"Seems" is doing some heavy lifting here. Using a typical grocery bill as an example is basically impossible, since households differ so much, so Stancil chose $100 for ease of comprehension.
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People aren’t stupid. He could have easily taken 400$ and just multiplied .42 by four, if that was his point. Instead he chose something ludicrous and out of touch…just like his positions on the economy.
aug 5, 2025, 4:34 pm • 1 0 • view
I’m assuming someone has pointed out to him that inflation in groceries comes with inflation in everything else?
aug 5, 2025, 4:35 pm • 0 0 • view
And I'm assuming that you know that 5% inflation in groceries doesn't mean that your total monthly expenses on everything go up by 5%? Of course inflation is generally correlated. Stancil's basic point is clear: Even 5% inflation, which is high, is not dramatically noticeable month to month.
aug 5, 2025, 4:51 pm • 1 0 • view
My utility bills have gone up a lot more than 5%.
aug 5, 2025, 6:10 pm • 0 0 • view
Yes, inflation is widely divergent among different areas. I just replaced my eight-year-old phone, and paid about the same number of dollars, unadjusted for inflation, as I did then. Meanwhile our house insurance premium is up 150% in the past six years, even though we haven't made a claim.
aug 5, 2025, 6:52 pm • 0 0 • view
Yeah, but if you're a household of one, $400 is too much – unless you have expensive tastes or live in a super-expensive-for-food area – and if you're a household of four it's too little. So he chose something very reasonable for a single shopping trip, and easier to conceptualize than, say, $400.
aug 5, 2025, 4:47 pm • 0 0 • view
Do you do the shopping in your household?
aug 5, 2025, 4:56 pm • 0 0 • view
My wife and I shop together, most recently yesterday.
aug 5, 2025, 5:58 pm • 0 0 • view
I suspect that your wife may be the one tracking the prices closely on this one. But actually, 400$ a month is a perfectly reasonable single-person monthly price these days. SNAP, known for being meager, puts a single person household at 292$. 400$ monthly is hardly veblen good land.
aug 5, 2025, 6:02 pm • 2 0 • view
You are wrong – my wife is utterly indifferent to price, and I'm the one who input everything into Quicken for a dozen years and knew EXACTLY how much we spent on groceries. I agree that $400 is a reasonable one-person monthly grocery bill; but many households contain more than one person.
aug 5, 2025, 6:48 pm • 0 0 • view
Then why did you initially say 400$ was too much for one person? People can work with a price they know is within a reasonable ballpark, even if it’s not exactly their own. But when they see something that doesn’t even cover dog food for a month, they’re going to balk.
aug 5, 2025, 6:59 pm • 1 0 • view
We eat well, and our monthly grocery bill for two is not $800. I'd say of $400/person that whether it's reasonable or on the high side depends upon where one lives and what one's tastes are. None of this, of course, has anything to do with Stancil's perfectly reasonable point.
aug 5, 2025, 7:06 pm • 0 0 • view