Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It generally isn’t the grocery stores, it is the individual brands. The grocery stores don’t want to sell a 12-pack of coke at $7.99 (or higher!) but the Coca-Cola corporation wants them to.

I rarely buy sodas but a couple of months ago I grabbed a 12 pack of cokes and it was $13! I put them back. They used to be closer to $6.

We were asked to "just bring sodas" to a recent family gathering. They specified Diet Coke, Regular Coke and "something without caffeine".

We brought fizzy water. Period. I'm not paying that much for a case of chemicals.

Certain categories are crazy high and sale prices are only 30 cents off.
$10 for 6-pack of Budweiser
No crackers for less than $4-5-6, cookies too
Berries
Lettuce
Hamburger patties
Store baked bread
Gourmet cheese
Deli roast beef
Chips/pretzels

I think the psychology is that people are addicted to easy/convenient/prepared and addicts aren’t price sensitive — look what the pay for packs of cigarettes.

Anonymous wrote:That's not been my recent experience. My weekly grocery bill has been coming down a little bit over the last few months.

+1 prices are the same, but the discounts are getting better

That's not been my recent experience. My weekly grocery bill has been coming down a little bit over the last few months.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You have to stop buying it. Otherwise they will just keep raising prices.

I find if I buy simple food, veggies and basic bread and dried beans, my weight stays down and my pocketbook is happier. No sugar, no processed foods, etc. Most Americans can stand to lose 20-100 lbs.

This means that more Americans have to learn how to cook, which isn't happening, because of a million different reasons.

+1. Packaged foods are expensive, but so are fruits and vegetables. I stay home and cook dinner 5 nights a week. It’s not cheap. Cheaper than eating out, yes, but not cheap. 1 lb of strawberries is $5 ($4 on sale). I can usually get two 2 liter bottles of soda for $5. A bottle of orange juice (I forget the size—probably 20 oz) is almost $5 and rarely on sale. It’s all expensive.

Varying factors. I'm 69 years old and last night was reminiscing with a friend about buying cheese for 50 cents a pound when we were in college. Over my adult lifetime I've experienced normal inflation with upward creep and also the sudden leaps. Eventually you readjust your sense of what's the "normal" price for anything, but I have yet to reconcile myself to oranges and grapefruit being sold by the piece instead of by the pound (I think maybe 5 years ago or so?). Besides the package shrinkage (probably showing my age just because ice cream in half gallon cartons was what I was used to until the jump in fuel prices during the Gulf War).

I was passing the grocery store section that has cream cheese and just happened to notice (I don't buy it) that those tubs of whipped cream cheese, I think only 8 ounces, were marked around $8 a tub.

Some of the big leaps in recent years have been because of:
bird flu, which shot eggs up to crazy prices until fairly recently, which means processed items that contain them got higher.
fuel costs
labor shortages

some months ago dairy farmers weree dumping milk because of low prices, but store prices were higher than ever

I like Kerry butter, but it's $9 at Harris Teeter, so decided to give it up. Then I saw it in Trader Joes for $4.49 and bought it. Who is paying $9 for it?

Anonymous wrote:You have to stop buying it. Otherwise they will just keep raising prices.

I find if I buy simple food, veggies and basic bread and dried beans, my weight stays down and my pocketbook is happier. No sugar, no processed foods, etc. Most Americans can stand to lose 20-100 lbs.

This means that more Americans have to learn how to cook, which isn't happening, because of a million different reasons.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Supermarkets are among the most competitive industries with the lowest profit margins. Prices are going up because cost of food and labor is going up. It’s that simple. And it's called inflation.

Your options are to put up with it, find a cheaper market, which means going downscale to Walmarts or Aldi, or find a higher paying job.

Your Econ 101 professor called and wanted your degree back.

Says the person who's clearly never taken economics nor paid any attention to the last few years.

We've had something called significant inflation. Which means everything, including record profits themselves, goes up. I assume even you can figure out how it's easy to have record profits when the value of the money declines while cost of goods and services increases noticeably. Which is why a million today isn't a million 20 years ago.