re: Socialism creep....Inflation and school supplies

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while you are getting left behind on "4%" raises.

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Wait, you guys are getting 4% raises?

asked my wife how much “school supplies” cost us for 2 in elementary school. she said $300. And I assure you she spared no expense and even purchased the teachers gifts.

I feel like that’s not thaaat bad. If you can’t afford that, don’t have children.

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Packed Lunch Cost Jumps
Blueberries (12 oz): Up 48%.
Sandwich bread: Up 22%.
Apple juice: Up 20%.

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they are your children. you have to feed them a lunch every day of the week. why is this even factored in?

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Yearly raises are a joke. The last 2 years my raise has offset rising insurance costs. Making the same take home I was before 2 full yearly raises.

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My father often tells me this story about working for Exxon in the late 60s early 70s. If you “only” got a ten percent raise, it meant the company was trying to get rid of you.

Things have definitely not gotten better for the working middle class in the last 60 years. The normalization of the 3-4% raise and 401k instead of pensions were unilaterally forced on us.

Difficult to imagine that if they drop a bomb on DC with all CONgress and the Presidentail office and administration that the country would not be better off.

Then let the state governors figure it out.

Even Democrats are worried that there party is becoming too socialist.

No Democrat will respond to this post except to downvote, but it's a problem they're trying to address.


Socialism is indeed a cancer that is growing, only the ignorant or uniformed don't recognize this.

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I don’t make enough to get a Roth

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There is no minimum to contribute and it’s all at your own pace. It’s all post tax funds too so you aren’t losing on a paycheck either.

Times can be tough no doubt. But if you can muster up even $10 a week or any other small nominal figure, you’d have much more than what you put in over time.

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how much life is increasing

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Wth are you even talking about? Your momma clearly didn’t buy any school supplies.

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Well we did pass a massive tax increase on all those items called tariffs

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The price increases described in the OP are way more than what we tariffs they were subjected to.

I will say this: some of these price increases, such as blueberries and apple juice, are due to basic supply and demand. Those two crop yields are down from last year due to weather and poor yields.


Some of you forget something:

When we say that average annual inflation should be around 2%, we are *not* saying that items shouldn’t increase in price only 2%. What we are saying is that the *average* change in prices from last year should be 2% increase across all items.


If you go back and look at price history since the 1960s, you would notice that year over year, some items go up 20%, some down 15%, some up 60%, some down 55%, etc.

The average tends to come out to a 2% increase in general price level of basket of goods. But the individual goods *within* that basket likely had much larger jumps or falls.

This thread illustrates my fear:

That anger/annoyance at high inflation during Covid and 2023/2024 has convinced people that any large price increases are unacceptable for any reason.


But it is completely reasonable to expect apple juice and blueberry prices to soar if El Niño weather wiped out crop yields all over South America. That’s exactly what happened. It’s basic supply and demand.


Even during times of low inflation between 1985-2021, individual goods and commodities saw huge price spikes at times, due to supply constraints.

That isn’t a concern for economists.

What is a concern is persistent inflation over 2%