Guides
Longer pieces on what prices actually measure: why a receipt from 1997 says something the official inflation figure doesn't, what the same phone costs in days of work around the world, and why almost everyone is carrying a mental price list that stopped updating years ago.
24 guides
What groceries cost the year you were born, and what they cost in work
Eggs, bread, gas and coffee in 1980, 1990, 2000 and 2010, from BLS average prices, and how many minutes of work each took then and now.
23 October 2026 · 5 min read
Groceries take 24% less work than in 1980, and 12% more than in 2020
A fixed basket of 12 U.S. groceries and gas took 112 minutes of work in 1980, 76 in 2020 and 86 in 2025. Both halves of the grocery argument are right.
23 October 2026 · 5 min read
Only three groceries got harder to buy since 1980
Of 15 U.S. groceries BLS has priced since the 1980s, only ground beef, eggs and bacon now take more minutes of work. Bananas take 58% less.
23 October 2026 · 4 min read
How to play Price Year, Open Range and Pricele 1000
Three new daily price games: date a grocery receipt, give a price range, or score out of 1,000. The rules, the scoring and how to get better at each.
23 October 2026 · 5 min read
How to compare two countries without fooling yourself
Cost-of-living comparisons go wrong in the same six ways every time. What follows is a method that survives contact with a real decision.
16 August 2026 · 8 min read
Eggs are the most honest price in the shop
No brand, no marketing, barely any processing. When the egg price moves, something real happened to the birds, and everyone finds out at once.
15 August 2026 · 7 min read
The price did not go up. The bag got smaller.
Shrinkflation is a price rise disguised as a package redesign. Statisticians catch it, shoppers mostly do not, and there is a reason companies prefer it.
14 August 2026 · 7 min read
The exchange rate you looked up is not the one you were charged
Between the rate on your screen and the number on your statement sit three separate margins, one of which you are invited to accept by a card machine abroad.
13 August 2026 · 7 min read
A fifth of what you paid was tax, and you never saw the line
Consumption tax is the largest single wedge between two countries' prices for an identical product, and the one shoppers are least able to see.
11 August 2026 · 7 min read
The coffee in your coffee costs less than the lid
Green beans are a single-digit share of what a café charges. Where the rest goes, and why a record harvest barely moves the price of a flat white.
10 August 2026 · 7 min read
The salary comparison you keep seeing online is wrong
Converting a wage at the market exchange rate answers a question nobody asked. Purchasing power parity answers the one you meant, and has its own traps.
8 August 2026 · 8 min read
Why poor countries are cheap, and why it is not what you think
The real answer has nothing to do with profits or standards. It is a sixty-year-old piece of economics about haircuts, and it explains most of the price map.
6 August 2026 · 8 min read
Petrol is the same liquid everywhere and costs whatever a government wants
Crude oil trades at one world price. Pump prices differ by a factor of forty. Nearly all of that gap is tax in one direction and subsidy in the other.
4 August 2026 · 8 min read
How well do you actually know prices? Take the test.
Ten questions, real answers, no partial credit for vibes. Then the four documented reasons everybody fails, and the one-minute habit that fixes it.
2 August 2026 · 7 min read
Four things set every price, and only one of them is the product
The same can, the same recipe, the same machine that made it, and a five-fold price gap between two countries. What follows is what actually sits in that difference.
2 August 2026 · 8 min read
Two incomes, no money: an autopsy of the modern family budget
$120,000 a year, and $350 a month left for everything else. A line-by-line look at where a dual-income budget goes, and why there is nothing left to cut.
1 August 2026 · 8 min read
Everything is more expensive, except the things that quietly became almost free
TVs fell 98%. Light fell 500,000-fold. Batteries fell 99%. Why the price collapses went uncelebrated, and why you still feel poorer anyway.
29 July 2026 · 8 min read
Where your money is secretly rich
The countries where $2,000 buys a $6,000 life, plus the two traps the geoarbitrage videos never mention, including the one where you become the price rise.
26 July 2026 · 8 min read
“Milk isn't $2 anymore”: everyone's mental price list is broken
Including yours. How your brain writes prices in permanent marker, why the update never installs, and the dinner-table quiz that settles the argument.
19 July 2026 · 7 min read
Your dad's salary bought a house, a car and a stay-at-home spouse
Yours buys rent. Same salary, one generation apart, wildly different lives. Here's the line-by-line forensics of where the money actually went.
12 July 2026 · 9 min read
The iPhone costs 2 days of work in Switzerland and 6 months in India
Same phone, same factories, same keynote. Ranked by days of work rather than dollars, the iPhone becomes an X-ray of the global wage ladder.
5 July 2026 · 8 min read
Stop asking what things cost. Ask how long you work for them.
In 1919 an egg cost 12 minutes of work. Today it costs 2.4 minutes, even at panic prices. Time prices are the true price of everything, and they cut both ways.
28 June 2026 · 8 min read
Official inflation says 87%. Your receipt says 220%.
Someone is wrong about inflation, and it isn't your receipt. Four structural reasons why the official number was never measuring your life to begin with.
21 June 2026 · 9 min read
A grocery receipt from 1997 made millions of people furious
122 items for $155 in 1997. The same cart today costs just over $500. Official inflation says it should be $312, and that missing $190 is the whole story.
14 June 2026 · 7 min read