If you pay X for a roll of toilet paper and it gives you Y number of wipes. . . and then a year later you’re still paying X but a roll is lasting fewer days — assuming you haven’t developed some kind of digestive problem in the interim . . . IS THERE INFLATION?
You’re still paying X. But you’re getting less for it. Not inflation? Really?
Check this out — “desheeting” — from Wolf Richter’s blog:
“Well, we took some desheeting in the quarter,” explained Mr. Buthman. The company was reducing the sheets on each roll of toilet paper and in each box of Kleenex. He called it an “innovation” that would lead to a “more positive” price. At the same time, volume, which the company counted in thousands of sheets, would decline. “Which net net, for us, works out to be a positive,” he said.
In other words, there are fewer sheets of toilet paper on a roll, but it’s the same price. The same thing has happened with numerous consumer products, including food. Same appearance, same product . . . same price. Just LESS of it.
But, according to the economists and pundits, and the U.S. government’s figuring of how things are working, there is no inflation.
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This is NOT here because the idea of “desheeting” toilet paper tickled the EleBlog. However, it’s a heck of a one-word explanation of some of what’s happening on the consumer inflation front. It’s why you are spending the same and feel like you are getting less . . . only because YOU ARE GETTING LESS.
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