https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000709112
Price of a gallon of milk over time
Price of a gallon of milk over time
Here's real-dollar food PCE. It's up about 38% since 2007 or just over 2% annualized increase above inflation.
Previously on HN[0] I broke down a grocery bill and found we were paying >40% more from 2021-2023.
Inflation from 2007-2024 was 49% so... that checks out. A 2% real-dollar annualized increase would actually be more than that.
I'm not sure what your point is, those two series are equivalent.
I guess you could normalize by something else like median wage but you're going to like that even less...
Dollars don't live in wallets for years on end. They live in markets. They live productively in bank accounts and in investment vehicles. And generally you're buying food out of your paycheck, which is also going up over time. Look at median wage. [1]
They myth of the idle dollar needs to die.
The question isn't how much your one dollar sitting in your wallet can buy (that's separately answered in CPI) the question is how much of your take-home pay as a percentage do you have to spend on food. That's what this series offers, in both nominal, and real dollars. The point is to compare the change in burden over time for the median individual. Comparing nominal prices isn't interesting and plays to humans poor ability to deal with exponential series.
Whether or not any of these comments in this chain have any relevance to the economic debate I have no opinion on.
Even in a huge cup you have at most $0.40 worth of milk and $0.30 of coffee beans (and that's generous, you could get specialty beans at that price).