Tag: inflation

benn’s law

from snowy summits are mountained limbs of venomous frogspawn
here is to the life pudendal
blessedly unaffected by format rigidity.
going home, i see the most expensive chocolate bar
i’ve ever seen, heard of or read about
and in a fog of lousy vibes await an operative positive.

i was in the pub with my friend i.h. the other day and conversation turned to inflation and high prices. mars bars in particular. i remembered distinctly (meaning, probably, inaccurately) that a mars bar was 27p when i was in my youth. a particular memory – i was at the swimming baths while my brother was taking a lesson. and reading the adrian mole diaries. and i’m sure i read him spending his pocket money on a mars bar in 1982. and it was 15p. so i reckon i read that book in 1995.

1982 15p
1995 27p

that’s an increase of 80%

so 13 years later, in 2008, you would expect it to be another 80% higher? rounding up that’s 50p. and i’m pretty sure that’s what it did cost in 2008.

so in 2021, how much was a mars bar? the model says 90p. I would bet you 90p you could find a mars bar for sale for 90p in 2021.

a mars bar today costs… £1.05.

so based on no underlying data other than my own memory of the price of mars bars, i was able to determine that the price of confectionary will increase by 80% every 13 years.

or, more snappily, we can extrapolate from our data that the price of confectionary doubles every 15 years. and i call this benn’s law.

(and we can take the calming news that the inflation we have suffered recently is relatively normal)

and yes, i know this ignore the fact that mars bars have also shrunk. the real rate of inflation is higher.

have you tried the toblerone, feckless bairn? / it’s abysmally pricey, but so is everything else

it was a year ago that i wrote this. the inflation rate may be lower now, but the gap between what things cost and what we feel like they should cost seems to have been made permanent. its hard not to feel anxious about the state of the economy. so much uncertainty. war. tariffs. irrational, illogical people in positions of power.

have you tried the choco lonely, graceful child? / it’s getting less expensive but you’ll still need a mortgage

i must be getting old. everything seems to expensive. £7 for a pint of beer? i remember when £2 was considered pricey. i don’t smoke any more, but i distinctly remember 10 packs of smokes for £1.36. they don’t even do ten packs any more and its most of £20 for a twenty deck. and the chocolate bars seem to have doubled in price in a mere couple of years.

i used to read about history, war, famine, strikes and all that, and think it was lucky i lived in the settled, modern world. sometimes now i wish i’d been born a million years ago. when human history does end, it will end with a bang, and not with the philosophy of francis fukuyama.