Why do a few things cost so damn much?

[Anonymous]

So I went to the store after work and I bought a couple things and I ended up spending $110 at Walmart. I mean personal things I needed mostly.
My dad said back then you would able to buy so many groceries with less money. I know $110 doesn’t sound much but still.

[NamerOfStars]

The way a fiat currency works is that the money has value because everyone agrees it has value. It's not like there's a hard limit on how many "dollars" there are, unlike gold or cattle or seashells or anything else that's been used as currency. This is fortunate, since there isn't really anything there's enough of.

Now, while the money is arbitrary, the wealth is not- and so long as you keep printing more money (physically or otherwise), you need a corresponding increase in wealth, or you're going to be hit with inflation. Over the past five years, we haven't had an increase in wealth that kept up with the historic money printing done at the same time, or that kept up with standard money printing like we'd done in previous years, or at all; we saw a marked DROP when every governor but one shut down their economies, causing an almost total cessation of the production of wealth at the same time as the money printers went into overdrive. All those people blaming Trump and Biden? They're mostly talking out of their asses. While neither of those two *helped*, the lion's share of the blame is on a far more local level- and only a single Covid governor (or emperor; I see you, Pritzker!) has been voted out of office.

The Spanish empire collapsed for pretty much exactly the same reason: a vast increase in money, stolen from the New World, without a corresponding increase in wealth. But there's more to it than that.

See, even a fully modern economy isn't entirely abstracted, since you can't eat electronic dollars, and there's one physical commodity that's critical to the functioning of every first world nation: oil. In the USA, if you're not a subsistence farmer, your job DOES NOT EXIST WITHOUT TRUCK DRIVERS. And the Biden administration decided that crippling oil production in the name of environmentalism was a good idea. But you can't transition on to a new fuel source when it doesn't exist, or if the technology that makes use of it is decades away from ready to be a primary replacement. We have both. Current-generation electric cars have killed more people through explosions and engine fires than even the legendary Ford Pinto. And not just in absolute numbers, either, but in PROPORTIONAL ones. Are electric cars the transportation tools of the future? Maybe; in the long term, we unquestionably need something to replace oil. But the electrical grid, barely functional NOW, is totally unable to handle an increase of millions of vehicles (even if they DIDN'T explode), and cutting oil production is going to make that worse, not better. Elon Musk- who for obvious reasons has rather a vested interest in public acceptance of electric vehicles- came out and said we needed to start the derricks pumping again, because HE knows that it's not worth destroying civilization to placate a few environmentalist whackjobs. Beyond that, if the public is FORCED into being limited to cars that might kill them, the laws will be overturned by force of opinion, and the idea of electric cars will wither on the vine.

I'm rambling a little, so I'll wrap up here and say only that it's going to get worse before it gets better. Maybe only a little worse; maybe much. To whatever extent you can, start growing your own food: even a few pots of radishes might make the difference, and even if things magically get better (which I would TOTALLY be okay with, by the way; I'd LOVE to eat all these words), you'll still be saving money. Find what plants grow in your area, which are edible, and which you can raise yourself. Look into keeping chickens (which are more work than most people think, but still a source of easy calories), or even goats.

[buzzword]

It's almost like some guy on this site told all of you four years ago that food prices were going to go through the roof. That you should prepare and grow whatever food you can on your own and stockpile what you can't... As it was put the Food Chain Reaction Game carried out by the global cabal was going to make food prices spike significantly. They want you hungry and desperate... Guess what? It hasn't even begun to go through it's steepest price hike which is set for 2025-2028. But as all the sheep said, that's a "conspiracy theory" you're banned! I don't care that global governments actually participated in a simulation and documented it in video and in pdf published to the internet for everyone to read... Censor! Censor! Censor! Disinformation because I fact checked it with my handy dandy fact check site that tells me what to think because I can't think myself and do basic research!

When you take the world reserve currency (U. S. Federal Reserve Note) in the country that exports the most food around the world (USA) and devalue it by expanding the money supply by printing lots of money, then increase the velocity of money with a bunch of frivolous stimulus checks and low interest rates, without increasing real GDP, then based on the quantity theory of money you get inflation.

If you then created supply shocks on purpose by doing things like locked down entire economy under the premise of covid so that people don't work to produce and ship goods you reduce supply or cut fertilizer shipments by 20% as part of the green new deal you again reduce supply of vegetables and drive grain prices higher which in turn boosts the price of meat and processed foods. If you then cut the water supply to potato farmers in Idaho you reduce the production of a major calorie crop. Then maybe you slaughtered millions of animals based on bogus PCR tests claiming chickens, turkeys, etc. have covid or bird flu then you reduce meat supplies. But wait if that's not enough you can burn down hundreds of food processing plants across the nation to reduce supply through economic terrorism, or provoke a war in Ukraine to shut down the bread basket of Europe, or blow up fertilizer silos in Lebanon destroying a middle eastern food exchange, or start a worker's strike in east coast ports from Texas to Maine on October 1st of this year. Are you guys paying attention yet or is it all just a "conspiracy theory"... Happy gardening...

[FunkyMonkee]

Have you ever heard of Joe Biden?
$110 sounds like a small fortune, to me!! I'll bet I could've bought the same stuff for about $30.00 40 years ago. Maybe just over that 4 years ago!
At least 4 years ago, I could go to the store and buy a shopping cart full of stuff and it might cost $75, or so. Today, I go and buy 3 handfuls of stuff and it's well over $100!!

[LiamJHayden]

Mostly government overspending and overregulation.

[LiamJHayden]

The overspending fuels inflation and the overregulation massively increases costs

[AshleyJarrett]

Price gouging

[Asker]

Apparently that. I’m so glad my parents taught us a valuable of a dollar.

[Jmmmfi4]

YEAH ITS FUCKING RIDICULOUS

[gatixek710]

Bidenomics.