cost of living crisis

Greed

It’s Not in Your Head: The Real Story Behind Shrinkflation and Why You’re Paying More for Less

You’re not imagining it. The cereal box got smaller. The chips bag has more air than snacks. The toilet paper roll has mysteriously lost an inch or two. Yet the price remains the same—or worse, it went up. This isn’t a quirky industry trend or “supply chain adjustments.” Shrinkflation is a deliberate strategy engineered to protect corporate profit margins while disguising price hikes. The end result: you pay more for less while executives congratulate themselves for “efficiency.” The real story behind shrinkflation isn’t limited to groceries and household products—it’s a symptom of something bigger. A culture that accepts silent extraction as normal, where customers are played like fools and essential goods become games of psychological misdirection. Instead of transparency, companies bank on fatigue, confusion, and the belief that you won’t notice. But you have noticed—and you’re not crazy for questioning why everything feels engineered to take just a bit more from you each year. Shrinkflation isn’t in your head. It’s the quiet tax of a system designed to squeeze you, one millimeter at a time.