Prices have inflated so much over the past 10 years that a $20 bill buys as much as $5 did back then.

  • butwhyishischinabook@lemmy.world
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    6 hours ago

    The cost of bread, toilet paper, and restaurant meals for the average American may have increased significantly more than $5 -> $6.85, but I promise it hasn’t literally quadrupled. Things are unacceptably bad but this isn’t Turkey yet. Do you have any indication that for the average American the average purchased good has quadrupled in ten years? The responses here are almost as unhinged as the takes over in MAGA world. This is insane.

    • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz
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      5 hours ago

      I’ll allow OP a little bit of hyperbole to get their point across; this is an internet forum, after all, not a peer-reviewed journal…

      • butwhyishischinabook@lemmy.world
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        5 hours ago

        It’s not a little bit of hyperbole, I literally linked to a calculator that uses the Consumer Price Index. OP’s claim isn’t even vaguely in the realm of the actual consumer price increase.

        • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz
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          5 hours ago

          My point is that those high-level macroeconomic metrics are completely divorced from the financial realities of ordinary people.

          If you think the cost of living has only risen slightly relative to the buying power of the average wage-earner, then you must be sheltered and insulated by having wealth and income levels that are well-above average.

          • butwhyishischinabook@lemmy.world
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            4 hours ago

            No, I’m extremely heavily laden with debt and barely getting by in one of the most expensive areas of the country, but good try. I get that the CPI isn’t perfect, but there is literally no data from any source indicating that we have experienced 400% price increases, generally speaking, in the last 10 years. You’re just going on vibes, selective memory, and anecdotes and you’re giving ammunition to fascists who try to discredit us by pointing to people like you and saying “see? These people have no tether to reality. Look at any actual statistics and you’ll see they’re wrong.” People like you make us look bad and made uninformed people incorrectly believe that both sides of the political divide are lying and living in their own delusional reality. Do better.

            • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz
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              4 hours ago

              Except I never claimed that prices literally quadrupled. I merely explained how OP is utilizing a hyperbole to riff on a common experience that many people are having, which is that the buying power of the USD has been in sharp decline for long enough that people can already feel the difference.

              What’s true is that $20 used to feel like a decent amount of money, and now it feels like barely anything; the way $5 used to. Nowadays you’d be hard-pressed to go anywhere and spend $5 or less.

              You’re literally in the showerthoughts community, it’s not meant to present literal, accurate statistics. Its MO is basically to have at least some inaccuracy or logical inconsistency, because when you’re in the shower you don’t have a computer in front of you to immediately verify every heuristical thought process that “seems about right.” The “sounds close to truth, but technically isn’t” is what makes it a “shower thought.”

    • Clent@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      4 hours ago

      I can proof with literal receipts that prices of goods have gone up 50-100% in less than 5 years.

      This is a weird time to claim someone is being unhinged and comparing them to maga. One even claim that is being unhinged and maga like.