“1000 points of light . . . recession bad, recovery good . . . I think I’ve got that.” – The Naked Gun 2 ½: The Smell of Fear
If Dodge® makes an electric car, will they sell Dodge© Chargers™?
Inflation has really started to bite here in Modern Mayberry. I’m not sure about the Big Cities, but I’ve begun to notice it around here. Today at lunch I made a trip to McDonald’s®. It’s rare, most of the time (if I eat lunch at all) I eat at home. It’s more convenient, and I really, really hate lines, but this was a late lunch and I could drive straight to the window. But hey, for me, it’s the McChicken®.
The prices at McDonald’s® have gotten silly. Whereas there used to be enough value in a Big Mac™ to make one of them (occasionally) worth it, it’s just not the case nowadays. I didn’t spend too much time pondering the price on any of the burgers, since I could get nearly a pound of steak for the price of the average burger-fries-drink combos. But again, for me, it’s the McChicken™.
What a fun, cool, happening place, if you can get 3-for-free!
Why are people not going out?
The prices are silly.
I think (and I might be wrong) that our local McDonald’s™ just has to match the prices that are (more or less) nationally set by some sweaty accountant in Chicago wearing a Grimace™ costume and questioning the life choices that led him to have to report every day to Stacy, who is forced to wear a Hamburgler© costume. I can’t see the labor around Modern Mayberry costing nearly as much as in a bigger city. The food, I would imagine, costs exactly the same as in the bigger cities.
The result? I’ve noticed that the lines are much shorter at the local fast-food restaurants, even at peak hours. One of the regional chains hasn’t raised their prices, since all of their restaurants are just scattered around Upper Lower Midwestia and they don’t have to worry about the price of a Quarter Pounder™ in Manhattan. Their lines are the longest in town, so I follow Yogi Berra’s advice, “Nobody goes there anymore, that place is too crowded.”
Since COVID, my favorite local restaurant has closed. It was a bona fide restaurant, great service, great food. Supply chain issues coupled with labor oddities and lower business slowly torpedoed them. They liquidated before they lost a lot of money – they saw what was coming and wanted to go out on their terms.
I’ve been told that McDonald’s™ was sued once for bugs in their food. They won the case – no one on the jury believed they used any natural ingredients.
And our world got a little bit smaller, so we now have dinner somewhere else. It’s cheaper, but I notice that both of the places that we normally go aren’t very busy anymore. And the waitresses that work there aren’t changing jobs anymore – the good ones are keeping their jobs now. Something tells me they’re a little harder to get now.
So, if you’re counting restaurants and the people who work there (and those that used to own them) Modern Mayberry definitely has fewer restaurants. The revenue in the town might be the same, but there are (my guess) 20% fewer customers.
This is the invisible recession.
I always carry some McDonald’s® fries when I walk the dogs in winter. Fries go great with chilly dogs.
It’s invisible because I’d imagine that, even though McDonald’s® is (visually) selling less McFood©, they’re charging more. So, higher prices times lower volume is probably about even. But the value created to the consumer is far, far less even though revenues might be neutral. Unless you count eating healthier food than McDonald’s™ makes as value. Heck, Ronald has killed more people than Pennywise.
I suspect this is going on everywhere. Wages are certainly not keeping up with daily expenses, and those who are less fortunate haven’t had raises that have kept up with inflation. And why should employers pay more? In a recent month, a net 1.2 million jobs were “created” but 600,000 Americans lost their jobs. They were replaced by immigrants (illegal or legal).
Thankfully, corporate profits were saved!
It’s better than when he ran the farm using Artificial Intelligence and had to reboot it all before the power outage – AI, AI, Oh.
Interest rates are up, and I expect they will continue to go up because there is no semblance of any fiscal adulthood in Washington, D.C. on either side of the ball. The Democrat mantra of “spend more” is always followed by the Republican response of, “Well, okay, but not quite that much” as the dance of the destruction of the currency continues.
I hope I’m wrong, but this is based on the bet that politicians will continue to be weak and craven, and that 2024 is an election year. What do politicians like during an election year? A good economy with low inflation. Failing that, politicians like distractions and spreading money out like AOC on a Saturday night. If you can’t make a good economy, fake one.
More money floating around means . . . more inflation. But if wages aren’t going up because there’s a massive influx of illegals?
Just more misery, especially for those at the lower end of the pay scale. All of the typical Leftist voting blocks will be rewarded, of course. The standard Leftie professor at the average Leftie college (but I mostly repeat myself) will get raises because the Left takes care of itself and funds itself. The Left believes in the state and uses it as a propaganda and funding arm. Why do drama programs get special federal funds?
Because they vote Left.
I guess the finale was shot before a live audience.
But real Americans that aren’t tied into the ecosystem of government gimmes are seeing their difficulties multiply. Me? I’ll still mainly skip McDonald’s© and save a few bucks and have more steaks and fewer fries. But the invisible recession is already here, at least in Modern Mayberry.
But, hey, for me? It’s the McChicken™.
I went to a crossfit competition to watch this weekend and they had 5-7 foodtrucks on site depending on what day/time I was there. I ate at them twice. I was shocked to learn that both of my lunches which were smaller than a typical meal were both $20. Who would have thought that my government printing 10 trillion dollars over the last 3 years would impact my cash….
Shocking that printing cash makes it worth less, and eventually worthless.
There’s so little traffic that McD is getting rid of the self-serve coke machines. And, er, the dining rooms. The future of McD is CosMc….
https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/12/business/mcdonalds-self-serve-soda-machines/index.html
And yep, the prices are going up…
https://www.axios.com/2022/04/17/mcdonalds-big-mac-inflation-food-prices
But depending on where you are, a Big Mac can still be a bargain…
https://nypost.com/2023/03/19/big-mac-inflation-attack-iconic-burgers-price-soars/
Beloved wife and I don’t do much fast food. Once a month at best. So the current asking price for a McWhopper is no more than an abstraction to us. But we sure do see the shrinkflation at the supermarket. As we wander through our local HEB, lightly loading the cart with more canned stuff than fresh, we are accosted at every turn by big, flashy signs, insisting “LOW LOW PRICES!”
Sure could have fooled me. In fact, if they did not advertise the fact that these are “LOW LOW PRICES!” I might have suspected just the opposite.
They seem to be following the leftist Big Brother playbook, to wit, when you tell a lie, make it a McWhopper. With extra sauce packets. The bigger the better, mate.
A friend of mine in college (during Carter) went to McD each day for lunch. He always got a big Mac, fries, and coke. He handed them a $1 and got back a few pennies. Devaluation of the dollar has been nuts.
The FED always forgets that they have 2 prime functions. The first is a stable value for the dollar. Of course, the first thing they do is force at least a 2% annual devaluation!
I’d still rather have a steak.
Ronald gets no sympathy from me. It’s the individual entrepreneurs who are the target of the “Great Retch” (er, “Reset”). Be it farming, fueling, finance, or fast food, small business is dead in the crosshairs. And we will all be poorer for it. Just shut up and put on the clown suit.
But how MCD does is a pretty good reflection of how well the hoi polloi are doing. And if they aren’t doing well, neither are the companies whose clientele is the lower and middle class.
I was thrilled when I first went to McDonald’s as a kid. Now? Quality is abysmal, as is service.
In my adopted country, the dollar has been plummeting for over a year.
Planned demolition by our Rulers. Build Back Better.
Yes, every bit is planned.
I’m headed up to Charlotte for biz today and always eat lunch at the same meat & 3 at Exit 65, I-77. Great food, especially the cornbread. Pre-FAKEVID in 2020, $9.90+tax. Now….$14.00 or so+tax.
Gawd knows what they’ll charge next year – if they’re in biz.
Indeed. One local place sold and want to sell a French dip for $15. It’s not bad, but $15???
I work for a national wood working store based in Minnesota. I have noticed over the years that even though there is a “recession” or “inflation” or whatever the ungodly society is experiencing….that company ALWAYS makes a large “Return on Investment” (ROI)
I think that is one of the unseen things to inflation….the companies desire to ALWAYS make ROI. Prices be damned! Amount of product sold; screw that. ROI is still high; mouth drooling, slobbering A-OK!!!!
I would have thought that in the lean years; just making a small profit would be ok. And then during the fat years; putting some of those profits aside to help ride out the lean years. But, nope ROI is king. Got’s to has dat high ROI!!!
Because shareholders or any owners of equity expect a good return on their investment. Else they would pull their capital out and invest in something else.
And keeping the share price from becoming too volatile is important in the investment world.
Corporations, and workers, are always “greedy”, trying to get the most for the least. But only when government and/or reckless bankers spread new money around can either one get “more” for the same.
Yes, because of the debt that these companies keep, they have to continually feed the ROI machine. Continually. There is no tomorrow.
Meat gets smaller price goes up. the only “bargain” in my neighborhood is local Mexican restaurants. Gee i wonder why family all works, half probably off the books.
Ditto. And they’re getting emptier, too. People are eating at home.
The media has done a masterful job of running cover for the unfolding economic calamity in America, and just imagine what lengths they will go to next year to keep Orange Man Bad out of office.
Yeah, but I think the average person can see that Emperor Joe has no clothes. Or Depends.
Unfortunately, too many people don’t have a clue, or have their fingers crossed. To some, it’s not a recession, it’s a depression, and I’d say the earmarks of a depression are seen in the drastic downturn in economic activity. Things will really change when the housing market tanks. Those that can are moving, those that can’t are probably just about underwater, and those just now buying a home are probably making a huge mistake.
I think that’s happening now. Family next to us bought a house and are out less than a year later. I’m thinking that it was too much $ for them as their business went down.
The Atlanta FED has a measure called GDPnow. It estimates the GDP for the current quarter until it is offically released. It had been quite accurate and far better than the independent future guesses. Prior quarter and now this one, they have gone nuts. They are currently guessing a 5% annualized quarterly GDP. That is plain stupid. If it were real, the stock market would have gone sky-higher that it even was. And there would be no one griping about the cost of McD visit.
Cool! I didn’t know about that metric. Yeah, it’s bogus, and has no relation to the economic status of the average Joe.