Our Shrinking Economy

My stock of tee-shirts has been depleted over the past few years to a point where I bought one of those packages of 10 tees last week with the usual bargain label that read, "buy 8 - get 2 free!"  This wasn't a bargain brand, but rather one of the leading makers of men's underwear, and the price wasn't any real bargain either.

When I got home and unpacked the shirts to put in the drawer, I noticed that they felt a little flimsy, so I took out one of the old ones for comparison.  Sure enough, the cloth in the new tee shirt is only about half as thick and heavy as in the old one.  They are the same brand, and both are listed as 100% cotton, so the difference had to be in the cotton weight.

This is just one more way that products are being degraded while prices remain the same or are raised incrementally.  And of course, clothing is only a small part of the scam.  it is even worse when it comes to food items.

Our government economists tell us that inflation is low, but it doesn't take much to see through that lie.  We've all seen prices rise on almost everything we buy, but how many of us have also noticed the shrinkage in contents of those more expensive items? 

To cite a few examples, the standard jar of pickles or peanut butter -- or just about anything that comes in a jar -- used to contain 16 ounces.  Look on the label today and it is likely to show 11 to 12.5 ounces inside.  The 'quart' of ice cream is now 12.5 ounces, while the half-gallon size is now 1.5 quarts.  The old #7 can of fruits or veggies, which always held 16 ounces is now only 11 ounces.  Juice bottles that held 64 ounces now have only 59 ounces.

A strange phenomenon of this shrinkage is that the containers themselves seem to be the same size as they always were, but I believe that is done by redesigning the shapes to make them appear larger than they actually are.  If you think real hard, you'll realize that most products you buy today don't come in the same shaped containers as they did some years ago.  It is very easy to disguise the amount by reshaping the container.

Here is another difference I've noticed lately at the grocery store.  The giant economy size  can or bag is slowly being replaced by a smaller version of the product.  It used to be that "bigger was better," and unit pricing was supposed to give you the opportunity to buy for less per ounce.  Now that is being replaced with "smaller is cheaper," not in unit price, but in overall cost.  If you don't want to pay the higher price for the same size, maybe you'll be willing to pay less for a smaller size.  The smaller size is advertised as "single serving size." 

The end result of all this engineering is that we are paying more money for less product, but by design changes, we don't notice the true rate of inflation.  And lest you shrug it off and say that we have to adapt and accept it, take this warning: It isn't over yet. 

The two-step process of tiny price increase along with tiny product decrease is a never-ending one.  Look for those 11 ounce cans and bottles to shrink to 10 ounces soon, while the price is increased by ten or fifteen cents.  It won't happen simultaneously, so you'll hardly know that the price went up last month, and the size went down this month, but inflation is on the march, and there's no stopping it.

What is the solution?  My only suggestion is that you keep track of which companies do it first and boycott the most flagrant offenders as you identify them.  Maybe we can slow the process, if not stop it altogether.