1357 Poor-cent

The other day I picked up one of those power-bar breakfast bar thingies and read on it that it now had “20% more nuts per bar.” Wow, I thought, that’s cool, how did they do that in these strained economic times?
When I took it home, I compared it to an old one I had in my cupboard and found the answer. The new bar itself was about 20% smaller. A simple formula for profit. Reduce the size of the bar, keep the same amount of nuts, charge the same amount, say there are 20% more nuts per bar.
That’s the magic and the peril of using percentages. And also why I say percentages are why the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Poor-centages as it were.
Here’s why. Inflation hits. Your breakfast bar goes up 5%. Let’s say it was a dollar, now it’s $1.05. You and everybody you work with gets a 4% raise. You were making $1.00 an hour, now you’re making $1.04. Your boss was making $10 an hour. He’s gets $10.40. After he buys the new breakfast bar, he’s still got 35 cents. Each time you buy one, you lose a penny. That the trap.
It’s okay to base inflation on percentages. But not the Cost Of Living Adjustments. COLAs don’t factor in the difference in real cost of goods to real amounts of earning. If we all made the same amount, no problem. But we don’t.
This becomes particularly worrisome when the economy as a whole shrinks drastically. It can bring about a little crazy revolutionary behavior. Because the bar is getting smaller and the nuts that are still in it are starting to get cramped.
And cramped nuts can get a little testy.
America, ya gotta love it.