<story><title>How shrinkflation is playing havoc with economists’ models</title><url>https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2019/08/06/how-shrinkflation-is-playing-havoc-with-economists-models</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>chewz</author><text>Shrinking portions is the simplest way. The other is replacing products.&lt;p&gt;Say supermarket bakery introduces new bread with seasame seeds only 25¢ more. Then slowly there is only new seasame seeds bread on shelves and regular bread becomes rare. Later seasame seeds is slowly dispearing from bread and voila - you have made regular bread 25¢ more expensive.&lt;p&gt;The other way is lowering quality of products. Inflation basket still contains basic bread, tomatoes and plain sausage. The problem is that the quality of these products tanked and to buy a bread of a quality of simple bread from 40 years ago you must shop in some premium, organic, hipsters bakery where it costs 10 times more then simple bread. Same goes for tomatoes and sausage.&lt;p&gt;And electric drills or washing maschines? Don&amp;#x27;t get me started. Today&amp;#x27;s Bosch electric drill lasts one building season, my fathers Bosch electric drill lasted 35 years. Price is the same or lower but you get way less for it.&lt;p&gt;But the inflation headline number stays low. And that matters as you can keep wages low (many pensions are inflation indexed). And as people used to say under communism -&amp;quot;Bread is more expensive but locomotives got cheaper&amp;quot;.</text></comment>
<story><title>How shrinkflation is playing havoc with economists’ models</title><url>https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2019/08/06/how-shrinkflation-is-playing-havoc-with-economists-models</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>hnarn</author><text>In Sweden, &amp;quot;jämförelsepris&amp;quot; (comparison price) is mandatory for many goods. This means stores have to, in addition to price, display &amp;quot;price per gram&amp;quot; or whatever unit makes sense.&lt;p&gt;This way, you can quickly compare different groceries despite differing packages, and shrinking the item for the same price would be visible when looking at the comparison price.</text></comment>