Sneaky, Very Sneaky: Brand shrinking

 

 

This is something I did not even notice for a while. Cadbury's chocolate have effectively reduced their 200g slabs down to 180g and the 100g slabs to 90g while keeping prices the same and not telling anybody about it. They say they do this to keep away from hiking the price – basically for the good of the consumers. Unfortunately, reducing the amount of grams that is bought while keeping the price the same is still making it cost more. And now the prices have gone up anyway.

It is not just the chocolate - Colgate toothpaste was reduced from 100ml to 75ml. All Gold tomato sauce shrank from 750ml to 700ml and some cold drinks cans shrank from 340ml to 330ml. Very sneaky, because the product is now more expensive so the companies get more money.

And people do not notice – I did not notice. One day I went into the shop and say a special on 90g Cadbury slabs and asked myself “was it not 100g before?”. It makes me wonder what other products we usually buy have decreased the weight sold. Interesting.

Prices are going up and packages are shrinking – This is happening all over the world . When I was a kid I liked buying chips, but they had almost no chips in them. Only a quarter of the packet had chips in it and the rest was air. It was like paying for air. Today I was feeding the cats and noticed less food came out than I remembered. I am not a 100% sure of this, because I never really looked at the weight of the cans.

At the moment there is not really anything we can do about this – sure you can stop buying the product in protest, but it would not make a difference. Even if everybody stopped buying from one company – that would hurt the company yes, but result in people losing their jobs and there aren’t a lot of those around lately. Without a job you have no income and with no income you cannot afford the house or even food. We all are trapped with the fear of money. And with no money to spend it is less money for the economy and so the economy suffers.

Investigate the Basic Income Guarantee – this would end poverty and inject more money into the economy which would result in a stable economic system.