Wednesday, January 18, 2012

The Ultimate Inflation Casualty

We've all seen the tricks being played by food manufacturers in shrinking the size of their products but charging the same price as the former size. The old 5 pound bags of sugar some to my mind. Whether it is cereal or bar-b-sauce, or whatever, the consumer ends up paying the same amount as they once did but they come home with a smaller quantity for their money spent.

All of this is to hide or disguise the impact of inflation. One goes to the store, buys a bag of sugar for the price they paid for it a few years ago and thinks little if anything about it until they realize that they ended up with one pound less sugar than they might have assumed.

Now, I give you the ULTIMATE INFLATION CASUALTY - yes indeed - the lowly but glorious roll of toilet paper.

Look at the following picture and weep for our old familiar friend... the roll of toilet paper on the right is the old sized roll. The new, inflation adjusted roll is on the left - I actually took out a ruler and measured the thing - it is 5/16" of an inch narrower. Think about how much wood pulp that saves the paper manufacturer. The result - VOILA!  the package of the new paper costs as much as the old sized rolls cost but you get that much less.

Alas, let us pause for a moment of respect at the passing of the dear friend of our derriere.


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6 comments:

  1. SteveJanuary 18, 2012 at 5:55 PM

    Excellent post, great review. I pay my respects :-(

    Okay, times up.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Titus AndronicusJanuary 18, 2012 at 6:56 PM

    Ah, poo!

    ReplyDelete
  3. PeterJanuary 18, 2012 at 10:12 PM

    Finger lookin good, - Dan

    ReplyDelete
  4. ChristopheJanuary 19, 2012 at 12:33 AM

    That's what happen when one offshore plants in a metric-system based country.

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  5. ljJanuary 19, 2012 at 8:04 AM

    They should really start publishing a "toilet paper index." They shrink the physical size of the roll (picture above), the size of the sheets and the number of sheets. The current "double rolls" are not much bigger than the good old "single rolls" of a couple years ago. And, this is one item that almost everybody in the modern world uses on a "regular" basis, unlike big mac's.

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  6. UnknownSeptember 4, 2012 at 11:58 PM

    Inflation reflects on the products we're buying from the market. If inflation get worse, that toilet tissue would become the half of its original size, LOL.

    __________________________
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