Tracking toy tariffs

[TheSameIdiot]

I don't want to get us too far off track here, but: it's true that food was cheaper than ever. It probably still is, at least for now. As of 2024, groceries continued to get cheaper. "Specifically, the budget share allocated to food-at-home spending decreased from 5.2 percent in 2023 to 5.0 percent in 2024." For reference, groceries were around 12% of budget share in the '60s.

Under Biden, food costs rose because of modest inflation, but salaries outpaced it. That will change under Trump because of 1) tariffs, and 2) salaries. The 2024 election was a coup for the bourgeoisie.

Agricultural technology improved to the point that it has become possible for us to improve society writ large. Half of people no longer have to farm for a living. Now they can invent medical technologies, improve green energy, or even create credit scores for some godforsaken reason. We have too much food. That sounds crass when there are people starving, but it's true. A ton of food is just... thrown away.

When people talk about cost of living, they often hit groceries because that's the most apparent change to consumers. In reality, groceries are cheap. Even after inflation. It's everything else. Car payment/insurance/maintenance, medical costs, and especially housing.

My wife and I make a decent living here and our mortgage still eats up well over 30% of our income.

Now, if we built more housing and increased urban density, housing and transportation costs would decrease. We've tried sprawl and not building housing. We can all see where that got us.

The "quality" of that food is a topic so complex that it has transcended into something more like a religion for the people with strong feelings about it

Ain't that the truth.

Yeah, obesity is largely driven by the fact that the cheapest food is bursting with salt and sugar, and often scientifically designed to compel you to eat more of it.

Obesity is also largely genetic.

 

[EnigmaticClarity]

I think you're taking the term "minimal quality of life" as something other than what it's intended to be, which is a metric of reliable access to not just basic needs but also to a basic level of comfortable living, growth opportunity, and unburdened participation in society. (In the U.S., that all might mean upward mobility, but that phrase assumes a lot about class divisions that might not reflect other systems or societies.) It's a measure of economic well-being that assumes prosperity as a desirable standard, not some elitist value judgment on the past.

I'm taking the term the way it's written which is what most people would, so if they mean something other than what it says then it's about as bad a way to describe what they're trying to describe as "defund the police" was for redirecting funding from "cops handle every social conflict" to people better trained to deal with many of the situations cops end up being forced to handle.

Language matters, and if you have to interpret the words to mean something other than what those words mean you've defeated your own purpose.

 

[EnigmaticClarity]

If you've never been into an Aldi's you should go even if you don't intend to buy anything there. The prices on food in that store make you think you've magically transported back to the 1970s or 1980s. They've appeared to maximize the industrialization of food to keep prices at insanely low levels.

And I agree that in America housing is the biggest issue. Even rent is insane in many or most places. That's a pretty complex topic though that needs its own thread particularly the issue of homelessness. Lots of causes there, and they're not all economic although certainly most of them are. I've never been able to definitively tell if income inequality, over-regulation, or the opiate epidemic is more responsible for it, but when you see that New York handles it so much better than California it suggests that it is a manageable issue.

 

[mrboshek]

I've eaten steamed broccoli nearly everyday for 15 years, but I'm still too chubby

I was thinking about the guy running for mayor of NYC. He's talked about city run stores. It might not be that crazy if you take into account the idea of "food deserts".

 

[docsilence]

I've eaten steamed broccoli nearly everyday for 15 years, but I'm still too chubby

I was thinking about the guy running for mayor of NYC. He's talked about city run stores. It might not be that crazy if you take into account the idea of "food deserts".

Food deserts are a legit problem. And I've written a LOT about things like healthcare deserts and pharmacy deserts (both of which are getting worse FAST). At a certain point, yeah the government isn't the ideal option, but if people live in places you just can't get basic needs met, the most powerful nation in the world should be able to find a way to resolve that.

 

[Schizm]

I've eaten steamed broccoli nearly everyday for 15 years, but I'm still too chubby

Stop steaming it! It's so much better crunchy.

 

[EnigmaticClarity]

Food deserts are a legit problem.

Wikipedia claims that the definition is when urban areas don't have a supermarket within one mile or a rural area doesn't have a supermarket every ten miles.

Huh? Which urban areas don't have buses? And my mom chooses to live rural and has never had a grocery store within ten miles. I doubt most of rural America has that, so I'm not clear on why this is an issue. It certainly doesn't seem at all new.

 

[Damien]

Food is cheaper than ever which is part of the reason obesity levels are so high even among those in poverty.

Can you cite the source on this? Because I have never, ever seen a causal link between food prices and obesity. Quality of food eaten (i.e. cheaper types of foods)? Yes, I've seen studies that suggest a link there. But the idea of 'food is cheap, therefore we eat so much that we all become obese' is a hell of a take that I don't know of any supporting research for, personally.

Food is cheaper than ever? That's news to me, as I now spend as much on groceries for my s/o and me as I used to for a family of four.

'Food is cheaper than ever' is based on so many metrics that don't actually matter to regular people. It's not a direct line study of 'what kind of food could you afford on minimum wage 50 years ago and what kind of food can you afford on minimum wage today.' There's so many sleazy ways to play these numbers that they tend to become meaningless. Using billionaires to calculate average wages, for example.

While I'm in favor of everyone having all of those things given where technology has taken us as you pointed out that definition seems VERY specific to the modern era.

It is. Because we live in the modern era. Are you suggesting that living like a 2nd century enslaved person in some backwater Roman province should be on the table for the quality of life conversation because the person was technically not dead while they were alive? I'm struggling with your line of reasoning.

So every human who ever lived prior to about 150 years ago were all living less than what some of us now define as a "minimal quality of life"?

No. They were living within the means provided by the world they were living in and their quality of life is relative to what was available. We don't, and shouldn't, live in a world where every advancement is available only to the rich and a Bronze Age level of subsistence survival should be considered the baseline for everyone else, right?

If you're buying mostly or all organic then prices are surprisingly close to the same percentage of income as they were a century ago.

C'mon. You're better than the 'you could afford rent if it weren't for your avocado toast' argument. I don't think anyone complaining about grocery prices is also just eating TOO well. I also don't think the majority of people making the 'I can't afford groceries' argument are the kind of 'liberal elite' you'd see shopping at high end organic food stores and the like. These are people buying groceries at Walmart and (name your local grocery chain), who are still struggling.

Because defining the majority of people now or almost everyone in the past as having a "minimal quality of life" is demeaning in a way that most of the people living those lives don't think about themselves unless they actually are fighting to survive. It's a level of intellectual elitism that directly led to the exact populist backlash that Trump rode to the presidency.

No. Not at all.
Contextualizing the human experience as changing based on the world we live in is... completely normal. If you are living like a 1300s French peasant in 2025 America, that is a fuckin' problem. Quality of life is comparative with your contemporaries. Not your ancestors. You're confusing 'subsistence survival' with 'basic quality of life.' One doesn't really change based on our biology. One changes entirely based on our society.

And I NEVER look back on that time as me living a "minimal quality of life." Neither do my parents.

So it's a touchy subject for you. Maybe you don't have the intellectual distance from the topic to react to these terms in a non-emotional way. But also you're being ridiculous because you can't say 'I lived in poverty' but then say 'I didn't live a minimal quality of life' - because they mean the same fuckin' thing. You said words should mean things, and I agree with you entirely about that. But then you quibble about whether being 'poverty-stricken' isn't demeaning but 'lived below a minimal quality of life' IS demeaning. By definition, if you lived in poverty, you lived -below- the threshold of a minimum quality of life. Literally by the definition of poverty.

I'm taking the term the way it's written which is what most people would,

You're not, actually. And you seem to really want to dig your heels in on that emotional reading of a very clear term. Minimal -quality of life-. Not 'minimal needs to not die.'

Also.. defund the police was pretty clear too. It's not the language's fault that some people are fucking idiots, and it's also not reasonable to believe that complex topics can ever be boiled down into a few words that won't potentially cause confusion in at least -some- people. As someone that uses forums to discuss all kinds of topics, I'm sure you're extremely familiar with the idea that how you write something might not be how someone else reads it, no matter how clear you try to be. That's the nature of language - particularly written language.
Just because you can interpret words in different ways doesn't mean the words are ineffective or inaccurate. You can flip it around and say 'just because you interpreted the words incorrectly doesn't mean you're right.' It's possible to say 'I just didn't understand what it meant' without blaming the words themselves.

 

[EnigmaticClarity]

The USDA has a map where they identify food deserts. I live in an area where over 80% of the population is below the poverty level, and they define my neighborhood as a food desert.

Food Access Research Atlas - Go to the Atlas | Economic Research Service

The Food Access Research Atlas (formerly the Food Desert Locator) is a mapping tool that provides a spatial overview of food access indicators by census tract, allowing users to investigate multiple indicators of food store access.

www.ers.usda.gov

This site doesn't use that specific "food desert" term that I can see, but they color my neighborhood as being between 1 and 10 miles from a grocery store--and that is accurate. But the bus lines here are completely free, so I don't see why this is an issue.

My main question is why doesn't Aldi or Lidl put stores in "food deserts"? Is it some kind of bias, or do low-income people just choose not to buy supermarket food and prefer to buy shelf food from places like Dollar General?

 

[RicksNerdLife]

^Thank you.

I didn't have the energy today to do this, but...yes. All of this, yes.

 

[EnigmaticClarity]

My main question is why doesn't Aldi or Lidl put stores in "food deserts"? Is it some kind of bias, or do low-income people just choose not to buy supermarket food and prefer to buy shelf food from places like Dollar General?

Come to think of it, we do have a Dollar General in my neighborhood but no supermarket. Same goes for my mom's rural area; she does have a Dollar General within 10 miles but no supermarket. I've never even looked at what Dollar General carries. Google claims they do sell some fresh produce, but it also says they're not considered a supermarket. I've never looked in them to know how much or what kinds of produce they carry.

This is a giant tangent.

 

[docsilence]

I don't have the stats on food deserts that I do on other types of access deserts, but i imagine stores don't open for the same reason we saw Walgreens and CVS shrink their footprint the past few years. The profit margin in those areas aren't high enough, they feel no responsibility to service them, and they make up an excuse (pharmacies are notorious for "oh it was a high shoplifting area!" closures when it was really just to improve the bottom line for shareholders). I imagine we don't see food chains open in a lot of areas for many of the same reasons - it's just not enough money for their Wall Street leash holders.

 

[Chooch555]

Josh Johnson just put up another special where he addresses groceries at Dollar General. He's always worth a listen, but this seemed timely.

 

[Damien]

^Thank you.

I didn't have the energy today to do this, but...yes. All of this, yes.

Clearly it was basically talking to a brick wall, but hey. You do what you can.

 

[JakeEkiss]

Come to think of it, we do have a Dollar General in my neighborhood but no supermarket. Same goes for my mom's rural area; she does have a Dollar General within 10 miles but no supermarket. I've never even looked at what Dollar General carries. Google claims they do sell some fresh produce, but it also says they're not considered a supermarket. I've never looked in them to know how much or what kinds of produce they carry.

This is a giant tangent.

Dollar General does not, at least as a rule, carry fresh produce. At least not in my area. I have never seen a grape at that store. I have never even seen a place for fresh produce to be stored. They barely carry anything not canned or more nutritious than a potato chip. They typically have a small frozen food section, largely heat and eat meals that are not awesome for your health. Some may be better, but I've never seen one that was more than a CVS minus most of the medicine (and usually WAY dirtier due to not hiring enough staff to clean the place).

My main question is why doesn't Aldi or Lidl put stores in "food deserts"? Is it some kind of bias, or do low-income people just choose not to buy supermarket food and prefer to buy shelf food from places like Dollar General?

I could be wrong, and if someone knows better correct me, but it seems possible it's because grocery stores, even ones as thriftily run as Aldi, still need a minimum base of purchasing to justify regular fresh food delivery. Dollar General doesn't stock anything that will go bad in less than a week on the shelf, but anywhere that stocks produce *has* to move that stuff in days, and has to be strong enough to tank through a certain amount of natural product loss. Dollar General, by comparison, rarely has more than two people on staff at any given time (if that). They run an operation so cheaply that it's basically the Spirit Airlines of all-purpose stores. To call it a grocery store would be massively overstating what they actually stock.