Friday! Has anyone else noticed grocery prices lately?
As you can see by Itzl's concerned look, this group is for us to check in at to let people know we are alive, doing OK, and not affected by such things as heat, blizzards, floods, wild fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, power outages, or other such things that could keep us off DKos. It's also so we can find other Kossacks nearby for in-person checks when other methods of communication fail - a buddy system. Members come here to check in. If you're not here, or anywhere else on DKos, and there are adverse conditions in your area (floods, heatwaves, hurricanes, etc.), we and your buddy are going to check up on you. If you are going to be away from your computer for a day or a week, let us know here. We care!
IAN is a great group to join, and a good place to learn to write diaries. Drop one of us a PM to be added to the Itzl Alert Network anytime! We all share the publishing duties, and we welcome everyone who reads IAN to write diaries for the group! Every member is an editor, so anyone can take a turn when they have something to say, photos and music to share, a cause to promote or news!
Ok, we do have a diary schedule. But, when you are ready to write that diary, either post in thread or send FloridaSNMOM a Kosmail with the date. If you need someone to fill in, ditto. FloridaSNMOM is here on and off through the day usually from around 9:30 or 10 am eastern to around 11 pm eastern.
Monday:
BadKitties
Tuesday:
bigjacbigjacbigjac
Wednesday:
Caedy
Thursday:
weck
Friday:
FloridaSNMOM
Saturday:
broths
Sunday:
loggersbrat
So, Sunday the food stamps came. We didn't lose too much because they re-figured ours to be higher than what we'd been getting, so we only lost about $9 per month. Still, we had a few shocks at the grocery store this week.
The prices of a box of store brand mac-n-cheese jumped from $1.00 to $1.49 in about a week. A couple of months ago it was .75/box. A couple of years ago it was .33. Mac-n-cheese, generic, the stuff the poor kids eat.. doubled in the past two or three months, in price. Not in size, if anything the size shrank a bit. It seems everything is up. Milk is up over $4.00/gallon around here. OJ as well, up over $4/gallon, even in Florida. And yet, food stamps benefits are shrinking, salaries are shrinking. I don't know what we're all going to be eating before too long.
So I did a little research to see what prices have done during my adult life. I paused during some major events of my life, starting with Graduation from High School, and turning 18 of course:
1988
Cost of a new home: $138,300.00
Median Household Income: $27,225.00
Cost of a first-class stamp: $0.22 ($0.25 as of 4/3/88)
Cost of a gallon of regular gas: $1.08
Cost of a gallon of Milk: $2.30
The year my first child was born:
1995
New home: 111,000.00
Median Income$19717.00
Stamp: .32
Gas: 1.35
Milk: 2.29
When President Obama was elected:
2008
New Home: $232,400
Median Income: $52,029
Stamp: 0.42
Gas: $4.10
Milk: $4.49
And last year:
2012
The median sales price of new houses sold in August 2012 was $256,900
Median Income: $50,054
Stamp: .45
Gas:$3.63
Milk:$3.65
One of the common Republican Meme's is don't have kids if you can't support them. Look at the price differences between when my son was born and now. Do you think in 1995, even if I was sitting down to figure out how much he would cost me every year (and completely discounting the disabilities I knew nothing about at the time), that I would have figured the cost of milk almost doubling, or gas tripling? And what about that box of mac-n-cheese? I seem to remember that being about .25/box in 1995. Now it's $1.49 and he can eat a lot more of it than he did back then too!
So the next time someone goes on about how much people are getting in food stamps, remind them of how much groceries are rising every single year! I know I can't find peanut butter for under $5 for a big sized jar any longer. Draco goes through one of those a week. It wasn't that long ago those were $3.50, and the HUGE jumbo sized of Peter Pan was $7, that would last him almost a month.
So what have you had to change in your grocery budget to keep up with the price increases? Do you remember how much it cost to eat when you were in your 20's? How are our young people to survive if this trend continues?