The physical size of charmin changed during the pandemic.
Good to track this yearly since some standard metrics are useless versus the shrinkflation, reduction in quality ingredients, and other manipulation we’ll learn about sooner or later.
Many ice creams are now dairy desserts due to not having enough ingredients to make the cut. Same with milk chocolates and now declared chocolate candy due to not using enough real cocoa.
Thanks to NPR for this important reporting; it sucks that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is shutting down after losing all of its funding.
This "basked of goods" approach to understanding price inflation seems outdated to me. 114 items! It seems to me like there must be organizations out there with tons and tons of price and consumer spending data for thousands and thousands of items, right? It should be possible to get much more comprehensive measurement of price changes over time vs and approach taken like this one (or the CPI, for that matter).
> Most households are able to afford more than the essentials and do care about the cost of entertainment.
1/3 of the households make less than $50k. Mean survival budget is $35k-40k. After taxes, if a third of the population can barely meet a survival budget, an index like this needs to be part of the overall economy.
And the point of the ALICE index is exactly to address what you are pointing out. When wages, social security etc. were increasing proportionally to the essential goods, it made sense to have the CPI include other goods and services, allowing policy makers to use it as a basis for policy directions. However, when essentials become expensive faster than non essentials, it creates a problem for policy makers. It explains the “vibeflation” where policy makers were pushing back hard on economic struggles that most people are feeling by pointing to CPI numbers that show a 2-3% inflation, meanwhile.
Thinking about the “overall economy” increasingly means focusing on the spending of the rich, and ignoring the poor and struggling. A consequence of increasing inequality is the rich make up more and more consumer spending. Consumer spending can therefore easily look great while most people are struggling to get by. There really is no “overall economy”, there are many many different stories happening all at once, and focusing on simple metrics lets you easily fool yourself.
1. It sounds like you're just describing a larger "basket of goods"? That data is available, but also valuable, and I'm not sure why the basket of goods tracked by the CPI or NPR would be inadequate.
2. This specific exercise is designed to be relatable to individuals (in general, and specifically ones such as the people interviewed in the article who claimed that their grocery bill went up about 50% in a year, which is implausible to put it politely) so that they can understand the actual level of inflation rather than the one they imagined in their head.
At least Walmart is likely to honor the price on the shelf. Dollar stores often just change prices without updating the shelf, so you don't know what you're going to pay until you get to the register. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/03/customers-pa...
Swai is perhaps the worst possible fish to buy (low nutritional value, bad for environment, contains toxins) so (a) it's unfortunate they picked this fish and (b) it's good it's more expensive since perhaps people will buy less of it.
What a poorly-built site. There is a cookie banner covering a popover solicitation for donations, covering an inset photo/caption which itself is covered by a cookie banner (wtf?) ... closed the tab.
For the love of god- I can't understand why people buy paper towels. It makes zero sense. It's expensive, you throw it after a use. I started using cloth towels and life is so much better.
We stopped using toilet paper during covid, got a bidet, and bought a couple hundred shop towels to dry our butts. Now we only buy toilet paper for guests, which happens maybe once a year after throwing several parties.
We also bought shop towels for the kitchen to replace paper towels. I love the shop towels so much.
The butt-towels are white, and we wash them with bleach, there's zero problems doing this. If there happens to be a bit of excess poop on a towel (typically there is none at all), we just throw it out, we have hundreds. The kitchen towels are blue, so we don't mix them up with the butt-towels.
We have laundry baskets specifically for each kind of shop towel. A small one in the bathrooms, a larger one in the kitchen for the kitchen towels. We have to wash the butt-towels maybe once a month, and about the same for the kitchen towels. It's a simple chore that takes practically none of our time, less than it would to go out and buy paper.
It's so much better than spending $100s of dollars a year on paper that literally gets flushed down the toilet or goes into the trash.
A few of our friends took notice and started doing this too.
Honestly, I don't know why we ever wiped our butts with toilet paper for so many years, it's just so... shitty. It's just not a good experience. When we travel we miss our bidet and shop towels so much, to the point that I've ordered a cheap bidet if I'm staying in an Airbnb for a week or more, and install it there.
It's disappointing, but not surprising, that people thought the president would make any really impact on inflation. That said, with global conditions improving it looks like we could've actually seen a drastically larger reduction in inflation if not for the tariffs. The goals of the tariffs seem so misaligned with what the country needs - again not surprising that we're doing something the opposite of what we need - and again also not surprising that his supporters don't seem to care.
I think the real issue is that for the powers that be, inflation is seen as either neutral or a good thing. The only people it hurts is the working class and the blame is nebulous. So it is used as a tool to increase taxes without changing laws, lower the cost of debt, and cut labor wages since they don't get pay raises commensurate with inflation. So I think it is a trick played upon the working class to screw them over in the long term while the wealthy are protected because all their assets simply go up in value with inflation. I think the target inflation rate should be 0%, not 2%. I simply don't believe the justification for the 2% target.
>It's disappointing, but not surprising, that people thought the president would make any really impact on inflation
Except that a president, in normal times, COULD make an impact on inflation, both directly and indirectly.
What is surprising, is that after a completely failed presidency that saw a marked decrease in middle class prosperity, people thought that Donald Trump, of all people, could bring inflation down.
It tickles me pink that people essentially want communism. (Not the theoretical communism but the not-really-communism that a bunch of Eastern bloc countries implemented in the 20th century)
Ask more widely. People want reasonable services from their government, and tighter regulation of markets, with elimination of profit-taking middlemen.
They want democratic socialism.
Meanwhile, the right wing has been telling them that public libraries and public schools and everything good except profit -- is communism.
> People want reasonable services from their government
Yes, though the definition of "reasonable" is a real sticking point
> and tighter regulation of markets
This is less clear to me, but I would agree people want less fraud and deception in markets
> with elimination of profit-taking middlemen
I don't think many people think about this at all, and it's another very nebulous term
> They want democratic socialism.
No, democratic socialists want democratic socialism. Most Americans do not.
> Meanwhile, the right wing has been telling them that public libraries and public schools and everything good except profit -- is communism.
I disagree with basically everything the current incarnation of the Republican party is doing or stands for, and silly statements like this aren't helpful.
People don't "essentially want communism" by advocating for socialist policy. Serious economists will tell you that it is impossible to transition America's free market into a planned economy. We're capitalist through thick and thin.
Yet there is a sizeable number of us who consider seriously promises to "lower prices of X" like it's a thing that can be done by decree. It's disappointing is all.
Exactly, people didn't used to even imagine there was any way to change nor think free-enterprise should be compromised for any special interests, the outcome had always been negative when lobbyists got their way too often with either party.
Remember why Ronald Reagan and the bulk of the American people from both parties absolutely hated Communism so much?
It wan't mainly the economic differences from a free-market system; that barely made it onto the radar and was largely academic.
It was the dictatorship aspect that was so disgusting and anti-American as can be.
Dismal economic considerations under Communist governments were well-recognized as a logical result of dictatorship, that had been obvious for centuries.
Otherwise there wouldn't have been as much ambition for subjects to withdraw from dictator/monarchy regimes and settle in America to begin with.
> As affordability became Americans' top concern, big brands began to worry about shoppers switching to store-label competitors or skipping some purchases altogether.
I think, at least in the last year-or-so, big brands also became worried about getting flamed by the president for raising prices.
Wages and energy have not increased. Tariffs on food are basically non existent for most items.
It's 100% purely supply side pricing, propped up by government spending and credit (which is largely backstopped by the government as well).
I listened to a podcast recently that some 'homeowners' have not made a mortgage payment in years, have no ability to pay, but here are essentially unlimited 'no doc' mortgage modifications available since the Corona time period.
> listened to a podcast recently that some 'homeowners' have not made a mortgage payment in years, have no ability to pay,
How? Somebody is holding the bag here on the mortgage - a bank, probably. And they are fine with not receiving payments? Or is somebody else making payments on the homeowner's behalf?
So, the basic process is 1) Borrow stops making payments. 2) Borrow goes into forbearance for 12 months just prior to foreclosure start. 3) Forbearance ends, borrower cannot make current. 4) FHA steps in to do loan modification. Essentially, they roll the forebeared balance into the loan, payoff the existing mortgage, and issue a new FHA-backed loan, without any income or payment ability qualifications. 5) Repeat the process again.
Yeah, those are some of the programs I was referring to. The 'loophole' aspect that was mentioned on the podcast is that when the FHA does the 'loss mitigation' (aka, refi's the loan), there is not any kind of qualification as to whether the buyer will ever be able to make a payment on the new loan. It's just approved anyway, and the cycle can happen unlimited times.
I think they're looking at adding a means test, but I'm unsure.
If you try it at home you'll realise combining milk, butter and sugar in a bowl doesn't create ice cream. And when you figure out how to create ice cream you'll realise moving said ice cream to a place where you can sell it requires extra steps too
First, I think you're probably right that ice cream is priced too high compared to its inputs.
But maybe there are other factors? What about energy? One would assume that ice cream has a higher energy requirement than other "treat" style products? Are there specific tariff impacts on ice cream manufacturing equipment?
Could be. But also, ice cream manufacturers buy their ingredients more cheaply than consumers do. It is very possible that the cost of milk/butter/sugar at Walmart reflect Walmart deciding to lower their profit margins on these items, even if the cost to Walmart has increased.
Or - Walmart is a big enough supplier that they have stable contracts with manufacturers, and are able to purchase their ingredients for the same cost as always, while Turkey Hill et al is competing over what's left. (Like Apple, buying up TSMC runs.)
The physical size of charmin changed during the pandemic.
Good to track this yearly since some standard metrics are useless versus the shrinkflation, reduction in quality ingredients, and other manipulation we’ll learn about sooner or later.
Many ice creams are now dairy desserts due to not having enough ingredients to make the cut. Same with milk chocolates and now declared chocolate candy due to not using enough real cocoa.
Thanks to NPR for this important reporting; it sucks that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is shutting down after losing all of its funding.
This "basked of goods" approach to understanding price inflation seems outdated to me. 114 items! It seems to me like there must be organizations out there with tons and tons of price and consumer spending data for thousands and thousands of items, right? It should be possible to get much more comprehensive measurement of price changes over time vs and approach taken like this one (or the CPI, for that matter).
I’ve had a gripe with “basket of goods” approach. Does a household really care that much if the game of clue is 10% cheaper in 2025?
There needs to be an index that reflects what people really need and the closest I’ve found is the ALICE index: https://www.unitedforalice.org/essentials-index
I did not know about this, and it's excellent. Seems like a one-shot explanation for the "vibe-flation" phenomenon that many people find mystifying.
Most households are able to afford more than the essentials and do care about the cost of entertainment.
There's value in the index you described as well, but IMO it doesn't make sense to use it as the basis for the overall economy.
> Most households are able to afford more than the essentials and do care about the cost of entertainment.
1/3 of the households make less than $50k. Mean survival budget is $35k-40k. After taxes, if a third of the population can barely meet a survival budget, an index like this needs to be part of the overall economy.
And the point of the ALICE index is exactly to address what you are pointing out. When wages, social security etc. were increasing proportionally to the essential goods, it made sense to have the CPI include other goods and services, allowing policy makers to use it as a basis for policy directions. However, when essentials become expensive faster than non essentials, it creates a problem for policy makers. It explains the “vibeflation” where policy makers were pushing back hard on economic struggles that most people are feeling by pointing to CPI numbers that show a 2-3% inflation, meanwhile.
We need to have both.
Thinking about the “overall economy” increasingly means focusing on the spending of the rich, and ignoring the poor and struggling. A consequence of increasing inequality is the rich make up more and more consumer spending. Consumer spending can therefore easily look great while most people are struggling to get by. There really is no “overall economy”, there are many many different stories happening all at once, and focusing on simple metrics lets you easily fool yourself.
The Economist tried to solve this in the past with https://www.economist.com/interactive/big-mac-index (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac_Index for non-subscribers)
1. It sounds like you're just describing a larger "basket of goods"? That data is available, but also valuable, and I'm not sure why the basket of goods tracked by the CPI or NPR would be inadequate.
2. This specific exercise is designed to be relatable to individuals (in general, and specifically ones such as the people interviewed in the article who claimed that their grocery bill went up about 50% in a year, which is implausible to put it politely) so that they can understand the actual level of inflation rather than the one they imagined in their head.
At least Walmart is likely to honor the price on the shelf. Dollar stores often just change prices without updating the shelf, so you don't know what you're going to pay until you get to the register. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/03/customers-pa...
> swai fish fillets from Vietnam (up 34%)
Swai is perhaps the worst possible fish to buy (low nutritional value, bad for environment, contains toxins) so (a) it's unfortunate they picked this fish and (b) it's good it's more expensive since perhaps people will buy less of it.
What a poorly-built site. There is a cookie banner covering a popover solicitation for donations, covering an inset photo/caption which itself is covered by a cookie banner (wtf?) ... closed the tab.
For the love of god- I can't understand why people buy paper towels. It makes zero sense. It's expensive, you throw it after a use. I started using cloth towels and life is so much better.
Same here.
We stopped using toilet paper during covid, got a bidet, and bought a couple hundred shop towels to dry our butts. Now we only buy toilet paper for guests, which happens maybe once a year after throwing several parties.
We also bought shop towels for the kitchen to replace paper towels. I love the shop towels so much.
The butt-towels are white, and we wash them with bleach, there's zero problems doing this. If there happens to be a bit of excess poop on a towel (typically there is none at all), we just throw it out, we have hundreds. The kitchen towels are blue, so we don't mix them up with the butt-towels.
We have laundry baskets specifically for each kind of shop towel. A small one in the bathrooms, a larger one in the kitchen for the kitchen towels. We have to wash the butt-towels maybe once a month, and about the same for the kitchen towels. It's a simple chore that takes practically none of our time, less than it would to go out and buy paper.
It's so much better than spending $100s of dollars a year on paper that literally gets flushed down the toilet or goes into the trash.
A few of our friends took notice and started doing this too.
Honestly, I don't know why we ever wiped our butts with toilet paper for so many years, it's just so... shitty. It's just not a good experience. When we travel we miss our bidet and shop towels so much, to the point that I've ordered a cheap bidet if I'm staying in an Airbnb for a week or more, and install it there.
It's disappointing, but not surprising, that people thought the president would make any really impact on inflation. That said, with global conditions improving it looks like we could've actually seen a drastically larger reduction in inflation if not for the tariffs. The goals of the tariffs seem so misaligned with what the country needs - again not surprising that we're doing something the opposite of what we need - and again also not surprising that his supporters don't seem to care.
I think the real issue is that for the powers that be, inflation is seen as either neutral or a good thing. The only people it hurts is the working class and the blame is nebulous. So it is used as a tool to increase taxes without changing laws, lower the cost of debt, and cut labor wages since they don't get pay raises commensurate with inflation. So I think it is a trick played upon the working class to screw them over in the long term while the wealthy are protected because all their assets simply go up in value with inflation. I think the target inflation rate should be 0%, not 2%. I simply don't believe the justification for the 2% target.
A weak economy bodes well for cash infused investors as fire sale prices arise.
I think we’ve crossed a line where we can no longer assume basic alignment with “our” leadership.
>It's disappointing, but not surprising, that people thought the president would make any really impact on inflation
Except that a president, in normal times, COULD make an impact on inflation, both directly and indirectly.
What is surprising, is that after a completely failed presidency that saw a marked decrease in middle class prosperity, people thought that Donald Trump, of all people, could bring inflation down.
It tickles me pink that people essentially want communism. (Not the theoretical communism but the not-really-communism that a bunch of Eastern bloc countries implemented in the 20th century)
Ask more widely. People want reasonable services from their government, and tighter regulation of markets, with elimination of profit-taking middlemen.
They want democratic socialism.
Meanwhile, the right wing has been telling them that public libraries and public schools and everything good except profit -- is communism.
> People want reasonable services from their government
Yes, though the definition of "reasonable" is a real sticking point
> and tighter regulation of markets
This is less clear to me, but I would agree people want less fraud and deception in markets
> with elimination of profit-taking middlemen
I don't think many people think about this at all, and it's another very nebulous term
> They want democratic socialism.
No, democratic socialists want democratic socialism. Most Americans do not.
> Meanwhile, the right wing has been telling them that public libraries and public schools and everything good except profit -- is communism.
I disagree with basically everything the current incarnation of the Republican party is doing or stands for, and silly statements like this aren't helpful.
How did you get that from my post? Not wanting consumer tariffs when inflation has been high is pro-communism?
So... socialism?
People don't "essentially want communism" by advocating for socialist policy. Serious economists will tell you that it is impossible to transition America's free market into a planned economy. We're capitalist through thick and thin.
> We're capitalist through thick and thin.
Yet there is a sizeable number of us who consider seriously promises to "lower prices of X" like it's a thing that can be done by decree. It's disappointing is all.
>We're capitalist through thick and thin.
Exactly, people didn't used to even imagine there was any way to change nor think free-enterprise should be compromised for any special interests, the outcome had always been negative when lobbyists got their way too often with either party.
Remember why Ronald Reagan and the bulk of the American people from both parties absolutely hated Communism so much?
It wan't mainly the economic differences from a free-market system; that barely made it onto the radar and was largely academic.
It was the dictatorship aspect that was so disgusting and anti-American as can be.
Dismal economic considerations under Communist governments were well-recognized as a logical result of dictatorship, that had been obvious for centuries.
Otherwise there wouldn't have been as much ambition for subjects to withdraw from dictator/monarchy regimes and settle in America to begin with.
I love when people with 0 capital think they are capitalists. The greatest con pulled on the working class.
> As affordability became Americans' top concern, big brands began to worry about shoppers switching to store-label competitors or skipping some purchases altogether.
I think, at least in the last year-or-so, big brands also became worried about getting flamed by the president for raising prices.
The companies that got flamed by 1600 Penn were the ones that raised prices without paying the occupant of 1600 Penn a bribe beforehand.
would be interesting to reveal the holding company behind each brand and what impact they had on products
Wages and energy have not increased. Tariffs on food are basically non existent for most items.
It's 100% purely supply side pricing, propped up by government spending and credit (which is largely backstopped by the government as well).
I listened to a podcast recently that some 'homeowners' have not made a mortgage payment in years, have no ability to pay, but here are essentially unlimited 'no doc' mortgage modifications available since the Corona time period.
> listened to a podcast recently that some 'homeowners' have not made a mortgage payment in years, have no ability to pay,
How? Somebody is holding the bag here on the mortgage - a bank, probably. And they are fine with not receiving payments? Or is somebody else making payments on the homeowner's behalf?
So, the basic process is 1) Borrow stops making payments. 2) Borrow goes into forbearance for 12 months just prior to foreclosure start. 3) Forbearance ends, borrower cannot make current. 4) FHA steps in to do loan modification. Essentially, they roll the forebeared balance into the loan, payoff the existing mortgage, and issue a new FHA-backed loan, without any income or payment ability qualifications. 5) Repeat the process again.
So, the government is making everyone whole.
Mortgage foreclosure is a legal process that takes a very long time and is very expensive.
It doesn't take years, and it's less expensive than writing off the mortgage.
Banks are perfectly well equipped to foreclose on you. Ask anybody who was around in 2008.
You don't usually skate by on years of non-payments, so I'd sticker the original claim with [citation needed]
Don't know if this is what the OP is referring to, but: https://archive.is/2EObp
sounds like a very similar thing.
Here's another one on perpetual forbearances: https://www.wsj.com/opinion/covid-housing-relief-forever-rec...
This would seem to indicate that Covid forbearances are extending into 2026: https://www.hud.gov/sites/dfiles/SFH/documents/SFH_FHA_INFO_...
Yeah, those are some of the programs I was referring to. The 'loophole' aspect that was mentioned on the podcast is that when the FHA does the 'loss mitigation' (aka, refi's the loan), there is not any kind of qualification as to whether the buyer will ever be able to make a payment on the new loan. It's just approved anyway, and the cycle can happen unlimited times.
I think they're looking at adding a means test, but I'm unsure.
The article text cites a comment about ice cream becoming unaffordable.
The numbers show reduced prices for milk and butter (e.g. cream), and sugar remaining constant.
Thus: ice cream is being priced too high.
If you try it at home you'll realise combining milk, butter and sugar in a bowl doesn't create ice cream. And when you figure out how to create ice cream you'll realise moving said ice cream to a place where you can sell it requires extra steps too
How does the cost of chilling, packaging, and moving 1/2 Gallon of ice cream differ from 1/2 Gallon of frozen dairy dessert?
Labor costs have risen. There are other inputs than a handful of raw materials.
Maybe the milk and butter were local while the ice cream was imported and hit with tariffs?
Less than .2% of ice cream is imported.
Does ice cream need to be affordable to 100% of US households, regardless of their other budgeting decisions?
That's the implication of your comment.
First, I think you're probably right that ice cream is priced too high compared to its inputs.
But maybe there are other factors? What about energy? One would assume that ice cream has a higher energy requirement than other "treat" style products? Are there specific tariff impacts on ice cream manufacturing equipment?
it may be that the costs of labor, distribution, and manufacture (for various reasons) have been increased
Could be. But also, ice cream manufacturers buy their ingredients more cheaply than consumers do. It is very possible that the cost of milk/butter/sugar at Walmart reflect Walmart deciding to lower their profit margins on these items, even if the cost to Walmart has increased.
Or - Walmart is a big enough supplier that they have stable contracts with manufacturers, and are able to purchase their ingredients for the same cost as always, while Turkey Hill et al is competing over what's left. (Like Apple, buying up TSMC runs.)