been extremely high too. The primary drivers are global warfare and ‘net zero’ – the energy cost implications of which added to attacks on fertiliser and some tough weather conditions have hammered food production in Europe and the US. So it would be wrong to blame the current administration for all of the inflation, but they are culpable for some of it.
Not sure how this works in other areas, but I pay $1.99 for a dozen Grade B eggs in a large chain store. Same situation in both Phoenix and Seattle.
Aren’t grade B pretty much the lowest grade eggs you can find, though? Maybe they’re still good enough, but I hate the deceptive grading system of B, A, AA, and AAA that they use to make you think everything’s great.
I can’t help but devolve this into some comment about politics. How can a Harris administration fight price gouging? Is there actual price gouging? And how could the federal government even knock it that back if it even exists?
I know economists have taken issue with her stand, but I’ve regarded it as just one of the pretend promises that politicians make to get elected.
It seems that net profits of the large grocery and food production chains increased significantly over the last few years, indicating that they took advantage of the pandemic disruption to justify some of the cost increases, and letting the Biden administration take the blame. This is the argument that Robert Reich makes.
Everywhere around the world, it seems that groceries are way up. In Canada it’s just awful because there is a monopoly with the chains and they even control the supply chain. I really wish Aldi and Trader Joes (two German grocery stores) could come here. I’m not sure what stops them. Maybe the grocery cartel here.
We stopped at McDonalds to get our dog a treat – a small order of fries, that’s it. Three dollars!
My latest :
$90 – ok, it’s groceries, etc.
Oops – forgot town garbage bags. I’ll get four packs of some number of 33 gallon bags per pack.
“Sixty-five dollars please.”
O_o oh… kay… WTF… price increase I guess….
Yep. My 88-year-old mother only goes shopping occasionally. Instead, my sister shops for her. She avoids telling my mother about the cost, as my mother would be horrified and would be more inclined to starve than to allow my sister to pay.
On controlling food prices, Vice President Harris has fallen into the politician’s trap of promising something she can’t deliver. Many or most lawmakers have stepped into the trap at one time or other. We have choices in understanding that promise. Either she was warned by her advisers that she couldn’t actually accomplish that goal but she offered it anyway. Or her advisers didn’t explain the risk of failure of the approach and she was or will be blindsided by reality if and when she tries it. Either way, her promise makes me wonder how to understand her approach to things I care about the most: protection of democracies around the world and protection of a merit based and civil culture based on equality of individual opportunity in our country. My jury is still out on whether she shares and will protect those existential values.
Wash Post says economists are in consensus that price controls don’t work.
https://nypost.com/2024/08/17/us-news/left-wing-washington-post-slams-harris-price-gouging-crackdown/
I now, at the age of 62, must be fitter and stronger than I was as a young man. Nowadays I can easily lift $100 worth of groceries with one arm. I couldn’t do that when I was 30.
$2 for a loaf of bread – luggsury! Here in Southern California it’s more like $4. Eggs are still a good deal, especially at Costco. Costco quality is also top-notch; we swear by their chicken breasts, for example.
At normal markets, we save by shopping specials and in-season produce. Here in CA, though, produce tends to be fairly reasonable.
At the Kroger stores in a university town in Kansas, the bread I used to buy is now $5.29. I refuse to buy Kroger’s “whole wheat” bread on sale for $1.79 (usually $2.49) because it is dangerously close to Wonder Bread. I watch for sales and can generally buy bread for $2.50. I buy two or three loaves, keep one out and freeze the others. Yes, prices are awful.
Grocery stores operate on thin 1-3% margins, so I don’t think there is any serious price gouging going on overall. In the last couple years, I’ve actually started clipping coupons. It does help.
We (household of 2) find Costco worthwhile for price (Oral-B electric toothbrush head ~$13 at CVS, buy 10 at Costco ~$4.40 each) but just as importantly for quality of the merchandise and their ‘no questions asked’ return policy. We do have enough space to store bales of toilet paper or six packages of chicken at once, so that isn’t an issue for us. Chest freezers are wonderful.
If you buy a food item, open and taste it and do not like it, you can return it. “I didn’t like it”, is all that’s necessary. The shortest return limit is 90 days (electronics, jewelry, etc.) but people have returned things as much as two years later. You don’t need your receipt since they can find the item on their computer.
They seem to have better products than you often get in the grocery store. The cans of ‘Chicken of the Sea’ tuna that you get at the grocery store are awful, but the cans with the same apparent label at Costco are much better, you just have to buy 12 cans (they also have more expensive sustainably caught or mercury tested tuna). I found a similar difference with ‘Miracle Gro’ potting soil – the bags sold at Costco – wonderful, ones bought at Home Depot – awful.
Costco employees are treated well, while many of my local grocery store employees are treated badly and are miserable.
The situation in NZ science is so appalling that it cries out for a book, putting together the voluminous material published on your website. It would, of course, have to be published overseas, but it would sell like hot cakes in NZ.
Agriculture runs on fossil fuels. Fertilizer is made primarily from natural gas. Diesel fuel keeps the tractors and implements running, and of course fuels the trucks that move the raw and finished materials to the consumer.
So, it costs me about twice as much to produce a bale of hay as it did in 2020. Most of our hay is purchased by people who keep horses. They usually send a truck from Montana or wherever, and pick the bales up from one of our hay barns. Of course the fuel cost for the customer has gone up significantly as well.
There are a couple of sections of land that we are not going to bale this year. The grass is green and perfect, but people cannot afford to buy is unless we sell it at a loss.
The war on fossil fuels is indirectly a war on modern agriculture. A few years ago, we could claim that Americans pay the smallest percentage of their disposable income for food than any people anywhere, at any time in history. This is no longer the case.
Usually, when there is stress on agricultural producers because of a drought, shortages, or a spike in material cost, farmers tap into their savings or equity and hope for better next year. A lot of folks have been doing that for a couple of years now, and are looking hard at getting out completely.
The thing that is happening to agriculture has not really happened yet. What we see at the grocery store today is only a portent of things to come.
During Covid supply chain shortages when prices went up grocery stores realized that Hoomans need to eat at any cost and haven’t seen the need to reduce them. It’s corporate greed pure and simple. Look at their record profits.
Egg prices have skyrocketed because of a bird flu outbreak.
Otherwise, the Costco here, just E of Pittsburgh, dependably has this great smoked whitefish from Acme Smoked Fish in Brooklyn. I’m sure it’s the same stuff that Mordechai will bring you if you can wait that long.
Yes, the recurring bird flu epidemics have significant effects on egg prices and poultry availability (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/egg-prices-are-rising-bird-flu-limits-supply-rcna167016).
May i suggest, for those who have access to local food cooperatives or farmers’ markets, that you check them out. There are many small producers who produce excellent quality fruits, vegetables, eggs, baked goods, etc. (Many towns also allow backyard chickens now, too.) The prices may not be much lower than the grocery store, but you are supporting worthy alternative sources.