A $9 Bottle of Ketchup is Not the Way Forward

Why this New Normal is Damaging My Calm.

A very long time ago I learned an extremely hard lesson. There are just some things in life we have to get used to. Some things we simply cannot change. It wasn’t easy. I’m a slow learner. In fact, coming to grips with the fact that I’d never build interstellar spaceships or date Kathy Ireland or be a ninja was devastating. But with the help of comic books, video games, and a few degenerate friends, I’ve learned to accept…or maybe, settle.

So now that I’m considerably older, I get it. I can accept the high gas prices, stagnant wages, and bank (investor) bailouts. I can even deal with with the harshest of realities that I’ll never be friends with Geddy Lee (apparently 3200 DMs from multiple Twitter accounts constitutes ‘harassment’…whatever). But this recent bout of madness simply cannot stand!

It goes by many names (that I’ve made up); Crimson gold. The red nectar of paradise. God’s condiment. All are apt descriptions of this wonderful, tangy dressing. And it’s been a constant companion of mine since the Carter Administration (Google it, kids). Meats, potatoes, day-old Mac N’ Cheese, the pairings are innumerable. It’s been an almost daily reminder that life is a beautiful thing and worth living to the fullest. But now, someone is trying price me and mine out of the market. That I cannot abide. And though I understand this affront is probably nothing personal…it kind of feels personal.

Slow down, there, Sun King. That’s ‘Simply Heinz’. That bottle of red heaven is made with real sugar, you bourgeoisie snob. Get your head out of mid-18th century Versailles. Why can’t you be happy with American ketchup instead of that aristocratic imported stuff? And how about dialing back your habit a bit? You know there’s a lot of poor people in Sikeston, MO who can’t even get that high-end stuff.

Sure, the real sugar stuff has always been a little more expensive, but only by about a dollar. This doesn’t change the fact that the above bottle must have been hand delivered by sherpas from the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro. I didn’t even know Heinz had a factory there! And dial it back? What am I supposed to do, parse that shit out by the milliliter?

Okay, okay…I’m trying to remain calm. It’s probably just a lack of lycopene. You know, according to the Ketchup Advisory Board, ketchup contains natural mellowing agents. Just take a look at this public service announcement: Ketchup...for the good times.

That’s better. However, I stand by my lunacy…er, points. At times like these, we should all take a minute to figure out what in Gehenna is going on.

“Boys…this is crap, up with which, I will not put.” Fr. Paul Stark, S.J., sophomore English teacher

Some people call it ‘the new normal’. It’s supposed to denote a shift in our collective consciousness, behavior, and/or attitude toward a new reality. However, it rarely describes anything positive. The new normal isn’t often associated with equal rights and expanded freedoms. The new normal isn’t predicated on a wave of world peace or explosion of democracy across the globe. Regular people like you and I don’t benefit from the new normal. It’s just another lurch in our long, soul-scouring slide into suck. Wikipedia notes:

A new normal is a state to which an economy, society, etc. settles following a crisis, when this differs from the situation that prevailed prior to the start of the crisis. The term has been employed in relation to World War I, the September 11 attacks, the financial crisis of 2007–2008, the aftermath of the 2008–2012 global recession, the COVID-19 pandemic and other events.^[1]

See? Suck. But enough about the what. We want to know the why. Who’s responsible? We need answers. According to a guy selling t-shirts at my local Safeway, this diabolical increase in ketchup prices has to do with something called ‘inflation’. Legend has it that inflation is the ‘rate of increase in prices over a period of time’.

Inflation!?! I knew it. All that free money dumped on the American people during the Pandemic. A couple of extra trillion just floating around demanding to be spent. All those freeloaders who refused to work getting handouts from those socialists in the…Trump Administration?? Anyway, all those politicians printing money like toilet pape…like it grows on tre…well, you get the point.

Now that sounds like a dope theory. Too much money in the economy. Kids spending all that stimmy largesse on food, video games, and rent blew up the whole system. Why not? I’m an open minded guy…who spent all his stimmy largesse on food, video games, and rent. Maybe this is really all our (my) fault?

Nope. Turns out it’s mostly these assholes again. According to the non-partisan Economic Policy Institute, corporate profiteering during the ketchup krisis (you like that?) accounts for nearly 54% of all inflation. That’s right, more than half of all price increases - in general - over the past couple of years have come directly from (big) corporations ripping us off during a time of economic chaos. Stellar.

Of course, it’s possible they took those profits and put them into raising wages or improving the…I’m sorry, I just can’t. During this period, instead of improving on our global supply chain or building more storage for consumer goods (more on that in a moment), corporate America mostly just boosted its stock prices. In 2022, US companies spent $1.26 trillion on stock buybacks. Moreover, as of February 2023:

Companies have announced $173.5 billion worth of planned buybacks so far this year, just over double last year's pace…

Woah. It’s almost enough to shake one’s faith in the humanity and goodwill of these giant global mega-conglomerates.

The good news is, it gets dumber! Wait…well, anyway, according to multiple sources including CNBC and the shipping industry newsletter, Freight Waves, inflation is being fueled by too much supply. Too much? Look, I’ve taken precisely an economics class. It was in college. I routinely ‘missed’ that class. One day I showed up to find out I’d missed a test. A test I remembered hearing nothing about previously. So, I admit I wasn’t particularly plugged in nor am I an expert now. But something about ‘too much supply’ just doesn’t exactly jibe with a $9 bottle of ketchup. Apparently, fuel prices are fine now and the actual (ocean) shipping is in pretty good shape. We just, you know, don’t have enough warehouse capacity to hold all this stuff that we’re paying so much more for because there’s…too much of it.

While many sources of supply chain inflation that stoked higher goods prices have come down sharply — including ocean freight rates and transportation fuels — bloated inventories due to a lack of consumer demand are sustaining upward pressure on warehouse rates.

Consumer demand down = prices up. Don’t worry, it all starts to make sense once you’ve slammed your head a few times in the driver’s side door of a Ford Festiva. You see, demand is too high for warehouse space but too low at the grocery store. Therefore, our lack of demand is driving up prices. Just like Adam Smith pointed out in his lesser-known, third book; But I’m Sure You’ll Find a Way to Cock this Up. Probably more sociological than economic, really.

Fantastic work, dipshits.

Nothing I’m not used to…but it’s amazing what you can get used to. - James Dalton, Roadhouse'

Ask any anthropologist what humanity’s greatest trait is and they’ll say it’s adaptability. Ask them what humanity’s greatest flaw is and they’ll tell you the same thing. At least the ones who are being honest. The new normal feeds off of our ability to roll with the punches, put one foot in front of the other, get back up after getting knocked down, and string together a list of tired cliches. It assumes we’ll keep coming back because that’s what humans do. Even in the face of inflation that continues to benefit big business while hurting just about everyone else. So what are we going to do about my beloved ketchup? Something really stupid, I hope…

Never fear! Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and FED Chairman Jerome Powell are hard at work on…not really knowing how inflation works. Powell said it last year:

We now understand better how little we understand about inflation.

Classic J-Powell. Saying the quiet part out loud. Yellen said something similar in late February. Powell, like many wealthy economists, believes there’s too much money in the economy. Too much. Rumor has it that poor people have actually been paying their bills and may be trying to save up for their own bottle of ketchup. His response: We need to keep raising interest rates. That will keep companies from borrowing so much - since money won’t be as cheap to pay back - and will eventually lead to higher unemployment - because dat what Big Business do. Powell postulates that this is a good thing because rampant unemployment is the only way to significantly slow the current economic misery. We need to put ketchup back where it belongs…in the hands of the top 20%!

You see, kids, we need more future misery to combat the current misery. And at the same time, ignore the real causes of the problem. Sounds like a bang up idea to me. But if I may be so bold, I think you’d be hard pressed to find a barista at the local corporate coffee hut who shares Chairman Powell’s assessment.

Customer: Wow…these triple-fripple, double-shot, mochachino-berry french roasts are really getting expensive.

Barrista: Yeah, bruh. It’s inflation. Just too much money circulatin’. The economy’s just too hot right now. Need some of that sweet FED monetary policy, straighten everything out.

Customer: You think so? What do you think they should do?

Barrista: Oh, it’s simple my dude. Just keep raisin’ interest rates. Sooner or later, the big boys will stop borrowing, hoard what they got, then lay off a few million people like me. Then we’ll all settle into a sweet little recession. Solid policy. Tried and true.

Coincidentally, we’ve discovered some never-before-seen footage of a private FED meeting regarding this decision. A sort of ‘deep dive’ into this venerated institute’s process:

YOU get some unemployment, and YOU get some unemployment…

You can shear a sheep many times, but skin him only once -Somebody’s Dad

The new normal is our boom or bust economy. But boom only shows up in publicity selfies with tennis stars and former Presidents. Bust is your high school buddy who’s been living on your couch for 6 months, ‘forgets’ to chip in for rent, and keeps drinking the last beer…not that I’d know anything about that. The new normal demands that we wake up every morning, pull on our best pair of crazy-pants, and go about our day while pretending that sanity didn’t just crowbar the window of our collective Camaro, hot-wire it, and flip us the bird on its way out of town.

But every once in awhile, the new normal makes a mistake. Every now and then, it goes too far. Marie Antoinette famously said ‘Let them use dial up’ (allegedly) just before the literal pitchforks came out. Eventually, there will be one too many bank bailouts, one too many endless wars, one too many recessions. Then what will the new normal look like? I really do wonder. Until then, I guess there’s always Costco.