8 Ways to Spot Hidden Inflation
Learn how corporations are actively trying to screw you
The government says inflation is 2.8%.
They’re lying.
Literally everything you buy has gone up by more than 2.8% in the past year… either in price or in one of the eight ways we’re going to cover today.
True inflation — the rate at which prices are going up and your money is being devalued by bankers — is significantly higher.
In the past five years, true price inflation alone was at least 26.49%.
It was likely way higher.
ShadowStats calculates it was 8–10%.
Michael Saylor rightly suggests we should calculate inflation rates NOT based on the consumer price index at all, but on asset prices, which are the things people actually want to buy. (IE, if house prices are up 100% over the past five years, that’s a far better long-term indicator of the truth.)
The godfather of capitalism, Adam Smith, said that capitalism is all about incentives.
Governments are incentivized to lie about inflation:
By lying about true inflation figures, it means they won’t have to raise pay for government workers, saving tax for their corporate sponsors.
Instead of admitting the truth, governments project a false stability about the markets. Admitting high inflation would spook investors, tank stock prices, and weaken currencies, hurting the portfolios of the rich and corporate profits.
They won’t have to pay pensioners more, saving tax for their corporate sponsors.
It means their corporate sponsors won’t have to give real-terms wage raises to their workers.
Corporations are happy for their sponsored politicians to lie about inflation because as their stock price inflates at real inflation rates, it appears like they’re performing better than they actually are, simply because they’re outpacing the fake government-published inflation rates.
Governments with national debts lie about inflation because it allows them to keep interest rates on their borrowing artificially low. This saves them and their corporate sponsors from having higher repayment costs.
Governments lie about inflation so they don’t have to adjust tax brackets upwards. Instead, any worker’s wage raise pushes them into high tax brackets without any real income growth, allowing governments to raise more revenue.
By lying about true inflation, corporations can raise prices without triggering widespread backlash or demands for proportional wage hikes. If real inflation is 10% but published inflation is 2%, a 5% raise in grocery store prices convinces most sheeple that the price hike is the fault of “supply chain issues” and not systemic inflation. Instead of fighting for wage rises above true inflation, the result is simply more profits for shareholders.
Because the rich own vast amounts of assets, lying about inflation keeps governments from raising interest rates and slowing asset price growth, meaning the wealth of the rich grows faster than worker wages erode.
Do you see the pattern here?
Do you see who benefits from lying about inflation?
Corporate shareholders and their sponsored politicians.
We need an entirely new system of incentives to drive real inflation to zero, otherwise, we are guaranteed to see our wealth stolen at a compounding rate.
In the meantime, here are 8 ways you can spot hidden inflation:
1. Shrinkflation
Remember when juice used to come in 4L bottles, yogurt was at least 1L, and beans or jalapenos were available in 5KG tins?
Now, you can’t even get 500 grams of flour. It’s 450.
Butter used to come in mammoth bricks. Now you need to buy ten little pads just to make a decent-sized party pan of Rice Krispies squares.
Serving sizes are going down everywhere, but prices are staying the same or rising.
In my grocery store, the largest rice size is now 500 grams — when I was growing up, you used to be able to buy 50kg sacks!
In some grocery stores like M&S, almost nothing can be purchased in sizes larger than single serving.
We see shrinkflation in housing, too.
For our grandparents, $5,000 used to buy you a house.
For our parents, $5,000 rented you a house for a year.
For us, millions of people pay $5,000/month for an apartment.
For our children, millions will pay $5,000/month for a single bed in a shared room.
2. Qualityflation
This one is huge.
Have you noticed that prices have been rising, but quality has been absolutely plummeting?
Now, what was considered average quality 40 years ago is now considered luxury-grade and premium-priced accordingly.
Clothing and footwear are absolute trash. We went from hemp to cotton to cotton-polyester to polyester to Lord knows what microplastic is currently poisoning our skin and killing fish when it ends up in the ocean.
My wife’s aunt had the same laundry machine for over 50 years.
Ours started leaking in eighteen months.
The Consumer Price Index used to include steak, but they quietly swapped it out for ground beef. And that’s not organic grass-fed beef, either… it’s grain-fed feedlot poison.
Even Teslas are made of cheaper plastic than my son’s Lego pieces and passed off as “luxury” cars.
We see qualityflation in housing, too:
Toilet handles and sink faucets are plastic garbage.
Flooring is soul-sucking grey laminate instead of hardwood.
Piping is PVC instead of cast iron.
Windows are hideous PVC instead of handcrafted wood.
Roof shingles are 10–20-year asphalt instead of 100-year slate.
In Wales alone — population 3.1 million — there are 497,000 houses built of stone. But slowly, stone was replaced by brick, and today in my hometown, exteriors are cheap vinyl stapled on plywood.
3. Misleading packaging
At my local grocery store, they now sell 5 organic apples in a bag that fits 6, but they designed the label to cover the four corners so most people won’t notice. (That’s a 16.67% inflation theft, for those keeping score.)
At my local grocery store, they now sell eggs 10 to a carton but have designed the box to still look like it contains a dozen. (16% inflation.)
Notice how goods now have bigger facades but less depth. The textbook example is breakfast cereal. They’re a foot wide and tall but only inches deep.
Kleenex is the same way. Tissue boxes used to have hundreds; now, you’re lucky if a box lasts a week.
Watch out for larger chip bags bloated with more air and fewer chips.
Watch out for lotion bottles with long necks and thick bases, both of which reduce the actual amount of product instead.
4. Serviceflation
Have you noticed that everyone is absolute $#!te at their job now?
People not showing up.
People showing up hours late.
People not having a clue what they’re doing.
Customer service reps who’ve clearly never used the product.
Your car’s in the shop for longer.
You’re waiting longer for an appointment.
My wife and I had an air filtration system installed earlier this year, and they’ve had to come back nine times.
5. Drip pricing
The airlines are masters of this.
My wife and I wanted to go to Canada this summer, and tickets were “only” $600ish...
Plus taxes.
Plus “fees.”
Plus baggage.
Plus food.
Plus choosing to sit together (who the hell forces parents to pay extra so their toddler doesn’t have to sit twenty rows away beside a stranger??)
Plus hundreds to have a baby sitting on our lap.
Plus taxes on the lap baby.
Plus fees on the lap baby.
In total, it came to over $3,500.
We passed.
Concerts and trains do this too, advertising “tickets from $10,” when not a soul on earth can actually experience the journey for less than $100 when you add all the inexplicable fees for no added customer benefit.
6. Subscription creep
You sign up for $9.99/month, but when you go to renew, it hops to $14.99.
$100 to cancel, of course.
Next thing you know, it’s an extra $2 per month to skip ads.
Plus an extra $3/month to watch the show that used to be included because it’s now on a “premium” tier.
Soon, you’re paying triple for less than what you started with.
7. Shelf-life shrinkage
This one infuriates me.
Have you noticed that all the ground beef now expires in three days?
And milk never lasts a week?
And batteries need replacing more often?
That’s all on purpose.
By reducing product durability and speeding up expiration dates, it forces you to repurchase faster.
Battery brands tweak their chemistry so it dies sooner.
A yogurt cuts shelf life from 60 to 30 days.
These people are straight-up evil.
8. Price comparison traps
There were two Parmesan cheeses for sale at the grocery store this week.
They were the same dimensions, but one was £3.65 and the other was £3.70.
Most people would automatically go for the cheaper option, assuming it must be a quality thing.
But upon closer inspection, the cheaper one was actually significantly thinner.
The “cheaper” option, by weight, was actually 24% more expensive.
When it comes to money, NOTHING is an accident.
It’s extremely disturbing to me that there are thousands of people out there whose entire job is to psychologically manipulate consumers into paying more for less.
It’s genuinely sociopathic behavior.
Can you imagine being married to someone like that?
Sadly, this sort of anti-human behavior is not only tolerated but trained, encouraged, and rewarded.
In conclusion
We didn’t even dive into AI-driven dynamic surge pricing, bundling bait, portion padding, package bloat, substitution inflation, feature stripping, or skimpflation.
This world is run by absolute despots.
Money-worshippers.
Human haters.
When you add up true price inflation (at least 26.49% over the past 5 years) plus the eight forms of inflation we covered today plus the dozen other forms of inflation we didn’t, no honest person can deny the truth:
Total real inflation is easily 12% per year.
That theft created the billionaire class, decimated the middle class, and destroyed the working class.
We need a renewal.
We need a revival.
We need to once again believe that people really matter.
And that people matter more than money.
We need honest money again.
Sadly, we have the likes of Canada’s new unelected Prime Minister, former central bankster Mark Carney, rubbing his hands in glee as he enriches the richest shareholders in human history by inflating the money supply via borrowing from his banker sponsors.
Until the masses wake up and take back their countries, I don’t see an end to this.
Debasing money makes everyone dishonest and dehumanized in the fight for survival.
What collapsed nations in antiquity — the greed of the powerful — will surely do the same to ours.
Unless we can find a way to rapidly decentralize wealth and power.
In the meantime, learn to spot and avoid inflation where you can.
And sell your stocks and bonds and other parasitic investments, lest you be numbered among the damned who profited from all this evil.
PS—my new book is out in the UK today! (Download the first chapter for free)