The incredible product shrink

It's not just the amount in our wallets and bank accounts that's shrinking.

Many moons ago on monoblogue, I did a semi-annual series of posts called “the market basket.” From 2006 to 2009 I would bring a pre-arranged list of items to the grocery store (usually Walmart) and see how much they cost as part of my weekly shopping. (Those things you do when you’re single again, as I was back then.)

As I may have explained when I began the whole thing, the series grew out of a bill that was one of many foolishly passed by the Maryland General Assembly over then-Governor Bob Ehrlich’s veto. Called the “Fair Share Act,” it was basically written to force Walmart into providing better benefits for its employees, especially when compared to one of its erstwhile Maryland competitors, Giant. (The former Giant in Salisbury is now an Acme, part of a divestment Ahold had to make when it merged with Food Lion’s parent Delhaize. In Delaware the switch went the other way and the local Food Lion became a Weis.) Giant was a union shop, so they complained loudly about having to compete with the non-union Walmart in many markets.

As it turned out, Fair Share was overturned by the courts before it was ever enacted but I kept the series going for a couple years because I enjoyed doing it and compiling the information. But something I noticed even back then, particularly toward the end of the exercise, was that the packaging I was using as a comparison would occasionally get smaller. Sure, it was hard to make a green pepper smaller, but it was easy to make that 24 ounce jar of salsa become 22 ounces with “new, improved packaging!”

It was something I would notice once in awhile back then, but in this era that threatens to bring the “misery index” back it’s more common than ever. The 8 ounce bag of chips we might buy to go with our lunch sandwiches is now a half-ounce smaller, but it costs about the same. I even commented last night when we went to a chain restaurant that shall remain nameless that there was no longer an 11 or 12 ounce sirloin on the menu that I seemed to recall was there before and the salad seemed somewhat smaller, too. (In fact, the pandemic did a number on a lot of restaurant menus and I’m not sure all of them have completely recovered.) I don’t begrudge the restaurant industry anything - and perhaps I really need smaller portions anyway - but I think the days of buffets and all-you-can-eat are rapidly coming to a close.

Point is, I don’t think the standard government measures of inflation take the shrink into account. Sure, they say prices are up 9% or whatever over a year ago, but I don’t believe they track the declining quantities of goods you receive, particularly in food but in other instances as well: take for example the push to go to 15% ethanol fuel instead of the current standard of 10%. You pay the same per gallon but get less bang for the buck, as well as help drive food prices up that much more as the corn spills into your gas tank rather than into your stomach where it really belongs.

The Federal Reserve is certainly trying to get a handle on inflation as they have rapidly increased interest rates over the course of this year, but even when they manage to decrease demand enough to allow the extra dollars to be soaked into the economy at large, we’re still going to get a lot less for our money. It will especially hit hard those on fixed incomes, who may get a large COLA increase once a year that may only catch people up from what they lost the year before but doesn’t keep up with the here and now.

Maybe when things get back to normal - that is, if we ever see what was considered the pre-CCP virus “normal” again - we’ll once again get the marketing ploy of getting extra product free. (Over the years we’ve seen this a lot with dog food, where they put 50 pounds in what’s supposed to be priced as a 46 pound bag. Have I told you we have big dogs?) But for now I don’t know which one is eroding our purchasing power more quickly: Bidenflation or “shrinkflation.”

And needless to say, many of those among us who get a paycheck every couple weeks aren’t getting raises that keep up. We may vote a particular party out in November, but the fix is going to take more than just one electoral cycle to accomplish.