So, Trump had a rather disastrous speech that was intended to be relatively intellectual and policy based. And it kinda sucked, but everyone is lampooning it a bit too hard. So I'm going to do something I don't normally do...and defend Trump for the sake of fairness.
Okay, so, tic tacs. Trump got out a pack of tic tacs, a relative large pack. And then he got out a smaller pack that was tiny AF and said "that's inflation." And as you can tell by the above daily show clip, desi lydic just...kinda missed the point and started laughing at it.
Um....okay, so, to explain trump's point more clearly, "shrinkflation" is a thing. You go to the grocery store. You have a product that is 16 oz for say, $2.00 in 2020. You go back a few years later, and suddenly, it's $2.00 for 14 oz. The price didn't go up, but suddenly, you're buying less product for the same money. In a sense, the price DID go up. Because at 16 oz, you would be paying $0.125 an oz. But now you're paying $0.143 an oz. The price did go up by about 14%. Because you're getting 12.5% less product for the same money.
This has been a common trick corporations have used to mask inflation. Except, it's pretty obvious, a lot of people know about it. And even a lot of Trumpers can understand it.
Maybe showing two obviously different sized tic tac boxes wasnt the best example. Maybe the one was $2 and the other was $1, ya know, and I think Lydic kinda had a point in comparing a 2 liter of coke to a 12 oz can in that sense.
But COME ON. Like, in all fairness to trump, he's trying. He's rubbing his two functioning brain cells together and the friction is starting to generate heat that lets us know that he's on to something here. And he is. And even if he explained it kinda poorly, he had a point. I mean, let's be honest about that. The dude had a point. Because shrinkflation is REAL. Its consequences are REAL. You are paying more money for less crap.
Just as they could've jacked up a 16 oz container of something from $2 to $2.30, instead they decided to keep the low price and hope you didn't notice them shrinking the size slightly. I mean, the box looks almost as big, do you even notice? Not unless you look. Maybe you might think "wasn't this slightly bigger?" But then you might be like "nah, i mean, my eyes are deceiving me and it's not like i have an old pack to compare it to." So it works. And that's what Trump was trying to get at.
I mean, it's one of the smartest things he's said. We should give him credit for it, kinda like how we give a kindergartener credit for making a poorly drawn fire engine that has armpit hair on it for....reasons....(yes, this is a maddox reference). Ya know, make fun of him for him actually being stupid when he's stupid (ie, the other 99.9% of the time).
PS, this does not mean I support or endorse him in any way. He's not only an idiot, he's a dangerous idiot. He just had a broken clock moment here, that is all.
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