Gabe Rubin

speaker

468 appearances 13 recordings 1 series first heard Apr 2018 last heard Oct 2023

Gabe Rubin’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

No recordings in the last 12 months.Older appearances are listed below; set an alert to hear about the next one.

Appearances

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

WSJ Your Money Briefing · Hidden Inflation: How Companies Charge More Without Raising Prices · 11 Feb 2022 podcast

Yeah, in some cases, the amount you're paying for a particular good or service might actually be the same as what you paid a couple of years ago, but you're getting a lot less for that price. voice-verified

So for instance, at Disney World, they no longer provide included free shuttles from the airport to your Disney hotel, and you have to pay for an Uber or a Lyft or a different shuttle service. voice-verified

Also, at a hotel, not necessarily Disney, at other places, those hotels might not clean your room every single day the way they would have before the pandemic. voice-verified

So you might pay the same rate for that hotel room, but you're actually getting less quality because they're not cleaning your room or the breakfast that used to be. voice-verified

hot eggs and toast and bacon is now a small box of cereal or a granola bar in a paper bag. voice-verified

So you're getting a lot less for your money, even if the amount you're paying is roughly the same as you would have paid before the pandemic. voice-verified

Yeah, grocers and food manufacturers are resorting to a very old form of hiding inflation, which is known as shrinkflation to economists. voice-verified

And shrinkflation is when you keep the price of an item that people recognize at a grocery store roughly the same. voice-verified

You might raise it by a little bit, but you're basically keeping the price the same, but you're giving them a lot less. voice-verified

So, for instance, we talked to someone in Connecticut who went to their local grocery store and he was shopping for his family. voice-verified

And he picked up a block of cheese that he normally buys. voice-verified

And it was roughly the same price. voice-verified

He said it was about 10 cents more than usual than he remembered. voice-verified

And then he realized that it seemed a lot smaller. voice-verified

And he noticed that it had dropped from 16 ounces to 12 ounces. voice-verified

So for consumers who are not looking very closely at the unit prices for things, you might actually be paying a lot more for what you're getting, even if the price is roughly the same as before. voice-verified

Yeah, that's true. voice-verified

And I talked to a pricing expert at Harvard Business School named John Goreville. voice-verified

And he told me that in his research and in others' research in this area, shoppers don't really look at those unit prices. voice-verified

Those unit prices have been legally required since the 1970s. voice-verified

Showing 321–340 of 468 · page 17 of 24