The Incredible Shrinking Everything

It’s time for a rant. The government tells us there’s no inflation worth mentioning. The MSM, which couldn’t stop talking about gas prices under Bush, reports this mindlessly and somehow doesn't notice that massive inflation is everywhere. And companies are trying to hide the fact they've been shrinking their products. Grrrr.

The Consumer Price Index is a measure of what it costs urban consumers to buy a basket of goods and services. This is how the government tracks inflation. According to the government, the CPI is running at a rate of about 1.1% inflation if you exclude food and fuel. When you include food and fuel, this number increases to a 2.3% inflation rate. Gee, that's not so bad, except that it's not true.

I bought a new car during the financial crash in 2008. I couldn’t pass up the deal as Chrysler was having a fire sale and basically shoved the keys into my pocket in exchange for some lint. When I filled it up in the first week, it cost me a whopping $38.50. I wasn't pleased, but that's life. Since that time, Obama supposedly tamed inflation. Indeed, we’ve been warned about “deflation.” Yet, when I filled up my car this weekend, it cost me $54!! That’s an increase of $15.50 or 40.3% in three years. That works out to roughly a 12% inflation rate. . . not the 1.2% claimed by the CPI for food and fuel.

Maybe the problem is just gas, right? Hardly. T-shirts, tennis shoes, printer ink, printer paper. . . it’s all more expensive than it was even six months go, when it was already more expensive than the six months before that. The local newspaper shrank a couple inches on each side and lost about a third of its pages. . . and 100% of its relevance. One of the magazines I get suddenly looks like they're printing it on used paper and it too seems awfully thin. Electricity and water are both way up too. I went to McDonalds the other day and paid around 30% more than I paid two years ago. And while the "Dollar Menu" is still there, almost nothing on it was a dollar.

But where you really see inflation is in groceries. Or, should I say, where you really have inflation but you don’t see it is in groceries. Why don’t you see it? Because producers are hiding it. For example, I’ve made spaghetti for decades. So imagine my surprise when suddenly the proportions seemed wrong in my recipe. How could that be? Well, because even though the noodles cost the same as always, the amount of noodles in the package shrunk. Yep. A 16 oz. package of spaghetti noodles now suddenly contains only 12.5 oz. That translates into a 25% hidden price increase!! Yet, the box is identical and there was no announcement: "Now with less than ever before!" or "Contains 25% more air!"

Have you opened a box of Captain Crunch lately? You’ll have to reach 25% further down into the box before you find the sugar-coated sugar bombs. I hope you have long arms. Donuts are smaller too. . . dammit. And they’re way more expensive. And now they're getting chintzy on cream! What the heck?! Coke is more expensive too. What was a regular price for Coke became a sales price. . . became a rare sales price. . . disappeared into history. Despite Coke’s best efforts to mix up their package sizes to confuse the buyer, I’m pretty sure Coke is twice as expensive now as it was five years ago. Cadbury Eggs, a personal favorite, are up 33% in two years. Damn you Easter Bunny!

In each of these instances, the product shrunk but the package remained identical. In some instances, they even put new claims on the label to distract you from what they'd done, such as in the photo above where Scott claims their new smaller toilet paper is "Now Stronger!" It better be, it's got more work to do.

So why is no one mentioning this? Why does the media ignore this trend? And why is our government lying to us about inflation and getting away with it? Oh, that’s right, because there’s a free-spending Democrat in charge. I guess we'll have to wait until 2012 to hear how bad inflation really is. Grrrr.