It’s not far from a decent argument. I did read somewhere that an economist considered the Mars Bar was an absolutely great way of valuing the economy. It includes a number of core raw ingredients (around 40 iirc) that could be used to understand a lot of how the supply chain is costing and the cost of labour/transport. I found it funny at first but the longer I thought of it, the more sensible it seemed.
Figures are wrong though. 2005 is the year the Freddo went up to 12p.
no one questions the fact that the goverment borrows money. at interest. thats the reason. its created out of thiin air and accepted as value with interst…. the result is debt… forever impossible to ever pay. hence the world debt clock. in debt to aliens it seems, yet its taken very seriously to pay it off. money is a tool but its being used to enslave the planet.
NHS Nurses pay in cans of beans an hour was a popular one
🤓Inflation is already measured across a basket of common goods. Because a single item can fluctuate too much without relation to the state of the economy. Cadbury got bought out by an American company who have been more motivated to increase profit, and also cocoa prices can rise and fall based on poor harvests, international demand etc.
On an a related note, when Freddos hit £1 I say we ditch pence
We’ve all got something to lose. Big or small. Nobody wants to lose whatever it is. We take the piss out of the French surrendering, but lets be real, they got more courage than us when it comes to fighting against inequality (wealth inequality)
If only there was another metric we could use…..
It’s worse than that.
The current top rate of minimum wage, the so called National living wage, was originally only for people 25 and over. From 2016 until 2024 the actual increase in minimum wage for 21 to 24 year olds that would get the 2005 rate was a lot less. It jumped £1.26 in one year for them, that’s over 3 Freddo’s but not quite 4.
I have full sympathy for people trying to manage on minimum wage. But we also have another problem. The minimum wage has increased by +142%. Meanwhile, my wage as a PhD-holding professional has increased by less than +50% over the same period.
I don’t expect anyone to break out the world’s smallest violin for me. But here’s the thing: getting a PhD took years of work and investment, meant sacrificing some of the best working years of my life, and was a huge personal risk to take. People will only do this if they think there’s a payoff and the payoff has gotten much smaller compared to entry-level jobs. What is true of my profession is true of many others too. So how are we supposed to grow the economy of achieving anything is hardly rewarded?
I used to buy a penny liquorice stick, because it was hard and lasted longer. There were 240 pennies in a pound back then. Now the liquorice sticks are about 33 pence each. so you get three for a pound. Okay, it was in the fifties, sixties and seventies. I like a Freddo but a liquorice stick lasts longer!
I think they’re thinner now too.
However, while this works in theory, it ignores 2 other factors which affect the perception of inflation: Increased production costs for chocolate, and Capitalist greed.
Chocolate has become a lot more expensive in recent years, and general corporate greed and the need to return more and more profit year on year, prices go up to keep shareholders happy.
So while in the past a Freddo was 10p, if chocolate was the same expense and companies had the same greed levels, maybe a Freddo would have been 15p in 2005. Likewise, without these increase chocolate cost or greed, we might have cheaper Freddos today.
Just to add on to this, Freddos are now lighter, as well as more expensive.
We are getting less Freddo per Freddo, and being charged more for the privilege.
So basically we all have about 68% of the buying power we used to have, at least in the Freddo metric. Meanwhile everything is cheaper to produce, so our kindly masters are making money hand over fist while taking away 32% of everybody else’s. Sounds about right.
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It’s not far from a decent argument. I did read somewhere that an economist considered the Mars Bar was an absolutely great way of valuing the economy. It includes a number of core raw ingredients (around 40 iirc) that could be used to understand a lot of how the supply chain is costing and the cost of labour/transport. I found it funny at first but the longer I thought of it, the more sensible it seemed.
Figures are wrong though. 2005 is the year the Freddo went up to 12p.
no one questions the fact that the goverment borrows money. at interest. thats the reason. its created out of thiin air and accepted as value with interst…. the result is debt… forever impossible to ever pay. hence the world debt clock. in debt to aliens it seems, yet its taken very seriously to pay it off. money is a tool but its being used to enslave the planet.
NHS Nurses pay in cans of beans an hour was a popular one
[Example ](https://i2-prod.mirror.co.uk/article29710039.ece/ALTERNATES/s615b/1_Screenshot-2023-04-14-at-112138.png)
🤓Inflation is already measured across a basket of common goods. Because a single item can fluctuate too much without relation to the state of the economy. Cadbury got bought out by an American company who have been more motivated to increase profit, and also cocoa prices can rise and fall based on poor harvests, international demand etc.
On an a related note, when Freddos hit £1 I say we ditch pence
We’ve all got something to lose. Big or small. Nobody wants to lose whatever it is. We take the piss out of the French surrendering, but lets be real, they got more courage than us when it comes to fighting against inequality (wealth inequality)
If only there was another metric we could use…..
It’s worse than that.
The current top rate of minimum wage, the so called National living wage, was originally only for people 25 and over. From 2016 until 2024 the actual increase in minimum wage for 21 to 24 year olds that would get the 2005 rate was a lot less. It jumped £1.26 in one year for them, that’s over 3 Freddo’s but not quite 4.
I have full sympathy for people trying to manage on minimum wage. But we also have another problem. The minimum wage has increased by +142%. Meanwhile, my wage as a PhD-holding professional has increased by less than +50% over the same period.
I don’t expect anyone to break out the world’s smallest violin for me. But here’s the thing: getting a PhD took years of work and investment, meant sacrificing some of the best working years of my life, and was a huge personal risk to take. People will only do this if they think there’s a payoff and the payoff has gotten much smaller compared to entry-level jobs. What is true of my profession is true of many others too. So how are we supposed to grow the economy of achieving anything is hardly rewarded?
I used to buy a penny liquorice stick, because it was hard and lasted longer. There were 240 pennies in a pound back then. Now the liquorice sticks are about 33 pence each. so you get three for a pound. Okay, it was in the fifties, sixties and seventies. I like a Freddo but a liquorice stick lasts longer!
I think they’re thinner now too.
However, while this works in theory, it ignores 2 other factors which affect the perception of inflation: Increased production costs for chocolate, and Capitalist greed.
Chocolate has become a lot more expensive in recent years, and general corporate greed and the need to return more and more profit year on year, prices go up to keep shareholders happy.
So while in the past a Freddo was 10p, if chocolate was the same expense and companies had the same greed levels, maybe a Freddo would have been 15p in 2005. Likewise, without these increase chocolate cost or greed, we might have cheaper Freddos today.
Just to add on to this, Freddos are now lighter, as well as more expensive.
We are getting less Freddo per Freddo, and being charged more for the privilege.
So basically we all have about 68% of the buying power we used to have, at least in the Freddo metric. Meanwhile everything is cheaper to produce, so our kindly masters are making money hand over fist while taking away 32% of everybody else’s. Sounds about right.
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