>
> (email exchange)
>
> On Mon, Jan 25, 2010 at 1:25 AM, Roger wrote:
>
> birds eye view: my son’s 1st weekend back at Google hq in Mountain
> View after a visit home (he only buys food for weekends)
>
> can only get worse this year;
>
> the “costs” of financial policy, health burdens & healthcare all run
> together yet few recognize one of Shewhart’s maxims about the statistics
> of ANY complex system: “Tune the system, not the components!”
>
> we’ve apparently gone from LBJ’s “War on Poverty” to a war on poor people;
>
I went to the store to buy two meals worth of food for myself. I don’t habitually look at prices when I buy food, I figure that’s the one place where I ought not to cut corners so I focus on the ingredients instead. I get to the counter, and the bill is $31.34 to my great surprise.
Broken down:
parmesan cheese 4.99
tortellini 4.69
tomato sauce 4.69
ravioli 5.49
salami 7.49
blackberries 3.99
That’s going to be supplemented with milk, juice and tea I already have at home, adding slightly to the cost.
Maybe I’m buying fancy stuff, but it doesn’t feel like it. In contrast, I can get a comparably complete meal with way more food than I need at a restaurant for less than $10 even now. Something is really out of whack with the cost of food. The only way to eat more cheaply at home is to buy less nutritious stuff. I didn’t check the price of other produce, but I’ll bet even vegetables are pricey. In even greater contrast, the last meal I ate at work must have cost a ton. Sushi, italian sausage, green salad with 3 kinds of greens and 5 kinds of nuts, lima beans, soybean sprouts, pomegranate kernels, carrots and beets, etc, etc.
If economic conditions are forcing people to eat more cheaply, I predict they’ll eat more McDonalds and wonder bread, while the wealthy will live well. Not good.
Yes, that’s what an export economy looks like you have a job and produce, but you only earn enough to eat and buy gas to get to work as your output gets exported.
We aren’t there yet, but on the way.
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I live in this area and have not noticed a major change in food prices.
I think the email writer, as they say in the newspaper business, buried the lede…
I can get a comparably complete meal with way more food than I need at a restaurant for less than $10 even now.
Since food isn’t getting any cheaper, restaurants can only keep prices down by lower profits and/or lower labor costs. Since California law requires waiters be paid minimum wage, exclusive of tips (the federal wage law is that wait staff working for tips can be paid a sub-minimum wage), I’d hate to be in the restaurant business out there.
That’s funny. Food going down here, especially when pricing in discounts and sales.
This guy is probably shopping at “Whole Wallet”. I used to shop without looking at prices, too, when I was single and had no kids – now I shop at the local Market Basket (the local discount grocer in Eastern Mass.) and ruthlessly price compare. I haven’t really seen prices increase, but I have seen that it’s certainly busier at the MB…
Agree with Jim Baird. As a Google employee, your son has apparently had the liberty of never looking at food prices and I also suspect he is shopping at “Whole Wallet” from the sound of the prices. This is more a reflection of your son’s inattention than climbing food prices.. no disrespect intended. “Whole Wallet” can afford huge staff w medical benies because of the prices they charge
Our “Whole Wallet” has a counter which makes great fresh sandwiches for under $8 that my wife and I split (equivalent 2 meals!)
Complaining about whole foods? In St Louis, our local supermarket chains have jacked up the prices so much in the last 6 months that, if the same item is carried by them and by whole foods, whole foods is 15% cheaper. No wonder Walmart is always crowded.