A Boring Dystopia

Yep. I switched grocery stores because of the price gouging. Now, instead of walking to Giant, I drive ten minutes to my nearest Aldi. My grocery bill is probably like 1/3 of what it was right before the switch. Every so often, we need things that Aldi doesn't carry, so we have to go back to Giant. They have a bunch of shit locked up now, they've closed half of the entrances and exits, and now have a loss prevention guy at the door, so I guess that means there's been a ton of shoplifting. Well, buying like 4 items there adds up to what a week of groceries from Aldi costs, so maybe they should blame themselves for that one.

The DoJ and FTC should be investigating corporate grocery stores for manufactured price hikes, especially because so much of it started during a pandemic and it yielded record profits for them. If you see nothing wrong with holding food for ransom from lower and middle class families for the sake of funneling more wealth to their wealthy shareholders, but you do see something wrong with people stealing food from these same greedy grocery store corporations, then you're part of the problem. Stop defending the oligarchs like you think they'll drop a few extra crumbs in your food dish in exchange. They don't care about you.

we're obviously going to be paying more in AC because it's hot.

That actually is how it usually works.