this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2023
72 points (100.0% liked)

Canada

9464 readers
1336 users here now

What's going on Canada?



Related Communities


🍁 Meta


🗺️ Provinces / Territories


🏙️ Cities / Local Communities

Sorted alphabetically by city name.


🏒 SportsHockey

Football (NFL): incomplete

Football (CFL): incomplete

Baseball

Basketball

Soccer


💻 Schools / Universities

Sorted by province, then by total full-time enrolment.


💵 Finance, Shopping, Sales


🗣️ Politics


🍁 Social / Culture


Rules

  1. Keep the original title when submitting an article. You can put your own commentary in the body of the post or in the comment section.

  2. Election Interference / Misinformation

Reminder that the rules for lemmy.ca also apply here. See the sidebar on the homepage: lemmy.ca


founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
all 37 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

who are still paying more than 20 per cent more for a basket of groceries relative to three years ago

Well, according to my grocery records, it's a MINIMUM 20% more on most items. Some are 200% more and some are 60% more.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I said this a few months ago and I was downvoted lmao.

When grocery prices go from $4 to $8, that's a 100% increase. Or when prices go from $2.50 to $8 that's a 220% increase.

Might not seem so bad on paper, but when you add it all together on your full grocery bill, it's turning the final bill from $100 to $200-250, which is bat shit insane.

I bought knock off mustard yesterday. Normal sized bottle. Cost me $8.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

People down voting aren't are the ones grocery shopping.

I also think people are missing the fact that while prices have gone up, shrinkflation has been out of control.

So while it may look like "only" a 50% increase for the package, the price per unit (often by weight) ends up being more like a 75% increase.

I have containers which wouldn't be able to store a regular sized box of regular cereal, but now it gets to 3/4 full with the "family sized" version of the same cereal. And I'm paying double for it. Some of the cereal boxes look comically thin, like cigarette packages. And you're paying 2-3x more by weight. Absolute insanity.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Fucking cereal box, the family size is $10.99, wtf?!?

When they are $5.49 on amazon I buy a dozen

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

My dogs food used to be $29.99 a case, now it's $42.99 a case. That's a 40% increase in two years. Crazy.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yeah it's crazy. I started making my own wet dog food (i give him about 50% wet and dry food). Chicken hearts or liver, carrots, a frozen veggie medley (just be careful it's all dog safe) brown rice and pumpkin in an instant pot. Cost per unit is about 60c, but I get most of it from a farmers market which brings the cost down a lot. Takes about an hour to makeevery 3 weeks, then I scoop it out into baby food containers and freeze them, and reheat in the microwave before feeding it to my dog. He loves them and seems a lot more healthy. It really was a big win all around for me, only downside is his shit smells way worse now.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I bought my 1st dog just before the pandemic. The bag for 38lbs of food was around 80$. The price have been rising a little every time I would buy one.

Before this summer the bag was 120$. I told myself that I'm going to look for alternative. Meanwhile I don't. So I go to the pet store to get a new bag of food. The price tag was the same (120$) but the size got reduced from 38lbs to around 31lbs.

I got upset and I ask WTF is going with that brand (good brand of food made in Canada with Canadian ingredients) and she told me that it got bought. So the new owners are pressing the lemon as much as they can.

Seriously it's pure fucking greed.Fuck them. Now I buy cheap Cosco food that seems to fine with dog. It upset me I just feel every thing I like get ruined by greed.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If it's the Kirkland dog food, I think that's actually really good dog food. So, no worries there.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah it is Kirkland! That's what I though but my brother was giving me so much shit at first. Just brothers things I guess.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Kirkland is the one I feed my dog. All his life and he's a healthy 11 year old great Pyrenees with a good appetite. Their cases of canned food used to be $29.99 and it was great. Bags of kibble went up as well but not quite as much, but I didn't pay that much attention to the weight when I first bought it.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

"Slower growth in prices may be imperceptible to consumers who are still paying more than 20 per cent more for a basket of groceries relative to three years ago — the biggest such increase in 40 years," [said a TD economist]...

While the pain at the cash register for staples like food and gasoline is getting comparatively better,

I always get a kick out of these pieces. The expert says we're "still paying more". Then the writer says "the pain ... is getting comparatively better."

If that 20% is a noticeable part of your budget, it isn't getting better.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It will when you get a 20% pay raise… any day now, right?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

20% pay raise isn't enough, though. My grocery bill is OVER 2x the money for the same items. That means we need an over 100% pay raise.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But you're not using yourself whole salary on groceries, though.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Rent went from $900 to $1600. Gas went from $1 to $2.20.

So ya. Everything has doubled or more.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

So… the cost of rent is directly tied to the mortgage rate. Are we done with rate hikes now?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

the cost of rent is directly tied to the mortgage rate

Who told you that?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Well, when our glorious landlords own multiple properties with variable mortgages and rates go up, they pass on the increases to the tenants. So it's not directly tied, but there is a connection.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not really. Rent is based on demand and landlords will take as much as the market will bear. It's pretty much independent of mortgage rates.

Case in point, rent in Southwestern Ontario exploded in 2020 & 2021, when interest rates were low and have stayed pretty level since, even with the significant increase in rates.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The price of everything is based on demand and offer. The price of production affects the offer.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Mostly no. The major drivers of price are supply and demand, not cost and demand. However, the “most profitable price” ( which is rarely the highest for those unfamiliar with economics ) does increase with the marginal cost. So the cost of production does play a role.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I'm not an economist so I could be wrong, but this is my thought process about it: If a product becomes too expensive to produce for some companies, those companies will stop selling it. Less companies selling the product = less offer less offer = higher price.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not really. In a system where demand is fairly inelastic (everyone needs somewhere to live and the only real flex is having roommates/living at home/homelessness or renting two apartments) and where the supply is currently extremely constrained, expenses are going to have next to no impact on rental prices.

For example, I was fortunately able to buy a townhouse two years ago (when interest rates were low) to live in. My mortgage is ~ $1,200/mo. Other units have been going on the rental market pretty consistently for ~$2,000/mo. Even with the increased interest rates, new landlord's would still have a net positive of ~$500/mo between the rent they receive and their mortgage payments. There might be a loss of profit, but with profits already so high, it's not going to affect rates on a macro scale.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

the area where you live sounds like the exception, not the rule (and this is an article from last year): https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/rising-rent-housing-market-canada-1.6525075

Interest rates are rising and the house-buying market is cooling off, putting more strain on rentals

The cost of rental housing is rising throughout Canada, according to Rental.ca. Analysts say rising interest rates are part of the problem.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Those "glorious landlords" you're referring to should have their multiple properties seized or have their financials squeezed to the point of blood. Fuck every last one of them. People have by and large turned into greedy fucks and it's disgusting.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

If not greed, how would you describe yourself in the paragraph above?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

That stood out to me, too. Stripping out mortgage interest, inflation is at 2.1%.

It can't completely be looked at in isolation like that, of course; part of the reason prices are lower on most things aside from groceries and housing is because people just don't have money left over for these things after paying for essentials. If mortgage interest were lower, demand for other goods would be higher and prices would rise faster.

Still, this adds support for BoC rates to stay frozen in the near term and decline in 2024.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Can I be one to say that despite all the shit on reddit that was given about the BoC not doing enough, or doing too much... So far they've done a damn good job at managing this given the fact that Jesus Christ are we dealing with once in a century issues. I will also give the Liberals props and the OPC props. We know what bad leadership looked like (see Alberta) but by and large most provinces and the country have turned out surprisingly well compared to their global partners.

  1. Pandemic
  2. War in Ukraine
  3. Escalating climate change

Yet here in Canada on a global scale we are still prospering and doing well. I"m speaking broad generalizations here. So if you're not doing well on an individual level I hear you, it sucks and we should be doing better.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


Statistics Canada reported Tuesday that the biggest reason for the deceleration in the cost of living was a drop in the cost of gasoline, which declined by 6.4 per cent during the month of October alone, and is down by 7.8 per cent compared to where prices were a year ago.

If gasoline is stripped out of the numbers, the inflation rate would have been 3.6 per cent in October.

That's slightly lower than the 3.7 per cent non-gasoline inflation rate clocked the month before.

While that's still higher than the overall inflation rate, it's down from the 5.8 per cent annual pace seen in September.

While the pain at the cash register for staples like food and gasoline is easing, plenty of other aspects that contribute to the cost of living continue to increase at an eye-watering level.

The data agency says the typical cost of rent went up by 8.4 per cent in the past year.


The original article contains 229 words, the summary contains 156 words. Saved 32%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!