Blog

Short blog posts, journal entries, and random thoughts. Topics include a mix of personal and the world at large.

How much for Mario Kart!?

As a person who don't understand gaming on portable devices, I can at least be happy for my friends who are excited about the incoming Nintendo Switch 2. The Japanese company continues to prove that customers don't care about specifications so long as you build something absolutely fun. Leaving Sony and Microsoft to battle the spec wars remains a brilliant strategy.

What caught my eye during the Switch 2 announcement is the pricing. Not of the console itself; $449 appears to me competitively priced with the Windows handheld counterparts. It's the pricing of games that's alarming. $80 for the digital version of Mario Kart is utterly hilarious. I don't care that if you adjust for inflation, that price is right in line. I personally do not adjust for inflation. I evaluate the cost of things as they are right now in the moment.

So I guess I am priced out of mainstream gaming. Just like I am priced out of mainstream fast food, and going out to the movie theatres. It doesn't matter that proportional to my current income it's effectively the same price. The higher number on the price list throws an illogical barrier that stops me from paying it.

Because I can remember a time when $80 is the price you pay for a special edition of a highly-anticipated AAA title. That is my price anchor, so seeing that same dollar amount for plain-Jane Mario Kart is challenging. If other game studios follows the lead of Nintendo, video gaming as whole has inflated beyond my reach.

But I am just one guy, right? There's no doubt Nintendo will continue to print money. Folks complained loudly about the $2,000 entry price for an Nvidia RTX 5090 GPU, but there's no shortage of Reddit users with that card in their flair. You really cannot underestimate the ability for American consumers to debt-spend their way out of inflation!

Money cushion

Word on the street is a five dozen carton of eggs at Costco is now a whopping $22 dollars. (Thanks, President Trump!) Those of us reliant on a high protein supply are in shambles. At the two eggs per day rate that I eat (which is kind of low, relatively), I might have to declare bankruptcy.

Elon Musk is taking a figurative chainsaw to the federal payroll. The city of San Francisco is in a massive budget hole. San Francisco State University (my employer) has declared a financial emergency. Seemingly every day another private sector company is shedding jobs. It’s not a great time, is it? We can’t be certain of our job security. And if we are unlucky to be fired, the job hunting market will surely be ultra competitive.

What helps soothe the stress in these uncertain times is to have a cash reserve. (I know, right to privilege jail. Right away!) Those of us with a proper emergency fund, one that can last us an entire year without employment, are sitting comfortable. Of course it would still suck to be out of a job, but not having to worry about covering rent for at least awhile takes away the dread. I will be fine either which way.

The dream is to stop working, right? Short of a lucky windfall, the best way to achieve that is to slowly stockpile the money. Keep it in a savings account for emergencies. Throw the rest into the market (not investment advice, do your own research) so that it can compound. I have a much better relationship with my job when I am not actively looking forward to the next paycheck to cover some debt hole I dug myself into.

Peace of mind in a capitalist system is to have capital. We work so hard in exchange for money. Mustn’t spend it all on TikTok shop!

Strategic egg reserve

In this current battle royale climate for eggs, the trick is to get to Costco (or your grocer of choice) soon as it opens in the morning. You will then be among the lucky few to snag from the limited stock for the day. At least Costco now limits three items of eggs per customer. Hoarders and re-sellers can go die a furiously fiery death.

I honestly don’t think there is a need to hoard an egg supply. I eat two eggs a day for the protein gains (some would say that’s not nearly enough per day), and I’ve yet to run out of my supply. That’s with resupplying only every few weeks (when I go to Costco). These pictures of customers filling up entire carts with eggs: how big of a fridge have they got? Unless there comes an avian flu strain that kills off chickens into extinction, I think we’ll be alright.

It reminds me of the toilet paper panic back at the beginning of the pandemic. Do people expect to wipe their ass more often when they are stuck indoors? The only thing hoarding toilet paper saves you from is having to make a trip when you run out. And even then, there’s always the shower…

What’s hilarious about the egg shortage is that it is coinciding with a new President that ran on a platform of lowering grocery prices (was never going to happen, obviously). January 2025 inflation numbers are unexpectedly high, too. Maybe what America needs is a strategic egg reserve, like the strategic oil reserve. President Trump can increase the egg supply to level out the price shocks.

Forget breakthrough medical research - the Trump administration certainly has by freezing NIH funding; what we need is to research a new method for storing eggs for years on end whilst preserving initial quality. I personally think that’s a great idea.

Ready for some football

It is Super Bowl Sunday. (I think the NFL will send me a bill just for using that term.) An American tradition unlike any other. Except in other countries during their team’s matches in the World Cup. I’m sure the Argentinian television station responsible for broadcasting the World Cup final sold some significant advertisements in Argentina.

One day last week I forgot to bring my own coffee. It’s been awhile since I’ve purchased from Peet’s, and wow has the pricing gone up yet again. This particular franchise seem so embarrassed about the prices it’s charging that they are only displaying the price for medium size. How much for a large cup of vanilla soy latte? Spin the wheel to find out.

There’s been this age old battle between two camps. One side says buying the daily coffee from Starbucks is keeping you poor. The other side says (what was) $3 per day is but a drop in the ocean in the face of immense housing cost. There’s truth to both sides. In areas such as our San Francisco, you definitely cannot save your way towards buying a house by abolishing store-bought coffee.

On the other hand, many little things can indeed compound into significant sums. What makes the high inflation of the past years so pernicious is that it’s kind of death by a thousand cuts. It’s fine if only the grocery haul is (for example) 10% dearer. But when everything else went up also, it’s really easy to look at your monthly statements and wonder where the money’s gone. Five dollars extra here, five dollars extra there, five dollars extra everywhere.

And so it is with the Peet’s medium drip coffee I bought for nearly $4. The Keurig life is for me. I rather have the $1000 ($4 x 21 workdays in a month x 12 months) extra at the end of the year.

Like winning the lottery

In our current national crisis of severe egg shortage, finding a two-dozen pack at Costco feels like winning the lotto.

It’s as if god himself wants me to continue having a constant egg supply. There I was at my local Costco on Saturday afternoon. It seems I had just missed a resupply of eggs: I saw many a cart with them, but when I got to the fridge section, there were no eggs to be found. That is, until I saw at the corner a fully intact two-dozen carton stacked underneath a few cartons with broken eggs. Pure luck is what that was. My two eggs a day habit shall not be interrupted. For now…

For all the joke about President Trump lowering produce prices - I really don’t care! Just let there be eggs for me to buy! I can absorb high groceries prices because I’m only buying for the singular me. (straight to privilege jail, right away.)

Of course, high grocery prices during the Biden years contributed a lot to Trump’s second ascendancy. You can throw statistics about how wages have kept up (or outpaced) with inflation - it doesn’t matter. Higher produce prices feel like a penalty, while a wage increase feels like something you’ve earned. It’s not a good feeling to get a raise, only for that money to get wiped out by inflation. Typically, a wage increase should mean more disposable income.

President Trump seems determined to curtail illegal immigration and deport illegal immigrants already on U.S. soil. Many of whom work in farming. When you diminish the labor supply, cost of goods go up. When cost of goods go up, so do prices. I’m skeptical that Americans would tolerate another inflationary shock to their grocery bills. Then again, it’s not like Trump can run for office again. For now…

Economic turkey

You know what’s a surprisingly economical meal? Thanksgiving food. Turkey, mash potatoes, ham, and frozen broccoli can all be bought at Costco for about $75. That lot will comfortably feed 10 adults into a food coma. In this inflated economy, I think Thanksgiving food is a very viable option for other times of the year. The price per pound per gram of protein of a turkey is devastatingly superior.

You know what grinds my gears? When people say: “When adjusted for inflation.” It’s annoying because the person saying that line is invariable using it as a defense of the current economy. It’s not so bad once you adjust for inflation! A 2024 Honda Civic is magnitudes better than the 2000 version, at a cheaper price when inflation adjusted.

That’s great, but we don’t live in the past. Our reality cannot adjusted for inflation. Telling people X isn’t so bad when you consider Y and Z is a recipe for losing an election. The economy under President Biden may look mathematically great: all-time highs in the stock market, and broad wage increases that kept up with the pandemic inflation. But people don’t feel great about the economy. Facts may not care about feelings, but facts don’t vote, feelings do.

I’ve certainly been negatively vocal about the economy on this blog. I’ve had a fortunate 30% increase to my 2019 salary - the keeping up with inflation part - and yet I feel like my purchasing power has gone to shits. What people want is deflation, but without all the other hugely deleterious effects. Of course, that’s not possible, but the Americans sure voted like it is!

Not for thee

This guy on Reddit is complaining about the prices of haircuts nowadays. I wonder what is his opinion on paying people a “living wage”. (Whatever that means numerically.) According to what he is saying, barbers definitely do not deserve one. Haircuts should remain cheap just like the old times.

Why am I getting the sense the people arguing for a living wage are advocating for themselves only, and not others? There’s this talk of Trump deporting illegal immigrants will cause food prices to go up because there would be a shortage of farm workers. The assumption is that with smaller labor supply, farmers will have to pay more to attract workers. Basic supply and demand.

Well, no one likes to pay more for groceries, right? The high inflation of past years is how (ironically) Trump won the election. But then aren’t we tacitly saying that farm workers don’t deserve a living wage? Fast food workers got a $20 minimum here in California, and enough people balked at the increased menu prices that McDonald’s and others had to start offering $6 value deals to entice customers.

There’s definitely a dichotomy between advocating for higher wages in general but not liking the results. Corporations will always protect their margins, therefore passing the wage increases to customers. Sure it’s easy to skip fast food, but groceries are kind of essential. The populace won’t stand for inflation at the supermarket.

Let’s be honest: what we really want is for us to get paid more individually, but for prices of stuff to remain the same. So we can’t all get a raise, because that would cause inflation. Living wage for me, but not for thee: Californians rejected the State proposition to increase the State minimal wage two weeks ago. At least we are honest with ourselves!