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Ham Steak. $1.88 in 2019 $5.99 this past week

TorontoBuilder

Ultra Member
I don't believe that is how to calculate "inflation rate"! You have calculated the percent increase over 4 years or so rather than a "rate" of increase. An increase of 2.6 fold in four years is an annual rate of increase of about 27%.
I shall freely admit I am not an economist...
 

TorontoBuilder

Ultra Member
Hate to go all political here, but there’s a reason Stats Can doesn’t rely on volatile items. I don’t trust politicians as far as I can throw them, but S/C data is pretty transparent, and well respected for honesty.

And this is Fridays sale flyer in Vancouver:

View attachment 33421


I respect what you're trying to convey here, but I also point out that food producers have always penalized individuals and couples who purchase smaller individual sized portions.

Additionally, in my example the regular price per pound is $1.65 per pound, in this flyer the regular price is $2.97 per pound.

Freshco also publishes regional flyers because they price products differently by region. Perhaps we need to only use regional prices for comparisons?

I could have purchased a large ham for lower ppp, but my wife and I are eating less meat and can't eat a small ham in a week
 

6.5 Fan

Ultra Member
Premium Member
I respect what you're trying to convey here, but I also point out that food producers have always penalized individuals and couples who purchase smaller individual sized portions.
I run into this a lot now that i'm cooking for just me, i have to cut down on fruit and veggies that i used to buy at Costco, to much waste.
 
Hate to go all political here, but there’s a reason Stats Can doesn’t rely on volatile items. I don’t trust politicians as far as I can throw them, but S/C data is pretty transparent, and well respected for honesty.

And this is Fridays sale flyer in Vancouver:

No matter how much they try to make their calculations sound sensible they make no sense to me and I've studied some basic economics at the University level. First of all the bottom line is their calculation is supposed to be a measure of the cost of living. For most people the biggest portion of their cost of living is the cost of housing. But they don't include the cost of housing in their calculation because it is "too volatile". Essentially they won't use anything in their calculation unless it is something that hardly ever goes up in price. I call that cheating!
 

Susquatch

Ultra Member
Administrator
Moderator
Premium Member
I don't believe ministries count as politics. But maybe others would argue.

I put Stats Canada in the same bucket as the media.

Anytime when I knew the real facts, the media got it wrong. If I can't trust them to get it right when I know the real story, why would I trust them when I don't.

Exactly the same principle applies to stats Canada. When I know the facts, Stats Canada has them wrong. Why should I trust anything else they say?
 

Tom Kitta

Ultra Member
May I make it mildly machining related by pointing out that my old slightly renamed lathe I purchased new 6 years ago now doubled in price. I also distinctly see that my salary did not go even close to doubling.

According to https://www.bankofcanada.ca/rates/related/inflation-calculator/

The change should not be 100% but 20%. So tools are really increasing at 5x the rate of "other stuff"?

I do not trust stats Canada - they use a special basket of stuff that is rather "stable" to calculate inflation.
 

kstrauss

Well-Known Member
No matter how much they try to make their calculations sound sensible they make no sense to me and I've studied some basic economics at the University level. First of all the bottom line is their calculation is supposed to be a measure of the cost of living. For most people the biggest portion of their cost of living is the cost of housing. But they don't include the cost of housing in their calculation because it is "too volatile". Essentially they won't use anything in their calculation unless it is something that hardly ever goes up in price. I call that cheating!
Another distortion is their "hedonistic adjustment". If TVs get larger but the price stays the same that is counted as a decrease in the cost of living. If prices rise and people can no longer afford steak and choose hamburger instead then hamburger replaces steak in the basket of goods used to calculate the cost of living. Taxes are not included in the cost of living either.
 

slow-poke

Ultra Member
Regarding the media. Many years ago I was on a bit of a travelling adventure that would attract the local reporter of the day to come visit us and then print a small article in the paper the next day. It was an enlightening experience to say the least. 90% of the time the published story was more fiction than fact and did not reflect the conversation we had the previous day. I think in some cases the reporter was just a really poor listener or note taker but in many cases it seemed they just wanted to fluff up the story to sell more papers so they would simply make it up on the fly, some of the articles had us in stiches because they were so distorted. That being said there were some reporters that were true professionals (surprisingly rare) the best example we encountered was the late Peter Gzowski.

It's a strange thing but when I read something from what I think is a credible source my first impression is to believe what I read and that's becoming a more dodgy thing to do by the day.

On some forums the edit feature is not time limited, so if you post something that you later realize is inaccurate you can go back and strike through your mistake and add a comment so you don't propagate the bad information.
 
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TorontoBuilder

Ultra Member
I thought I'd update this tread again.

I haven't found any more old meat in a freezer, but I did need to replenish my stash of Asian pantry stables. So off I went to T&T supermarkets, owned by Loblaws, and since some of the items I buy are hard to find via their menu system I used my previous order to look up my usual items.

A couple of prices went down, but they had both spiked previously due to covid shortages winter 2021

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6.5 Fan

Ultra Member
Premium Member
I found a bag of chicken thighs hiding in the bottom a freezer, fortunately i had marked the date on the bag. March 2017, didn't take the hoard of cats to make them disappear. I need to clean out the freezers and sell 1 or maybe 2.
 

Ironman

Ultra Member
We have produced our own food and ground our own flour since we were married in 1980. Part of the eat bugs thing is control of the food supply as was done on a test basis in quebec during the plandemic. I feel lucky to be free of this stuff but farms will be hit hard, farmers do not vote for the Laurentian elite. The Holland experiment is coming here soon. I would suggest to anybody to learn to produce their own food. It is going to be a critical component in the Plan, hungry people are easy to pacify.
 
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