We are being constantly warned that economic doom, gloom and disaster are about to hit – because of the impact of those global Covid lockdowns and because the switch to wind- and sun-powered electricity is causing massive increases in power prices.

Now it has been suggested to me that the situation is worse than the official inflation figures reveal. That’s because of something called ‘shrinkflation’. This is the phenomenon of prices remaining the same while products get smaller. When the economic pressure builds up businesses have two options: either to put up their prices (and lose customers) or to offer slightly smaller products and hope no one notices. British journalist Richard Godwin recently pointed out that his favourite chocolate bar had recently shrunk from 200 grams to 180 grams while the price remained the same. In the same way, he says, a café that is struggling may have to make the serve on your plate a bit smaller – while charging just as much as before. When products you order online take longer to arrive – might that be an expression of ‘shrinkflation’? The company has your payment for longer (invested on the short-term money market?) before they have to provide anything in response. There is often an excuse (‘…coming from overseas’) but there is still a shrinkage of service. The Macquarie Dictionary provides the following official definition of ‘shrinkflation’ which has now become so common: ‘a rise in the price of a product per unit weight or size, accompanied by a reduction in the size or weight of the item sold, with the end result that the price of the purchased product remains the same although the amount is less’.

For supermarkets, one of the benefits of pre-packaging fruit and vegetables is that they can put fewer in a pack and keep the price the same. We are living in ‘The Incredible Shrinking World.’