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Alarming Food Prices

Something I'm finding annoying and a very stupid marketing idea is the buy more discount at the grocery store. It has stopped me from buying something I need,

Lets say you need XX pounds of flour and the price listed is $5.99, but it has a tag that says $3.99 if you buy 3. So if I was to buy one for $5.99, I would feel like I'm getting screwed.

It's just a very stupid marketing idea.
Unless it has a long shelf life count me out on buying more than I wanted with a multiple purchase discount. I will buy items in number when I know I'll consume them long before their expiration date.
Besides getting the discount, and stocking up somewhat, the price will likely be more expensive in the future if current inflation trends continue. Just today I bought two boxes of scalloped potatoes that had buy two at a savings. The savings wasn't a great sale but I'll use the other box sometime. My thought was I bet the product doesn't even have an expiration date. :) I've bought some canned goods that were buy 3 at a discount. I buy three.. I'll use them. I'd never buy three bags of flour. :)
 
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I noticed something today at the market that I'll be paying closer attention to. In knowing I was going to be roosting watching football all day I decided I'd buy something to munch on. I decided I'd buy a bag of Gardetto's pretzels and rye chips mix. They had two sizes of bags. I though I might buy the larger, even though it would take a while to eat them, figuring the larger would be cheaper per oz. I looked at the two tags. The larger bag was more expensive per oz which surprised me. I bought the smaller bag. It was more than I needed and cheaper.

Is it just me or are we all accustomed to the larger or family package of something being cheaper per oz?
 
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olbriar

 
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Jun 19, 2010
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It seems to me that inflation is alive and well in the food industry. I thought it might be interesting to track the increases in foods until we all starve for lack of buying power.

Today I did a bit of shopping at my local market. On my list was ground beef. I was shocked when I saw the 85% lean that I wanted was $7.99 per pound. There was a row of 96% lean that was $9.99 per pound! It seems like it was just last week that the burger I wanted was $6.99 and a couple of months ago $3.99. We are in trouble my friends.

Post your recent jaw dropping shopping experience so we can all cry together.
 
Something I've noticed is items that have taken a huge jump, I will not buy and obviously other people have done the same thing. In a few weeks the item will be buy 1 get 1 free.

It actually shows capitalism working. if the price is too high and people are not buying it, they have to lower the price.

We have all seen the same thing happen with gas. If the price goes to high people don't drive as much and the price comes down
 
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Shortage of a product often sees an increase in price. I'm not seeing a shortage of goods at my market. I'm just seeing a 100% or more increase in prices. Every item is seeing an increase but meats seems to riding high on the inflation curve. $40 dollars for a couple of decent ribeye steaks for an example. I didn't look at the price per pound but I'm not paying twenty bucks for steak. Next week the steak might be thirty bucks... perhaps I should be investing now.
 
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Here in the UK overall inflation has been high (higher than in the US), but food price inflation has been running well ahead of the overall rate. And the prices for basic foods have risen more than food overall as well, so if you are someone who can only afford the cheapest products you've been facing the highest rates of inflation while being the person least able to afford them.

Funnily enough the profits of the big supermarket chains, who dominate the food market, have taken no hit at all from inflation and in many cases have risen. Naturally government refuses to accept that there may be any profiteering because that would be awkward and might force them to actually do something, which goes against their ideology.
 
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so i went to costco and the meats were as high as i have seen it. for 4 ribeye steaks, costco was selling them at $60-$75.....which is just crazy. i did find some NY steaks going for $45 for 4 steaks......so i bought those. i was really craving for ribeye, but those NY steaks were not bad.
It's not like we are running out of cows. What's the deal?
 
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It seems to me that soon regular food will only be available to a select few, and regular people will be forced to buy "fodder". It will be cheap and nutritious. Except that life expectancy will be reduced by 50 years. That's the picture I saw when I was in central Africa. There they sold only cheap canned food in the stores made of fish I don't understand. And it didn't even look like fish. It was just like a thick mass. (We asked the guide to show us the real Africa where people survive every day, not tourist routes).
By "soon" it doesn't mean it's coming in a year or five years. But it's bound to happen.
Food will become more and more expensive. It will become more and more problematic to buy them.
It is even scary to imagine that "bright future" for my future grandchildren, for example.
 
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My buddy buys prime ribeye roast from Costco and cuts his own steaks. He is my age (old as dirt) and doesn't want a pound steak anymore. By cutting his own he says he can cut a thick cut steak and then cut it into meal size steaks with no waste. I did a quick Costco search and their prime roast is running $25 a pound... basically $300 a roast. The roast doesn't come at a savings but when you factor in the custom cuts without waste, it's something to consider.

Buying meat right now is likely a better investment than any stock or precious metal. If it continues to increase in price at the current rate, you could double your money in less than sixty days. :) The very worst scenario, a complete monetary collapse, you could always eat your investment. Stocks and precious metals will need a lot of seasoning. :)
 
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This is eerily similar to the movie "Soylent Green" from the 70s, where a carton of strawberries cost $150 dollars.
Based on Harry Harrison's uncharacteristically grim novel "Make Room, Make Room", which contained no plot about the "secret" of soylent green (which was just what the name implied, a soya and lentil basic foodstuff that was all most people could get), just a story about life in an overpopulated USA where a gilded few could have what they wanted and everyone else made do on subsistence rations, no space, no privacy and no hope.
 
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just a story about life in an overpopulated USA where a gilded few could have what they wanted and everyone else made do on subsistence rations, no space, no privacy and no hope.

Twisted Metal is a cool movie, homeboy makes a treacherous run from one city to another to deliver a quart of ice cream to a gilded person, he had no clue he risked his life, for ice cream ...

 
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