For the official US inflation calculation, this is probably in BLS series CUSR0000SEFT01 (Soups in U.S. city average, all urban consumers, seasonally adjusted). You can get the data (starting from 1978) here: <a href="https://beta.bls.gov/dataViewer/view/timeseries/CUSR0000SEFT01" rel="nofollow">https://beta.bls.gov/dataViewer/view/timeseries/CUSR0000SEFT...</a><p>Using BLS numbers, you get a price increase of 346% (=246/71) from Jan 1978 through Jan 2020. If we eyeball the graph from the blog, we're looking at a price increase from $0.19 or $0.20 to $0.85, which is 425% or 447% (starting at $0.19 or $0.20 makes a big difference). Looking closely at the dots of raw data, it looks like most of the recent ads clusterred around the $0.69, $0.79, $0.89 or $1.00 level. If you buy it at the $0.69 level, you're almost exactly at the BLS 346% level, whereas at $1 you're looking at 500%.<p>On wallmart.com, it seems you can buy it currently at between $0.98, $0.87 (4-pack) or $0.415 (12-pack) per can:<p><a href="https://www.walmart.com/ip/Campbell-s-Condensed-Tomato-Soup-10-75-Ounce-Can/10321636" rel="nofollow">https://www.walmart.com/ip/Campbell-s-Condensed-Tomato-Soup-...</a><p><a href="https://www.walmart.com/ip/4-Pack-Campbell-s-Condensed-Tomato-Soup-10-75-Ounce-Can/43346748" rel="nofollow">https://www.walmart.com/ip/4-Pack-Campbell-s-Condensed-Tomat...</a><p><a href="https://www.walmart.com/ip/Campbell-s-Condensed-Tomato-Soup-10-75-oz-12-Ct/375787161" rel="nofollow">https://www.walmart.com/ip/Campbell-s-Condensed-Tomato-Soup-...</a>
In 1971, the US ended the convertibility of the dollar into gold and shifted the dollar to be fiat money. Many dollar-based metrics have a similar change of slope around 1971:<p><a href="https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/" rel="nofollow">https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/</a>
They have updated it for 2021:<p><a href="https://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2021/01/the-price-of-campbells-tomato-soup-in.html" rel="nofollow">https://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2021/01/the-price...</a>
This is interesting.<p><a href="https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/</a><p>In 1913 dollars a 10 cent can of soup is $2.66 USD today.<p>So at $1.00 in 2021 its a bargain. :)<p>I think modern manufacturing processes have made common items cheaper to produce and this is how the ordinary citizen has been able to survive 40 years with very little real wage movement. (my opinion)
Sure, it's gone up a lot since the 70s, but appears artificially static low before that. 10 cents in 1900 (from the graph) would be over $3.00 in today's money.
I'd be curious to see estimates of the US economy with different deflators over the last 50 years. In particular the last 20 years of campbell's price history would indicate some form of inflation that ran much faster than the CPI.<p>A reasonable resolution the the productivity/wage gap would be that productivity simply hasn't risen very much over the last 50 years, and apparent productivity/wage gaps are due to differences in how the GDP deflator is calculated.
If people's forum posts are accurate, the can size has changed (shrinkflation accusations).<p>I would assume the content has not stayed the same. The time interval is long enough that tomato varieties have changed quite a bit.