Some time back, I wrote a post that mentioned the Hershey Bar Scam. [Never mind that it was a post about toilet paper, a product that should probably never be mentioned in the same breath as Hershey bars for several scatologically pungent reasons.]
Just to refresh your memory, the Hershey Bar Scam was the sneaky way the good folks in the chocolate industry dealt with fluctuating raw material costs. Instead of jacking up the price of a candy bar to cover increased raw material costs, they would simply shrink the bar... and so it was that the 2-ounce nickel Hershey bar you could have bought in 1930 eventually withered away to a mere ¾ ounce less than forty years later. Things might have gone on like that even longer, but it got to the point where you would have needed a magnifying glass to see a nickel chocolate bar - and so prices began to rise.
This has been going on so long, I no longer pay attention to it... and, probably, neither do you. Getting less stuff for more money is nothing new. Anyone who visits a supermarket - especially if one is there for the purpose of purchasing food in order to feed one’s family - is all too familiar with the phenomenon. It affects way more than chocolate bars. Hell, it affects way more than just food.
Cars used to have humongous fuel tanks as a matter of routine. Twenty or twenty-five gallon tanks were common in family sedans. Now you see tanks that size only in Winnebagoes. And yet it costs a lot more to fill today’s dinky-ass 14.5-gallon tanks than anyone would have imagined back before the first Oil Shock hit back in 1973-74. Again - this is nothing new.
But lately, an even more disturbing trend has surfaced...
Just to refresh your memory, the Hershey Bar Scam was the sneaky way the good folks in the chocolate industry dealt with fluctuating raw material costs. Instead of jacking up the price of a candy bar to cover increased raw material costs, they would simply shrink the bar... and so it was that the 2-ounce nickel Hershey bar you could have bought in 1930 eventually withered away to a mere ¾ ounce less than forty years later. Things might have gone on like that even longer, but it got to the point where you would have needed a magnifying glass to see a nickel chocolate bar - and so prices began to rise.
This has been going on so long, I no longer pay attention to it... and, probably, neither do you. Getting less stuff for more money is nothing new. Anyone who visits a supermarket - especially if one is there for the purpose of purchasing food in order to feed one’s family - is all too familiar with the phenomenon. It affects way more than chocolate bars. Hell, it affects way more than just food.
Cars used to have humongous fuel tanks as a matter of routine. Twenty or twenty-five gallon tanks were common in family sedans. Now you see tanks that size only in Winnebagoes. And yet it costs a lot more to fill today’s dinky-ass 14.5-gallon tanks than anyone would have imagined back before the first Oil Shock hit back in 1973-74. Again - this is nothing new.
But lately, an even more disturbing trend has surfaced...
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