In another pathetic pre-recorded speech, played before Sunday’s Super Bowl, President Joe Biden lambasted America’s corporations for “shrinkflation.”
“As an ice cream lover,” he explained in the vid, “what makes me the most angry is that ice cream cartons have actually shrunk in size but not in price.”
The Guardian expands upon the president’s gripe: “Inflation dropped to 3.1% in December but some companies are thought to have responded to rising costs by marginally shrinking the size of products — shrinkflation — as well as changing recipes to reduce the amount of more expensive ingredients — sometimes known as ‘skimpflation.’”
My, oh my, so businesses must adjust to inflationary pressures as well.
When the costs of their inputs go up, they do not automatically become charities. Knowing that consumers do not sport infinite incomes and demand schedules utterly “inelastic” — buying the same goods in the same quantities even at higher prices — they often adjust by reducing quality or quantity.
It is one of many ways that inflation hurts us.
Inflation has even been referred to as the sneakiest of all taxes, taking from the masses and giving to the insider class, those closest to government (those who receive newly-created money first).
Biden calls “shrinkflation” a “rip-off” and insists that “the American public is tired of being played as suckers.”
Well, that will prove true only if the American public rejects those politicians who push the policies that led to the inflation — politicians like those in the 116th and 117th Congresses, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden himself.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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3 replies on “Shrinkflation, Shrunk Nation”
Absolutely. The sincere opponents of inflationism amongst Republican elected officials are a tiny minority, and the Democratic Party has none at all.
Before Trump took office, he spoke of paying-off the Federal debt by increasing the issuance of money. Fortunately, in office he didn’t do something quite that dire, but he didn’t work to throttle spending before the COVID Panic, and he embraced what were dishonestly called “stimulus” payments during the Fauch-downs.
Biden himself may never have understood the differences amongst P, ΔP/Δt, and Δ²P/(Δt)² — that is to say amongst the price level, the rate at which the price level changes, and the rate at which that rate itself changes. But his handlers do understand these differences. They just rely on a base almost entirely of people who either don’t grasp the differences or will rôle-play as if they do not. Most of our formal and informal institutions of education will cultivate confusion and enable pretense.
(Just as a car merely slowing down is not moving in the other direction, a drop in the inflation rate doesn’t imply that prices are falling. A drop in the inflation rate only implies that they are not rising as fast as once they did.)
Mr Biden’s complaints are but another indication of his mental acuity. If the dollar is inflating due to governmental malfeasance one can easily predict that there will be less goods or services provided in exchange for a dollar.
Misallocation of the blame is not a solution, it is an intentional deception. The solution is proper fiscal management by the government and treasury but that will not be considered, especially in an election year when the most common election stragity is to buy votes with borrowed money.
Where has Joe been? “Shrinkflation” has been with us for several decades. Instead of raising prices, product sizes keep shrinking and the retail price appears less volatile. It’s nothing new.