After years of inflation, US consumers are shouldering a burden unlike anything seen in decades — even as the pace of price increases has slowed.
It now requires $119.27 to buy the same goods and services a family could afford with $100 before the pandemic. Since early 2020, prices have risen about as much as they had in the full 10 years preceding the health emergency.
It’s hard to find an area of a household budget that’s been spared: Groceries are up 25% since January 2020. Same with electricity. Used-car prices have climbed 35%, auto insurance 33% and rents roughly 20%.
Those figures help explain why Americans continue to register strong dissatisfaction with the economy: Consumers’ daily routines have largely returned to their pre-pandemic normal, but the cost of living has not.
Well It’s Mostly Transitory.
With shrinkflation the cost is probably up over 75% on lots of stuff at the grocery store.
That said Americans spent $12B on Halloween candy and yard crap in 2023 so it's really hard to feel sorry for the spendthrifts.
However the above shows that our priorities are askew as we have yet to see hard times where we really have to pay attention with our dollars.....As worthless as they are now.
You know Covid is still a thing right…...But no one gives a fuck now that the dem's wealth and political transfer strategy played out.
