AI burger meat is my favorite.
Wow, so I did tha math. The official inflation rate factors up to just over 1.5 (50% increase) over the past 16 years. But this meme suggests a factor of 3.58!!! (258% increase)
The official inflation rate doesn’t include food or energy. It’s ridiculous.
Food and products have 2.3x’d since just before covid started.
The most funny thing was the “I can’t eat an iPad” reply, when someone from the Fed tried to explain these mental gymnastics
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704893604576199113452719274
It does include food and energy, but they also separately report a “core” inflation that excludes those items because food and energy tend to go up and down.
Or up and less up
Looking at beef in particular, a pound of ground beef has gone up from $2.10/lb in 2008 to $6.20 in 2025.
Chicken breast, on the other hand, has gone from $3.50/lb to about $4.10.
Beef has been getting more expensive faster than inflation basically my whole life, while stuff like chicken, milk, and eggs have been volatile, jumping up and down at times, and stuff like rice and flour have long periods of stability with the occasional big permanent jump.
It’s prepared food, so the price also depends on wage increase and changes to tip structure in that state. Several states began fair wage for servers after 2008, so the gratuity may now be included in the price of the meal.
I would like to say, California instituted a $20 fast food minimum wage which was estimated to cause an 8% increase in overall wages (they already trend high there) but a 1.5% increase in menu prices. To my mind this tracks as wages are kind of small (too small) against ingredients, building lease, etc.
Granted, increasing the wages of everybody in the agricultural supply chain would probably have a bigger effect, but overall I think businesses tend to mcfucking lie about the impact of wage increases on consumer prices.
But I want to know how Bitcoin could be doing so well, it makes no sense, what demand is there for a finite commodity to store their value?
When Bob’s Burgers started airing the burger of the day was $5.95. This used to be a reasonable price for a burger.
Do we really not see that being on that show might have something to do with that?
Being on a food TV show and becoming slightly famous therefor allows you to increase your prices and still keep all the seats filled. The best burger place near me has increased to $10 from $5 over roughly the same time period, in keeping with the increase in beef prices over that time.
https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/2008?amount=4.75 About $7 today, for those curious.
Burgers are fine-dining now. Still trying to find cheap food that’s nutritious and doesn’t contain too much fiber for medical reasons. Eventually that will be fine dining prices too.
One of my parents said that steaks were 35 cents when they were kids.
I am not looking forward to my Walmart cheese & breadstick snacks costing $70 bucks for a set of five.
$17 for a burger, even if it really did look like the picture, which we all know it doesn’t, is way too much. No, thank you.
I pay $12/day to feed myself. I make all of my own meals at home, I haven’t eaten out since the pandemic. I formed the habit, and just kept cooking at home as prices got ridiculous. My diet is excellent, mostly fresh vegetables, and organic chicken.
Gentrification came for flavortown.
Rent is now $4000/mth. No loitering.
LOL where can you find $4k/month? My dentist said her office rent in W. Seattle was $11k/mo.
For commercial rent that nearly seems reasonable. Especially considering what they’re charging for dentistry, that’s like… 3 people without insurance? 🥲
My rent was $8,000 a month in 2009 for a strip mall restaurant that sat 40 people. It wasn’t in an expensive area either.
We’re not in flavor town anymore, Toto.
In Pulp Fiction (1994) John Travolta’s character freaks out over the “5$ milkshake”.
That would be about $10 today.
In 2025 a chocolate shake is 5.49 at the sonic near me. I thought that was expensive but compared to this thread apparently inflation on milkshakes hasn’t been to bad. Though I’m pretty sure you can get a $10 shake if you start asking them to add every kind of diabetes candy into it.
There’s a fast food chain where I live called Nifty Fifty’s ('50s themed of course). They have “dessert milkshakes” for $9.85 - basically shakes with a whole extra dessert blended in - and if you get it malted you’re at $10.50. TBF they’re really fucking good milkshakes, but $10 is ridiculous.
A “craft burger” with fries is 15€ in Germany. And normal burger meal is like half that.
people used to think I was on crazy pills because I for some reason used to point to 2008 as my favorite nostalgia year.
Nothing particularly major happened with mine, no sports team championship, no graduation, no first date, nothing like that, and my family was for the most part, well insulated from the financial crisis, we lived in a country that was less impacted anyway
2008 was just another year in the 2000s, I only remember it so well because of the communities I had joined online when I was 16, Still talk to and hang out with them today at 32.