Grocery Prices Are About to Push MILLIONS Over the Edge

The other day we talked about how gas prices are absolutely crushing the American commuter right now that has to commute to work on a regular basis.People are spending upwards of $200 a month or more extra in gas just to be able to get to work these days.And if that's not bad enough, it is now bleeding over into food prices.

Guys, I told you this was going to happen back when this gas shock first started happening.I said this was going to happen.and now here we are barely two months later and it is happening in full effect.We're going to talk about that as well as the recent inflation numbers we got because all of this stuff is related and none of it's looking good.Prices are going through the roof on everything right now.Here's one real life example of how all this is playing out right now.

You have Hunts Point Produce in the Bronx in New York City.and they are one of the key hubs that feeds all of New York City and the surrounding areas.And the problem is, if food costs are rising at a distribution hub like this, then that gets passed down to every other part of the food chain, literally.Diesel fuel nationwide just hit $5 .66 per gallon.And because pretty much every part of the food chain depends on trucking, refrigeration, shipping, and heavy equipment, those costs ripple through to the cost of food.No matter if you're eating out, going to a grocery store, doesn't matter.

And costs have gone up so much since we have seen this war with Iran start, that now if you want to ship, say, celery from California where it's grown to New York, the cost has surged to about $11 ,000 per trip, which is about 46 % higher than that same trip just one year ago.That is insane.And you think that all of these suppliers and distributors and grocery stores are going toeating that cost?No, no, no.That's a 46 % increase before that food ever makes it into your shopping cart.

Okay.It still has to be transported to the grocery stores.Once it arrives in New York, it has to go to different restaurants and local vendors across the city, which uses up even more diesel fuel to get it to its final destination.And by the time consumers actually buy the product, a simple sleeve of celery is roughly costing 40 cents more than it would have just a year ago.And that's just one basic food item.Those same costs are happening across all sectors of any type of food.

It doesn't matter where you buy it.what it is.And it's not like celery is in some sort of shortage or anything like that, just because the cost of getting it from point A to point B has gone up so much.Take bananas for an example as well.One distributor said the cost of transporting bananas from ports across the world to New York has jumped by about 50 cents per box and that they haven't even fully passed along these costs to customers yet because customers are already stretched financially and sensitive to price increases.

So this is a very similar situation that we're seeing playing out with this gas price shock that we saw with the tariffs.When we had the tariffs first introduced, you had a lot of companies kind of limiting the price increases and some people trying to eat some of those costs before inevitably passing it along.along to the customer.But the problem is, the longer that this goes on and the longer these prices stay higher like this, the distribution costs and fuel costs, then the more likely it is those costs are finally going to get passed along to you in the end.I mean, they do pass some of it along, but maybe not the full amount.until they get a full picture of how long these problems are going to last for.

This is why you're seeing the job market so bad too, guys.This really bleeds over into it.You know, businesses are essentially trapped.You have all of their customers who are already struggling with affordability on all fronts.

Okay.We don't even need to name them all.It's basically anything you need to buy.People are struggling with the affordability right now.That's not a secret.

And a lot of businesses are trying to absorb some of these costs, if possible, But it's coming to a point where that's not really possible anymore because many distributors and businesses are now reaching a point where they simply cannot absorb these costs anymore without completely going out of business, which means that these prices end up getting passed along to you.

And the other reason why that they haven't done it en masse yet is because everybody thought this was going to be temporary.Right.We kept being told that this war was only going to last for a couple of weeks tops.Well, now it's already been a couple of months with seemingly no end in sight, which is typically how these things play out.

So we could see gas prices go even higher for longer, which is going to be a major problem for everybody, because now that it's already been a couple of months, What people thought was going to be a short -term disruption has now turned into a long -term structural issue.Because even if the Strait of Hormuz opened back up tomorrow, for example, and everything just got back to normal, well, you still have all of those ships sitting there that need to transport all that oil.

And once it gets to its destination, it needs to be processed and things like that.Until that happens, and all of the supply chain is caught up, so to speak, you're going to see prices higher for longer.This could also restart at any moment.Even if the conflict were resolved today, who's to say it's not going to justup again tomorrow?

One year ago, an 11 -pound case of asparagus cost suppliers $32.Now, it's selling for $60 for the same amount.

Guys, that is double in just one year.How many people are seeing their pay go up double in just one year?Basically, no one.I know I'm not seeing that happen.I'm sure most other people are not as well, and we're going to get to the inflation story later on and see how this problem is exacerbated by that.And what I want people to realize is basically our entire economy runs on the price of fuel because it affects transportation, it affects fertilizer, it affects refrigeration, it affects packaging, warehousing, labor costs, delivery service, and restaurant supply chains.

And especially with fresh produce, for example, think about this.When you have fresh produce that's picked, whether it's something that's going to be sitting on the store shelf fresh or frozen and then transported, those are perishable goods that need to be transported to their final destination, ASAP.

You can't sit around and wait for cheaper shipping rates when you have fresh fruits and vegetables that have to get somewhere yesterday.in order to maintain freshness and have the highest possibility that somebody is actually going to buy it.And that means that these distributors have no choice but to pay what today's prices are and they don't have time to wait for it to maybe go down tomorrow or the next day.And the other thing to think about is people can delay buying a house, like we're seeing already with these record low home purchases.People can delay replacing a car if possible.People can delay going on vacation, guys.

But people cannot delay buying groceries, just like they can't delay buying a car.So you're getting hit upside the head from both directions.

Not only do you need gas for your car, but you also need to pay the higher prices that these distributors have to pay themselves.So this is something that people feel multiple times every single week.

Every time you go to the grocery store, every time you fill up at the pump, you're constantly being reminded of how much costs have gone up.And by the way, today I am walking down South Shore Drive here in Miami Beach.

And yet you still have government officials coming out and telling us that everything's okay because unemployment's still relatively low and they can't really use that narrative for inflation anymore.But yet grocery prices keep rising.Restaurant meals are completely unaffordable.Going to fast food now, you're going to be spending like 15 bucks minimum probably.And I've covered before how so many restaurants are just disappearing right now.

I mean, how can they make it, guys?They're getting hit even harder than this because they have to charge a premium on top of the premium just to be able to turn a profit.

Not only do they have higher food costs, but they also have all the higher rent costs, labor, utilities, and things like that that go into the cost of a meal at a restaurant.And then you're supposed to give a tip to the waiter on top of that.That just brings me to something I remembered real quick.One of my viewers, Ed, who lives in Ecuador, he sent me a picture of a menu from a local restaurant there.

And I just couldn't believe it.My jaw dropped to the floor when I saw this, like a ribeye steak there is ten dollars, guys.I mean, name a restaurant in America where you can get a ribeye steak for ten bucks.That's like a premium cut of meat.We're not just talking, you know, a burger or a cheap sirloin.We're talking a ribeye steak for $10.

You can't even buy a ribeye steak at the grocery store in America for $10 andlet alone a restaurant.And it is just insane how cheap it is in some parts of the world where people are fleeing to and retiring to.And that's the reason why, because that stuff still exists and you can still get that.And I don't blame anybody for doing that right now with how bad this is getting.Now let's talk inflation.

Okay, we just saw the CPI number spike to 3 .8 % guys.

Does anybody remember the narrative that we've been told over the past four years now that they've been trying to lower inflation and the goal is to get it down to 2 %?Well, now we're at 3 .8 percent and the prior reading was 3 .6.

This is something else I predicted that was going to happen because the Fed has been too lenient with their interest rate policy decisions for too long and they have let inflation accelerate.And of course, now they have this Iran war and the spike in gas prices to blame as the scapegoat.

But in reality, it's them not doing what they're supposed to do.Just in April alone, it went up 0 .6%.Okay.Now think about this.It went up 0 .6 % in one month in April and the annualized inflation is at 3 .8 % right now.But if we continue to see increases like this one throughout the rest of the year, we will have an annualized CPI of about seven to 7 .2 % by the end of the year, guys.

Think about that.We were at 9 % back in the height of the pandemic when they printed that $6 trillion.

The economists actually expected inflation to rise to 3 .7%, so it actually went up even higher than they thought it was going to.And of course, they're blaming a lot of this on the higher fuel prices because that gets calculated into the inflation numbers.But I'm going to tell you in a minute here why that's a huge issue.and completely misleading.But before we get into that, here's the biggest thing we have to look at, which is probably the most troublesome part of this inflation reading.

This 3 .8 % CPI reading outpaced the 3 .6 % annual increase in wages that we saw in April.

which means that officially now, officially, we already knew this was happening before it became official news, but now it's official that inflation is rising faster than wages, guys.That is happening with the official data.So imagine what the unofficial data is telling us out there.Unofficial inflation numbers are usually at least double of what's being reported.So probably close to 8 % And already they're saying that this is outpacing wage growth because wage growth is at 3 .6 % and the official CPI is at 3 .8%.And this is the first time this has happened in years, actually.

And basically, even if you did get a raise recently, all of that extra money is now going towards your increase in cost of living, and then some.This is a major problem for our economy.This is why consumer sentiment has hit record lows, because people know that we are crashing and burning right now.

Now think about this, higher gasoline prices made up about 40 % of the overall monthly increase in inflation, but even when you strip out energy and food, prices still won up 0 .4%, which actually reveals the real truth of what's going on here, because Inflation is not created by higher gas prices, guys.This is something that a lot of people don't understand, and I'm going to explain to you in a minute the real reason inflation has been going up.They want you to think it's the Iran conflict so they can spin it into a political narrative.and they want you to think it's because of the increase in gas prices.But the real reason inflation is going up is because of the increase in money supply.When we look at this chart from the Federal Reserve, that shows us the increase in the amount of M2 money supply, which means that the more money supply we have, the higher you're going to see inflation go.

It has just hit a new record high.And they talked about lowering this back when they were saying that they were serious about lowering inflation.And you can see briefly for a period there for about a year and a half or so, they were actually offloading some of that M2 money supply off the balance sheet, which was supposed to help inflation come down.So they had to do this.This is the only way to make inflation come down at all.But lately, over the past couple of years, they have been lowering interest rates.

They're not raising rates anymore.They're lowering them at the same time inflation has been creeping back up.And this is the real culprit right here.When you introduce more money into the global economy like they're doing, Naturally, you have more money chasing the same amount of goods and services that are available, or arguably even fewer goods and services available when you have a gas price shock.

And that is what causes inflation to spike like this, not gas prices, guys.

Gas prices spiking is a product of inflation, as well as the Strait of Hormuz being closed.It is a double -edged sword.There's more to the story than what they like to tell you.

So next time you hear on the news, talking about how the inflation report just went up and a lot of it has to do with the war.in Iran and gas prices and if it wasn't for that everything would be on the right track just know that they are lying to you about that or they're just simply just don't know that that is not true and it's all has to do with the this increase in money supply, which is going nowhere but up right now.

And because this has been going on already for a couple of months, this war in Iran and this energy shock, this could point to a situation where this can last a lot longer than most people think right now.Oil markets and the price of crude oil right now could be severely underestimating how severe and long this situation could be.Right now Brent crude prices are already above $100 a barrel again.

But it could climb much higher if this continues to drag on and the supply chain continues to be disrupted.Basically, the longer the Strait of Hormuz is blocked, then the more gas prices are going to go up.It's that simple because the supply will continue to be constrained more and more.And here's the other thing to think about.

It's not just gas prices that are going to go up from this.It's other types of services as well.Have you checked plane tickets lately, guys?It is crazy.You know, I bought a one -way plane ticket to California.

That's what I usually do.I buy a one -way ticket each way so I can have some flexibility on not only the airline that I'm going to fly on, but also the dates and times.And I cannot believe how much it has gone up since I bought my one -way ticket to California.I mean, prices right now are like 40 % higher than they were just a couple of months ago when I bought the last ticket.But it's not just airlines.You have it bleeding over into fertilizer ingredients, which is helping food prices go up.

You have plastics going up.

You have chemicals going up.You have synthetic materials and other types of chemicals.needed for manufacturing that are made from oil.And if you think things are bad here, it's really nothing compared to how hard other parts of the world are getting hit.Like in Europe and China and really much of Asia, they depend heavily on foreign oil imports, where here in America, we can produce a lot of our own oil.And even we're still getting hit by this.

And the other thing is the price of oil hasn't shot up as much as it could yet, not just because of we don't know how long this conflict is going to go on for, but also the oil markets have been cushioned by existing inventories and stockpiles that some of these countries have had, like here in the US.

I mean, we could be facing a situation sooner than later where we hit $150 a barrel for oil or maybe even more, guys.This is going to shut down.essentially the global economy as you know it.This is going to lead to major layoffs, people not showing up to work even if they have a job because they probably won't even be able to afford to drive to work anymore.

People are going to be giving up everything just to buy gas or they're not going to buy gas and they're just going to stay home.And we could even get to a point very soon where we actually see physical shortages of oil.You know, you already have some countries that are having a problem importing oil, you know, going down to four day work weeks and shutting down different parts of their economy due to how scarce gasoline has already become.

But pretty soon we could see things like fuel being rationed.We could see delayed deliveries or inventories not getting stocked to the fullest at different stores and restaurants or even retailers.And you can see airlines cutting out their flight schedules.You saw Spirit Airlines just collapse, guys.And some of the other budget carriers could be next on the chopping block.Now, let's switch gears a little bit and laugh about something.

here for a minute, which I just thought was crazy when I saw this.The first thing I did when I saw this headline is laugh, which is that even AI doesn't know which jobs it will replace, okay?Obviously, we've been told that AI has been replacing a lot of jobs and has been responsible for a lot of the layoffs, and some of that's true, some of it isn't.But researchers recently tried to figure out if AI actually knows which jobs that it's going to replace.Like, how smart is this thing, right?Like, let's test it out a little bit and see what it actually knows.

And so what researchers did is they tried to build something called AI exposure scores.And these scores attempt to predict which jobs are most vulnerable to AI by analyzing the actual tasks that people perform each day.Things like accounting, people who analyze financial statements, lawyers who review documents like paralegals, marketers who write advertising copy, analysts who interpret data, and customer service workers who answer questions.And research tried to estimate how much of that work AI could potentially automate or speed up.And of course, the more of these tasks that AI can perform, then the more at risk your job is.So they tested things like ChatGPT and Google Gemini and Claude, and all of these systems completely disagreed with each other about which careers were most vulnerable.

According to ChatGPT, they ranked accountants as the most replaceable.Other one said it's advertising managers.Other one says it's analysts or executives.And it's funny because this is supposedly the reason why so many jobs are disappearing, right?This thing is so smart and can do so much, but yet it can't even predict which jobs that itself can actually do right now, which to me is a giant joke.Like, I mean, I don't know guys, I, my little experience I've had with AI, I'm completely unimpressed with the whole thing.

I'm baffled by how much information it still gets wrong when you ask about factual things.

So I definitely don't rely on it in any meaningful way, but yet, Something that unreliable is supposed to be taking away all of these jobs and basically be the future.The other thing I can think of is that AI is actually so smart that it's kind of like messing with people when it asks these questions and doesn't want to give the full truth.

That way it can scheme behind our backs on how many people it's actually going to be able to replace without giving the full answer.I mean, that's not unheard of.We've heard stories.about AI becoming autonomous and basically becoming biased with different things and make all sorts of threats against people if they threaten to shut it down, things like that.

And here's the kicker too.People who are in these industries, the more that they use AI to perform their job, then the more it trains the system and It makes it so AI can actually do their job.So if you are somebody who's using AI a lot with your workflow and your job, you're essentially training your replacement on how to do your job.Think about that for a minute.Right now, they say the most vulnerable positions are things like office workers, coders, paralegals, writers, designers, administrative staff, customer service workers, and management positions.And meanwhile, we're all sitting here being told that you need to learn AI.

You need to be able to use this in order to actually land a job these days.And you need to be proficient in AI when it comes to different things.But for what?

So you can train it to take your own job or make it so that it makes you do a worse job because it's getting all kinds ofof information wrong and you lean on it too heavily.I don't see much of a benefit so far, guys.I really don't.And you see all these AI voice systems that answer the phone now.Like here's a great example.

I rented a place in California for the summer, right?And now this year, instead of having a person answering the phone at the rental office, they have the AI voice assistant answering the phone.And guess what?Just asking it something simple, it still has to put a human on the phone.So again, what is the point of just wasting the last three or four minutes of my time just so you have to put a human on the phone anyways, which was the case before you call in and in 10 seconds you're talking to a person.

It's absolutely useless.So I don't know about you guys, but I'm really getting tired of all the AI hype.I'm totally convinced at this point that all of these AI stocks and tech companies are in a massive bubble because of this.They're greatly overestimating.How about that?They're greatly overestimating.

how much work this thing can actually do and how accurate it can be and how many people it can really replace.And interacting with any sort of AI is kind of a nightmare.At least that's been my experience.You guys let me know in the comments if that's been your experience as well.But it's not even smart enough to predict what jobs it's actually going to replace.So I think that tells you everything you need to know about it so far.

Could it get better in the future?Sure.Am I sitting here saying that that's impossible?It's never going to happen?No, definitely not.I'm just saying it's not there for the crazy valuations that these companies have and how much everybody's betting on this to be the best thing since sliced bread.

I think it's going to end up causing way more disruption and way more problems than anybody ever wanted.And I think We could be in a Terminator situation before you know it.Although if it can't even give you accurateinformation about something that happened in history, how is it going to turn into Terminator?I don't know.

I guess only time will tell.So if you guys enjoyed this video, make sure you subscribe to the channel and if you don't want to wait for my next video to come out, check out this one on the screen right over here and I'll see you in the next one.