You might have heard that we’re on some sort of streak of cooling inflation. And while that is great news, one can only get a sense of the actual figures – food prices climbed 8.5% from March 2022 to March 2023 and keep decreasing only by 0.1% each month – by realizing how much you need to shell out for basic goods in this day and age.

In a viral video that has been viewed over 236,000 times, a San Diego-based TikToker shared his bewilderment after doing a quick grocery run. “This is getting out of hand,” Carenstino said in his video. “It’s to a point where people can’t live.” Surely, as you can tell by the popularity of the video, he’s not alone in feeling frustrated about the current economical situation which is far from being how we remember it.

After doing a quick grocery run which cost $100, this man didn’t hold out from venting his frustration in a viral TikTok

Image credits: carenstino

“This is getting out of hand. It’s to a point where people can’t live. And I just want to show you something. This right here. I just went grocery shopping for very basic things, very basic. This amounted to $100. You’re telling me this is $100?”

Image credits: carenstino

“This is barely anything to feed me for a couple days. Literally just some chicken, eggs, rice, these things, and some juices, body wash, deodorant, some thank you cards and seaweed, $100 for this. Excuse me?”

Image credits: carenstino

Image credits: carenstino

Here’s the viral video in full

@carenstino Im literally shaking from shock… something needs to change #fyp #fypシ #inflation #cantaffordtoeat ♬ original sound – Carenstino

Image credits: Karolina Grabowska (not the actual photo)

While being shaken to the core might sound like an exaggeration for dramatic effect, realizing just how bad inflation has been for our all-time favorite groceries begs for such a reaction. Egg prices, for example, increased by an eye-popping 70% over the last year. A loaf of white bread, the staple component of the American diet, was also done dirty by inflation, as it saw its prices climb by 22% compared to 2021. And if you want to see proof of the rising cost of living, then go no further than your local shop’s dairy aisle.

According to CNN, between January 2022 and January 2023, groceries got 11.3% more expensive – the highest yearly percent change since 1974. Compared to the last two decades, when average year-to-year food price inflation was a stable 2%, hearing that grocery bills will keep increasing until the end of the year – although “more slowly in 2023 than in 2022 but still at above historical-average rates” – doesn’t certainly put us at ease.

However, while we do have the undeniable numbers that things are not improving (and that we might never taste oat milk if things keep going that way), behavioral economists say the so-called ‘inflationary psychology’ also has a play in how much inflation scares us. Meg Elkins, in an article for The Conversation, highlights this notion: “As behavioral economists, we can see the dilemma in warning about inflationary psychology, given the very concept is about self-fulfilling prophecies.”

While Elkins argues that we’re doing fine at the moment, she also highlights that we, humans, are pretty susceptible to panic which can only drive the prices up because, of course, for companies, that only means more opportunities to make a profit.

Turns out, there’s little consumers can do to prevent food companies from raising their prices

Image credits: Anna Shvets (not the actual photo)

Manufacturers, meanwhile, have been blaming everything from higher labor costs to transportation delays for an eye-watering spike in grocery prices. And while that sounds like a solid explanation, considering that we were just about to get back to where we came from pre-COVID days until the Russia-Ukraine war kicked off, Chris Becker, senior economist at the Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive economic advocacy organization, believes it’s all smoke and mirrors.

“Part of the story was that we had huge disruptions in our economy like the pandemic, the war in Ukraine that did for a long time drive up costs that businesses were facing. That’s certainly a big cause of inflation is these supply disruptions,” Becker explained to Bored Panda over the phone. “But then what we saw is that these corporations were explicitly talking about the fact that they could use the pandemic, the war in Ukraine as an excuse to raise prices by much more than the cost that they were facing. So costs did go up, yes. But then they raised the prices they were charging to consumers by much more than that.”

So does that mean we’re doomed to live in a timeline where food companies can pretty much raise their prices whenever they please? Well, pretty much. “I don’t think there’s a lot consumers can do. We’ve really created a system where things are really stacked against them. You know, we have allowed corporate power to grow and grow over time. We’ve allowed labor power to erode. So when prices go up, it’s hard for workers to go to their boss and say, ‘I need a raise to compensate for this’,” Becker said.

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On the other hand, the future might not look so hungry and grim if governments start acting on it. Becker offers a few potential solutions that might work. One of them, he explains, is anti-price gouging laws which “under certain emergency situations like the pandemic, would allow the government to step in and say that there’s a limit on how much corporations are able to raise their prices in those situations.” Additionally, regulations targeting soaring food prices, similar to ongoing experiments in countries like Bulgaria, could be another viable approach. Although we’re yet to see anything like that being implemented in the US.

People thought it accurately reflects how we all feel about grocery prices these days

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