Inflation, the sustained rise in the general level of prices, is almost as old as money itself. Although individual prices may increase because something becomes scarce, true inflation occurs when prices rise broadly and money consequently loses purchasing power. There are seemingly endless ways to make prices rise and thereby erode the purchasing power of whatever form of money is in use. From reducing the content of whatever precious metal was used in a coin without changing its nominal value to printing money barely worth its paper content, governments have been at it for millennia.
My subject is mostly shrinkflation. Manufacturers have long responded to rising costs by reducing a package’s quantity while keeping its price unchanged. Selling fewer ounces of coffee, a shorter candy bar, or fewer sheets on a roll are typical examples. Because buyers notice price increases more readily than small changes in weight or count, downsizing can be less damaging to sales than openly raising the price.
My view is limited to a few creative examples of the practice now in widespread use or potentially in use. The first is selling yourself into slavery to pay your debts or to beat price increases that outstripped your income. In the early Republic, an insolvent Roman might enter nexum, a form of debt bondage abolished in 326 BC. During the later Empire, desperately poor people sometimes entered arrangements resembling self-enslavement, despite the legal principle that a freeborn Roman could not sell himself. Using this expedient today would run afoul of the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution. Since there are those who consider the document to be outmoded and a barrier to progress, this impediment should be easy to overcome. Those with a sturdier moral compass could stay free and sell their children into bondage.
The term shrinkflation became widely used in the 2010s and especially during the post-pandemic inflation of the early 2020s. However, documented package reductions go back many decades. During the inflationary 1970s, food producers commonly reduced package sizes, substituted cheaper ingredients, or both.
It is not necessarily fraudulent if the new quantity is accurately disclosed. The objection is that the change is easy to overlook, particularly when the package itself remains nearly the same size. Shrinkflation is therefore neither a new form of inflation nor a separate cause of it; it is an old method of making inflation less conspicuous.
Consider Cocoa Puffs. The family-size box is the same size but now contains 18.1 ounces, down from 19. Why should a site that has opera as a main focus care about Cocoa Puffs? Read this article: Mad Max Meets Mozart – 2004 and all will be revealed. If you’re too busy to delve into the absurd, here’s a key sentence from my review of an English National Opera production of Don Giovanni staged by the crazy Catalan director Calixto Bieito: Both the Don and Leporello are inordinately fond of cold cereal, Coco Pops to be precise. Bieito may find himself priced out of material for future productions because, without cold cereal, his creative juices may solidify.
The amount of dental floss contained in a regular-sized container is shrinking so rapidly that I now only have enough to floss either my upper or lower teeth before having to start a new roll. Soon there may only be enough for a single tooth. But the package is as big as ever.
Shrinkflation has even engulfed the corrida de toros. I’m not writing about ticket prices, which have increased faster than the price of gold. Rather, I’m concerned with the indulto. To those unfamiliar with the labyrinthine rules and customs of the Spanish bullfight, the indulto (the pardon) is the sparing of a bull’s life because it is a spectacular example of what a brave bull is supposed to be. It is supposed to be so rare that even an inveterate bullfight attendee might go through life without seeing a bull pardoned. Madrid’s Las Ventas, the most important plaza de toros in the world, has issued the indulto just once. Plaza México in Mexico City, by contrast, has granted 37 indultos. But the Mexico City venue has not increased the rate at which it pardons bulls over the last 60 years.
The plethora of indultos has occurred mainly in third-category and provincial plazas. A historical comparison for Spain reveals 11 indultos in the nineteenth century, 42 in the twentieth century, and more than 350 so far in the twenty-first. The term “indultitis” is used to criticize Spain’s lesser plazas. A genuine indulto ought to recognize extraordinary behavior throughout the lidia, above all at the horse, and identify a bull worth using as a semental (seed bull). Too often today it rewards a long, crowd-pleasing muleta performance. That is a different, and substantially lower, standard.
Enough about a phenomenon many Americans find repulsive – when they think about it at all. And it’s not true shrinkflation anyway. But it is characteristic of the Western world’s current tendency to want more than is earned.
Toilet paper presents a problem more immediate than the fate of faraway bovines. Today’s rolls contain fewer or smaller sheets even when described as “mega” or “double” rolls. Families in need have been forced to practice ritual constipation. Others have adopted a liquid diet. Congress threatens to act. The Republicans say the last tax bill will soon solve the problem and urge both patience and continence. The Democrats say inflation will solve the problem. Dollar bills will be cheaper than toilet paper, creating a new use for paper money.
Finally, an issue with which I have direct experience: Instant Water. I invented the stuff decades ago but never patented it, so anyone can make it. The standard-size packet contains 16 ounces, though larger packets are available. I’ll concentrate on the 16-ounce size. Its use is simple. Just add 16 ounces of water to the contents of the packet, and you have enough to drink or use for whatever aquatic need is at hand. Since the financial crisis of 2008, the amount of Instant Water in a packet, whose size has not changed. has been reduced until it is now sufficient to make only 8 ounces of potable water. As the ingredients of Instant Water are as light as air, its manufacturers hope the public won’t notice. But even a registered voter can tell the difference between 16 and 8 ounces.
