【《We Chinese in America》Media Editor Tang Zhao, July 29, 2022】McDonald’s UK raises price of cheeseburger for first time in 14 years. Price jumps by fifth to £1.19 with immediate effect and other increases will follow as costs soar. ( McDonald’s Cheeseburger image from McDonald)

When we talk about inflation, it can sound like an uncontrollable, mysterious abstraction. In one sense, that’s true: there’s no ambassador for inflation to hold talks with, and no button to switch it off.

In another very blunt way, though, it isn’t true: almost any time an item’s price goes up, that’s because somebody, somewhere, has decided to charge more for it. The McDonald’s hamburger hasn’t stayed 99p for 14 years because its recipe happened to feature the only combination of ingredients where costs haven’t changed: it’s stayed there because McDonald’s has decided it’s worth holding the price down and absorbing those costs itself.

Yesterday, when the fast food giant announced a change to one of those prices that seemed written in stone: after 14 years, the era of the sub-£1 cheeseburger is over. The company said it had protected consumers from increased costs for as long as it could, and the price had to go up to £1.19. There will be increases to a range of other items like McFlurrys, fries, and large meals – but it’s the totemic burger that sticks in your head.

Duncan Weldon, author of a new history of the British economy, Two Hundred Years of Muddling Through, and the Value Added newsletter on Substack, said that the price change “will not have been an easy decision for them to make at all. [McDonald’s] know their customers well, and they will have had concern about the impact of moving the prices up. And you never know which are the things that are going to become the examples that get picked up by, for example, the Guardian morning email.” That’s influence for you, eh.

From luxury goods to fast food, the tipping points for price hikes will come at very different stages. In the meantime, it is alarming that the inflation is a global phenomenon, not just in the United States!

(Source: Bing.com & Guardian)

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