54% of young Americans say food costs are the biggest strain on their finances
54% of young Americans say food costs are the biggest strain on their finances
I go to the grocery store and tomatoes will be randomly $7? And next week it's something else. It's like a rolling brownout for the economy.
I heard a great point recently about how the Soviet Union was just willing to accept shortages and not try to obfuscate them. The current model of distribution will not permit shortages to be obvious, so the failures of the supply chain will just take the form of things randomly being obscenely expensive
The way we stock our grocery stores with the expectation that a third of the food will just go to waste is unbelievably unsustainable, but it's a hell of a marketing gimmick. Feasts and cornucopias and all of that used to be special because they were rare - but in America we show you that image over and over until it becomes your expectation, and not surprisingly Americans wind up consuming way more than other cultures do as a result.
People need to stop expecting every fruit and vegetable to be available fresh year round. I shouldn't be able to get fresh berries in the middle of winter.
What the fuck is the deal with butter too btw? That shit used to be a dollar per pound. Now it’s 6-8 dollars on any given week AND cows are starting to catch the fucking bird flu.
Historically, food insecurity has been the revolutionary straw that breaks regimes' backs, even in the most repressive regimes. Wall Street is playing with fire here. We all know about the "peace, land, and bread" slogan, and you can be damn sure that it was the "bread" part that most caught the attention of the peasants.
As Lenin put it, every society is three meals away from chaos.
That's the thing about Rome's bread and circuses - they worked for like a thousand years.
No peace, no land and soon no bread
Communism is when no foo-
But like, at least they had actual famines (due to a myriad of material reasons like kulaks and technological limits) so there weren't any actual food to distribute, and that was what, 60+ years ago?
There's plenty of food around now, but you just can't have any...
I have an incredible deal on rent in NYC and shop very conservatively for food. Why do I have to pay almost 30K a year, not counting any other living expenses, to just eat the bare minimum food and sleep in the bare minimum accommodations? If you gave this info to somebody living in the Soviet Union they wouldn’t even believe you because it sounds like such unbelievable bullshit that it surely would have to be propaganda.
Coupons aren't even as effective!
I snip and cut away, use their stupid apps
And somehow only manage to save like 3 dollars????!!!
For me the issue is that coupons are often for brand name items and the coupon rarely makes it more cost effective than buying store brand.
Pretty sure it is some STEMlord's job to ensure the coupons and couponing apps are designed with precise calculation in order to not benefit the consumer in the long run but only appear that way.
Don't stone me but we have a decent amount of disposable income and the prices have sort of made me move away from coupons and circulars anyway. If chicken breast is 6.99 / lb. and fucking wild Alaskan king salmon is 9.99 / lb. I might as well just get salmon. When we hit Weimar inflation the extra money in my account isn't going to help me and I'll be grateful for the Omega-3s when I need to brawl in the streets for bread.
But I was told that inflation was gone and that the economy is going great?!
That’s the thing. Deflation never happened and wages were never adjusted, so the impact of inflation just stayed and is still slowly increasing
Inflation only affects the rise in prices, once the price goes up it never goes back down.
Please heed our call Mr. Kelogg. People are demanding sawdust-enriched cereals.
CW Joke about meat
Thank goodness the rate at which calories get more expensive has gone down. Surely a reduction in how fast things get expensive means that we can now afford them despite their prices not getting lower.
you could maybe afford food again in 5 years when high prices get offset by wage growth. Thank me later
Don't worry, the global extreme poverty line is still stuck at a realistic-grounded-in-reality $1-2/day according to very serious people doing economic "science", so if you're above that you're good actually.
It's groceries sweetheart, how much could it cost a week, $350?
the thing that everyone absolutely must have to live on a daily basis is a huge concern for those people now that the price of it is increasing rapidly?
news at 11
ummm i am very surprised the majority are not saying HOUSING COSTS.
But that's probably because a lot of people are just having to keep living at home with their parents forever. which i guess leaves food costs....
Or they have 6 roommates in a 2 bedroom.
My favorite thing about this dystopian nightmare we all exist in is that during the height of the pandemic, food costs basically tripled over night FOR NO GOD DAMN REASON.
But muh supply and demand!!!!
It's called inflation. It's like the weather, it just happens and have nothing to do with greed. Maybe you need to learn basic economics 101.
I was going to say I don't understand what people could be eating that would make them feel like food costs are a bigger strain than housing costs, but based on the sample size and age target I wonder how much of this is skewed by younger people living with parents, dorms, etc. Rents all over my state have doubled in the past few years. Food had definitely gone up by a few dollars here and there, but none of my regular groceries have doubled in price.
It's also probably people who've lived with crushing rent burdens for so long that they feel like a background aspect of life, not something that can be changed.
Also it is literally culturally accepted that rent will go up every year. I’ve only heard stories about somebody’s rent going down, but never known a single person who has paid less in rent going into a new lease on the same space
Yeah I think you're right. My food bill is up around 50% but it's still less than half of housing.
I think it varies from place to place too. Groceries have skyrocketed here while rent has risen, but not as sharply. Cost of living here has always been relatively low compared to elsewhere in the country.
Not dragging you on this, but maybe you just haven’t noticed the creep plus where you live could make a difference. I never paid more than a dollar for a box of pasta in my life even after I moved to NYC. Then in the past few years no matter how much I shopped around, not a single box was under $2 unless it was on sale. It’s things like that which crush people the most, the cheap ingredients people use all of the time. Pastas, soups, eggs, butter, chicken, fresh vegetables, etc have all shot up in price in my area
started going to a certain discount eurogrocery store in the city and basically cut my bills in half. and i work at a grocery store (not that one)
shoutout to the "so over this shit" twink that haphazardly throws my food into a cart. i get it, i really do
It's not a true eurogrocery store if the twink throws it into the cart for you. True eurogrocery stores expect you to operate at the speed of their cashiers to pack your shit away
it's a separate cart that you swap yours for and you have to take it to a station to bag it yourself. i think it's just for efficiency
It does seem like every time I go to the grocery store these days I'm dropping $60-70 on not very fancy things
I swear to god asparagus didn't feel like an "oof..." purchase like 5 years ago.
asparagus has always been a luxury item. you must be the ELITE!
I've had to downgrade to the store brand hayfever tablets that leave an incredibly bad taste in my mouth.
I did a double take at the store this week when I realized bell peppers were three goddamn dollars each. Not even organic or at an upscale grocery store or anything, just regular old peppers that I'm pretty sure I was buying for less than half that less than two years ago
I would have thought housing would have been the highest.
More than half of people under 30 live with their parents now.
And I'm not saying that's necessary a bad thing, that's a norm in most parts of the world. But we aren't really socialized that way. People are living at home with parents who harangue them daily about not getting a good enough job and who aren't planning on leaving their home to their children.
My dad would constantly call me "loser" and other deprecating shit when I was still living with him and my mom in my early 20s. Even when i was making pretty good dough (but still not enough to live on my own) and was paying them a few hundred dollars a month, buying all my own food and paying 100% of the Internet bill.
I don't miss that at all. I feel for people who have no choice but to be in that predicament.
thank you for actually reading the article. i smelled BS.
i can't afford the avocado toast at the cafe down the street anymore so now i have to make it at home.
Stop making it at home you're killing the economy.
The only way to fix everything is to make avocados extinct
🅲🇴🇴🅻 🆉🇴🅽🅴
Literally every other day Im spending 40-50 dollars at the grocery store on bullshit. I mean like 18 of that is beer but
Honest question, not trying to belittle your situation, but would buying in bulk less often help that?
I know there are a lot of factors to this tho, personally I never really had the space to store bulk food until recently. Nowadays tho, I feel this helps a little bit depending on the item.
No shit! Between food and rent I can barely make it.
Because they love avacado on avacado toast. They 'av a kado, and its avacado. Stangating wag... AVACADO! Student loan de... AVACADO! Never own a hom... ACADO! Predartory landlorACADO! Move somewhere rural and use the loca... AMAZON'S OCADO!
Isn't most of this due to Biden's War in Ukraine? I remember the impact on food prices being discussed when it started but 2 years later and I guess people forgot Ukraine produced an assload of food
not for the US, the US produces big grain surpluses. maybe in the roundabout way of US prioritizing exports to places that used to pay Ukraine & get US grain at a markup---but i feel like thats what US subsidies are supposed to disincentivise
maybe in the roundabout way of US prioritizing exports to places that used to pay Ukraine & get US grain at a markup
I mean it's a global system of trade and there being Less Grain means all of it is More Expensive
And i'm pretty sure Russia is the biggest fertilizer producer in the world and they put embargos on that
doing the "avocado toast" thing unironically
Considering the fact that at least in my hometown there is a Starbucks on every corner and absolutely no public transportation whatsoever (and cars are still stupid expensive unless you find a deal on Craigslist or facebook marketplace) I can empathize with the DoorDashing part. But fuck Starbucks
How about you mind your fuckin business?
54% of young Americans are splurging on luxuries such as groceries and need to learn how to cut back of frivolous expenses
But also, please do not stop buying frivolous items or else the entire economy will collapse.
One meal a day should be enough for everybody.
It's not being broke, it's intermittent fasting!
You only need one ration of Soylent to be a happy and productive associate of your loving company!
Anything more than that is wasted money and time you can better use to invest in yourself!
You joke but I'm already only eating 2 meals in a day
Millennials are killing the being alive industry
It's only their biggest issue because they've all already had to move back in with their parents.