I suspect potatoes are still inexpensive, but the packaging, shipping, and handling costs are much bigger. Not to mention government printing money faster than drops of water cascade over Niagara Falls. And then there's forever growing government controls and regulatory bureaucracy...

Yep. In my engineering work about three years ago I had to calculate a life cycle cost analysis for a project, comparing two different designs. In order to do that you have to go get the official, federal inflation. Of course, that's normally lower than reality. But, this wasn't CPI (which is just a big lie, really). It was the official inflation rate for energy. At that time...over 39%. I sat at my desk and realized that my compounding equations had been rendered useless. Almost 40% annual inflation for energy...This was under Biden. Now...as this article points out, they are certainly targeting the food supply - especially beef. It's criminal, in my opinion.

Being close to leaving the working world I have been paying very close attention to my bills - utilities, food, taxes, insurance... It is not good. The middle class can't survive this much longer.