Cancelled flight? Shoddy clothing? Disappointing meal? Blame skimpflation, the hidden curse of 2022

theguardian.com:

Did your flight get cancelled in the school holidays? Has the delivery of your new sofa been delayed? Was your last meal out disappointing? Are your new socks see-through? Are you reading this while you are on hold to customer services? Does everything feel just a little bit worse?

The cost of living crisis has given British households a crash course in the misery caused by inflation, which is scaling heights not seen since the 1980s. But what if there is also another force at work in the economy, lurking in the background and making a bad situation that little bit grimmer?

Welcome to “skimpflation” – a term popularised in the US and gaining traction in the UK. “Skimpflation is when consumers are getting less for their money,” says Alan Cole, a writer at Full Stack Economics and formerly a senior economist at the joint economic committee of the US Congress. “Unlike typical inflation, where they’re paying more for the same goods, skimpflation is when they’re paying the same for something that worsened in quality.”

The most common example is “having to wait longer for things”, says Cole. “If you’ve ordered furniture or an appliance recently, you’ll find that delivery times are slow. That loss of timeliness is a quality downgrade.”

Thanks to the current crisis, we are all familiar with what inflation means: the price of stuff is going up, sometimes by an eye-watering amount. There have also been plenty of examples of shrinkflation, which is when a company reduces the size of a packet of chocolate or crisps, for instance, but the price stays the same.

But even if it is not as easy to identify, when you start to look for skimpflation, you can see it everywhere. It is in the supermarket, when you bump into someone filling shelves