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ELIRetarded: Why has service gotten worse, and why is everything expensive and smaller now?
When I Google this I get a bunch of one-sentence explanations about "inflation" and "supply chain problems" but those just sound like things that most people think a smart person would say and/or that they heard from the TV box. There are also conspiratorial comments amount money printing, M2, the "true" inflation rate, etc.
Inflation and supply chain issues don't just fall out of the sky, they're the result of government policy. My economics-illiterate impression is that technocrat morons freaked out and started pulling levers during covid, ruining the economy in the process by causing mass unemployment and killing SMBs and pumping massive amounts of free money into an economy where money was already free, which
caused serious inflationnothing to see here citizen, inflation is low, CPI is normal, everything is fine, don't trust your lying eyes or wallet and now another band of technocrats are raising interests rates to control the mess their comrades caused in the first place, compounding everyone's pain.If the above is true, I don't know why there isn't a mob in DC with pitchforks demanding to cook and eat the bureaucrats responsible for flying the economy into the ground and royally fucking everyone who isn't independently wealthy. Please tell me my understanding is incorrect so I can stop being mad about this every time I buy groceries.
I guess you're asking three questions here:
Why has service gotten worse? - Has it? In a measurable way? It's plausible that a tight labour market and some cost-saving measures put in place have made service worse in some sectors, but it would help if you could be more specific.
Why is everything expensive? - Assuming you're from the US, incomes (inflation-adjusted) have either decreased by 4.7% or increased by 3% between 2019 and 2022. However, wealth is up significantly. This article is worth reading.
Why is everything smaller now? - Do you mean consumer goods? Shrinkflation for food is definitely a thing, but it's just a manifestation of regular inflation. Over the long term, food costs are static, which with growing incomes means food is getting cheaper in real terms. Again, can you be more specific? Houses are getting bigger while households shrink. TVs are obviously getting bigger. Cars are getting bigger.
Thank you for patiently dissecting my incoherent rant.
#1 When I've been back in the States, store hours have been reduced, services have been cut, and menus shortened. Maybe it's just my perception or the places I've been, but it seems different than 2019.
#2 The article was interesting, thanks. But this was concerning
and
If my income is $100k/yr, and the price of consumable goods goes up 30%, BUT the estimated value of my house and car go up 50%, I guess on paper I have more wealth, but buying groceries and vacations is going to feel more expensive.
Also, as the article points out, if you don't have big far assets that have appreciated over the last few years, you're missing out on this wealth boom. Maybe that's why I'm feeling the squeeze.
#3 I don't have any specific examples for this one off the top of my head. I'll need to keep an eye out.
On bad service, I did read some discussion that this is downstream of the tight labor market. Service jobs are struggling to hire good people because good people would rather get other jobs if they could. So they have to hire crappy people or nobody at all. I'm also seeing anecdotally that teenagers are delaying drivers licenses and jobs, so I think the talent pool is smaller on that side.
There was some talk about service being the best during recessions when all your laid off engineers/etc got jobs at Dairy Queen and crushed it.
In addition to teenagers delaying driver's licenses and jobs, those that do try both are trading their time against extracurricular that can be marked on a FAFSA or CommonApp, and it's extremely unlikely any entry-level job will be as remunerative in the long run, especially with how scholarship-focused a lot of programs have gotten.
I think there's also been improved outreach from blue collar work to skilled- or smart-but-not-college-bound students, which on the upside means that they're getting pulled into more serious careers instead of spending a few years at McDonalds before seeing something more serious, but it does mean you're not seeing the sort of person you'd trust to reassemble a car engine doing customer service.
But more morbidly, the educational system has also just very strongly moved away from practical skills. I see it more clearly in STEM outreach, where it's now typical to see students who've never handled a wrench (and sometimes not even a screwdriver!) nor had a serious long-term project to manage, but almost all of the nearby schools have completely closed down their shop classes, and classical reading-writing-math has moved away from larger-scale or longer-term projects without immediate oversight.
This has not been my lived experience in highly skilled blue collar work- functionally all the decline in smart non-college types’ availability is from increased pot use. Young people entering the trades mostly went to college, discovered that they still didn’t like school, and then left to go to trade school because it will at least be over quickly(or had a relative in the trade in question).
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