Americans are buying less groceries; unit sales were flat most of 2025 and declined about 2% year over year in most months since February 2026, according to data from Bain & Company and NielsenIQ shared exclusively with CNBC. CNBC’s Brandon Gomez has the details on what that means for retailers as this trend is likely to continue unless other financial pressures ease.
Uhhhh I guess I could see that being true for a limited segment of the population. Those with disposable income at some given moment.
I think that’s part of the reasoning for keeping inflation around ~3% or so on purpose. Basically it incentivizes not hoarding cash but rather spending it or at least investing it since it will devalue over time and you become poorer.
But as far as people buying stuff due to inflation, I do have to admit I have purchased a few things as inflation skyrocketed. I saw them going up and I “knew” (was proven correct) that the prices were not coming back to a sane level. Might as well get them on the way up rather than keep waiting and the price will only keep getting worse and worse… or something along those lines.
But I can only imagine that scenario plays out a small number of times and only for an already small amount of the population. On the whole of course inflation depresses things. People buy less because they’re scared (sort of the opposite of my scenario I suppose) and/or people buying less because, well, it’s all they can buy. Even if there is some jump in sales of some products, and maybe there is I dunno I haven’t looked, it’s going to be only short term and then one has to assume the drop off will be like off a cliff. I don’t think anyone needs a phd in anything except Bird Science (adjacent to Bird Law) to say “that’s pretty fucking stupid and shortsighted.”
Unironically, the Sunday Friend does a perfect job of explaining the core of inflationary economics because he doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about, goes completely mask off, and drops 100% of the economic theory behind that concept: none at all, it’s just to stop people from saving their money.
Disco Elysium Spoilers
He’s actually a Moralintern agent posing as an economic bureaucrat, which is why he has no idea what he’s talking about but does actually understand that the core of that economic model is to prevent people from building savings. He’s politically conservative, and only exists politically within neoliberalism because it’s the dominant economic model of Elysium. He doesn’t actually believe any of the things he says, it’s just hawk babble.