Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Food price hikes are no longer outpacing overall inflation

cnn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 71 posts

Re: Food price hikes are no longer outpacing overall inflation

#11

Post by bhpm »

runsWphotons wrote: post #4
bhpm wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s so weird to me that the labor story seems to leave out that 1m people died in the pandemic and also the largest generation in history is retiring.

The people who died would have mostly been retired or lower productivity. Shouldnt impact labor costs much. Age pyramid definitely would though.

> Johnson took excess deaths and COVID deaths by age and applied labor force participation rates by age. And he got 300,000 workers who died as a result of COVID. Add that to the long-haul workers, and we’ve lost 1.9 million workers — or 18% of currently unfilled jobs.

Note: most of those long-haulers have recovered, but I suspect that a great many of those didn’t recover back to their original job. That means during the time they were disabled, they had to be replaced, possibly at a higher wage.

https://www.marketplace.org/2022/01/24/how-much-labor-force-...

Re: Food price hikes are no longer outpacing overall inflation

#12

Post by margalabargala »

JaceLightning wrote: post #9
xnx wrote: post #8

This soft landing will be viewed as one of the greatest economic achievements in history.

if there is a soft landing... the recession is penciled in for Q3 2024 currently based on yield curve inversions.

And unlike the last eight predicted recessions, this predicted recession might actually happen! On account of it still being in the future.

Re: Food price hikes are no longer outpacing overall inflation

#13

Post by hnbad »

runsWphotons wrote: post #4
bhpm wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s so weird to me that the labor story seems to leave out that 1m people died in the pandemic and also the largest generation in history is retiring.

The people who died would have mostly been retired or lower productivity. Shouldnt impact labor costs much. Age pyramid definitely would though.

Long COVID would, though. And if people who would mostly have been retired or lower productivity are more likely to die and children don't contribute to the labor force in most of the US, long COVID would affect working age people primarily, no?

Re: Food price hikes are no longer outpacing overall inflation

#14

Post by killingtime74 »

tekla wrote: post #7
killingtime74 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1m is worldwide right? I see excess deaths for US for the entire pandemic is around 470k. The US population grew 1.5 million just from July '22 to July '23. This is apparently above trend. https://www.texastribune.org/2023/12/19/texas-2023-populatio... Ref: https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid

I'm going to guess you didn't read your own sources > The raw death count gives us a sense of scale: for example, the US suffered roughly 470,000 excess deaths in 2020, compared to 352,000 confirmed COVID-19 deaths during that year. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#datatracker-home Total Deaths 1,159,864 That roughly tracks.

However that two years of excess mortality is still less than one year of population growth. How do you answer that

Re: Food price hikes are no longer outpacing overall inflation

#15

Post by [deleted] »

skygazer wrote: post #6
killingtime74 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1m is worldwide right? I see excess deaths for US for the entire pandemic is around 470k. The US population grew 1.5 million just from July '22 to July '23. This is apparently above trend. https://www.texastribune.org/2023/12/19/texas-2023-populatio... Ref: https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid

I think it was over a million just in the US just based on reported cause on death certificates. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/covid19/mortality-overview.htm

[deleted]

Re: Food price hikes are no longer outpacing overall inflation

#16

Post by burningChrome »

xnx wrote: post #8

This soft landing will be viewed as one of the greatest economic achievements in history.

"soft landing"

After three years of constant inflation and shrinkflation on the majority of products you buy?

- a family size of cookies used to be 17.2oz, its now 14.6oz for the same price

- laundry detergent scent enhancer - 13oz to 10oz and increased in price

- a pack of frozen burritos went from 20 items to 18 for the same price

- baby wipes in a smaller sized package and they increased in price

- OJ went from a half gallon (64oz) to under a half gallon (59oz) for the same price

- many milk manufacturers have trimmed down their half gallon to slightly under a half gallon while keeping the price the same.

- snack crackers like wheat thins went from a pound for a family sized box to 14oz

Color me skeptical. I've seen this movie before it always ends in a painful recession.

Re: Food price hikes are no longer outpacing overall inflation

#18

Post by tmaly »

burningChrome wrote: post #16
xnx wrote: post #8

This soft landing will be viewed as one of the greatest economic achievements in history.

"soft landing" After three years of constant inflation and shrinkflation on the majority of products you buy? - a family size of cookies used to be 17.2oz, its now 14.6oz for the same price - laundry detergent scent enhancer - 13oz to 10oz and increased in price - a pack of frozen burritos went from 20 items to 18 for the same price - baby wipes in a smaller sized package and they increased in price - OJ went from a…

You have to also factor in the shrinkflation of 2008 banking crisis to get a full picture of what they took from us.

Re: Food price hikes are no longer outpacing overall inflation

#19

Post by tmaly »

hnbad wrote: post #2

It's interesting that the article is quick to blame "increased labor costs" and low unemployment (???) for the price hikes but then doesn't explain why prices for some items actually went down again. Meanwhile overall wages don't seem to track inflation. It reads like some businesses had to increase wages to retain employees but this doesn't seem to be causative as these employees were asking for higher wages because…

Just because someone writes an article and cites increased labor costs, doesn't make it true.

There are a lot of other factors that are driving prices.

Re: Food price hikes are no longer outpacing overall inflation

#20

Post by dehugger »

killingtime74 wrote: post #14
tekla wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to guess you didn't read your own sources > The raw death count gives us a sense of scale: for example, the US suffered roughly 470,000 excess deaths in 2020, compared to 352,000 confirmed COVID-19 deaths during that year. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#datatracker-home Total Deaths 1,159,864 That roughly tracks.

However that two years of excess mortality is still less than one year of population growth. How do you answer that

Babies don't work in grocery stores.
Post reply on HN