Kind of hate posts like this. Yes! Inflation is happening and bad. And yes! The McChicken (and a lot of fast food value options) have soared in price in recent years. But trying to take that and frame it as “look at this… it’s so obvious the government is lying to us and overall inflation is actually over 100%” Is just ignorant nonsense and it tends to play into conspiratorial minds who don’t actually have any experience in economics or data collection.

You can hate the federal government all you want. Really. I totally get it. But they are unfortunately really good at data collection.

[–] mods_are_assholes 13 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Inflation for necessities like food and housing is ridiculous and exceeding 100% over three years.

Inflation for rich luxuries have barely gone up comparatively.

But all the reports are averaged.

So since the rich are doing so fabulous that their numbers make it look like no one is struggling.

Nevermind the fact that 60% of people live paycheck to paycheck.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Can you provide… anything to actually substantiate that? Maybe some food items like fast food value options have gone up 100%. Maybe some homes in particular, extremely high demand areas have gone up.

When you make these gigantic sweeping claims with nothing but vibes and the McChicken to point to it just feels like bad faith

[–] mods_are_assholes 3 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Sorry Sealion, I'm not wasting my life to show you stats you can easily get off of the internet. There are literally 5 very high profile search results that will give you historical food inflation values.

You just want to waste my time because no matter what source I give you, you will find an irrelevant detail that lets you shift the goalposts again and again, and I've been through that dance non-figurativley hundreds of times.

The increase in food costs is obvious to literally anyone who does their own grocery shopping. The fact you don't understand this either means you are being deliberately obstinate, or indeed, do not do your own grocery shopping.

In either case neither types of people deserve a moment more of my time.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pbyCT2mmlwg

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

https://m.piped.video/watch?v=pbyCT2mmlwg

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Turns out food inflation as a portion of income is currently sitting at about 1% since 2000, and maybe 2% since 1990.

Ignorance is bliss though right?

[–] Huschke 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I get what you are saying, but think about it like this. If all you ate was McChickens then food inflation for you specifically was almost 300%. So even though "real" inflation was lower, you are still paying 3 times the amount you did before for your food.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

See I get that, and that’s absolutely fine. There’s just a gigantic difference between saying “hmm, it seems like inflation for ‘budget’ items used by poorer individuals has gone up at a higher rate than other items, let me see if I can find some info on that” and “nope! The government is lying, actually! I can tell from the vibes.”

One is very solution and truth oriented and the other is impatience that only sets them up to fall for further conspiracy theories and emotional arguement