The cost of food has grown considerably more expensive statewide over the past few years, as featured in a series of entertaining yet depressive vignettes produced by The Colorado Sun.
Take the take-out restaurant hamburger, for example.
Tamara Chuang reports the Covid cost comparison is up 31% since May 2022.
It’s also not just burgers. The cost of eating out at a restaurant in Colorado has increased 28.2% since January 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index. Menu prices have gone up at most Colorado eateries, and restaurant owners don’t really like to talk about it.
Restaurant industry professionals blame inflation. Or as the kids are calling it these days, Bidenomics. Note that labor spike.
And yet another Colorado Sun report explores the sharp increase in grocery store costs since 2018.
Or as we refer to that point in history — the dark times when Jared Polis was elected king, Democrats took over the state legislature, and Colorado went to shit.
Here is the Sun’s side-by-side comparison of basic grocery items then and now.
We have questions.
Is the coffee price for just one cup of coffee at the grocery store? Because $6.10 sounds about right. Certainly, that’s not cost per pound.
Also, whatever bread they selected is obviously not wheat. We’re not even sure a generic loaf of white is that cheap.
Grocery shoppers nowadays can carry out $150 of groceries without a cart.
Costco is another matter, but mostly because folks only go there anymore for the toilet paper and paper towels, which we recommend. Also, Costco hasn’t locked down the laundry detergent, which we find comforting.
The Sun looked at the five most purchased grocery items and reports the price has spiked 35% since 2018.
What they didn’t report, is why the increase over that time period.
Was it just Bidenflation, or did Colorado politics and government overregulation of the market have anything to do with it?
PeakNation™ will recall that we lectured ad nauseum about hiking the minimum wage, which we argued would also cause a spike in goods and services.
The minimum hourly wage was $10.20 when Polis and the Dems took power, and now it’s $13.65.
That’s a 34% increase.
Go figure.