Shelves with several varieties of Arnold's breads.
Along with many other Plainfielders, I shop at Twin City for many items, especially bread and milk, which need regular replenishing.
Favoring Arnold's several multi-grain bread varieties, I was stymied recently to come upon a totally empty rack where normally there would be a superabundance of 5 Grain, 7 Grain, 12 Grain, Multi-Grain and Oatnut selections, among others.
My regular bread rack was empty!
Then I spotted a small sign that had never been there before.
Arnold's Whole Wheat (orange bag only) now WIC-approved.
The next time I came in, the rack was replenished -- but now contained ONLY Whole Wheat bread.
Arnold's Whole Wheat took over the whole rack space.
Had some sort of loony Freakonomics version of Gresham's Law taken over Twin City's bread aisle?
There were other brands, also 'WIC approved', where Whole Wheat had displaced even plain white (except for the Wonder® product, which I am not sure actually qualifies as 'bread').
Not that I have anything against Whole Wheat in particular, but this is America, the land of CHOICE, and it seemed that CHOICE had utterly DISAPPEARED. Ohmygod!
Thomas Gresham, Royal Factor to Queen Elizabeth. Is he to blame?
Gresham's Law, if you recall Econ 101, is a formulation that demonstrates that debased currency (i.e., 'bad' money, containing less or none of the precious metal on which it is based) drives out 'good' currency (containing more of the precious metal) -- which people tend to take out of circulation by hoarding against a future increase in value.
(Like all metaphors, this is a three-legged dog, as I don't think anyone is ACTUALLY HOARDING Whole Wheat bread. I may however, as always, be mistaken.)
Is Gresham to blame for my bread predicament?
Not really. Firstly, he never formulated Gresham's Law -- which was actually remarked upon by Aristophanes about 2,500 years ago; and secondly, it probably has to do more with Arnold's being the cheapest bread on the shelf, since it is a smaller loaf, thereby making it practically mandatorily the 'bread of necessity' for WIC recipients.
How so?
The WIC (Women, Infants and Children) program provides vouchers for supplemental food assistance to 45% of all infants born in the United States. That is an amazing fact! And WIC recipients are required to buy the cheapest version of the product on the voucher that is on the store's shelves. Voilá! Mystery solved.
If you want to read up on WIC, check out the Federal website (here), New Jersey's website (here) and a useful overview on Wikipedia (here).
So, since it is snapped up almost the moment the driver stacks it on the shelves and solves Arnold's 'out of date' bread problem, the little orange Whole Wheat packages have literally driven all other Arnold's varieties off Twin City's shelves.
And it's not the fault of Arnold's or Twin City or even Gresham.
It's all Hubert Humphrey's fault (see here).
Humphrey can consider himself fortunate we don't have him to kick around any more.
Hubert Humphrey and another famous former Vice Presdient.
-- Dan Damon [follow]
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4 comments:
The Guy with the two pretty girls was a historical President, the only one to resign under duress. In retrospect he and his cabinet -at least the ones he did not fire - represented one of the greatest threats to our form of government.
It is also true that we have had more recent presidents from both parties that have felt to be exempt from common Law.
Shoprite has the same bread for a $1.99. That's a big price difference. 300% markup?
@ 8:18 -- If you mean the $2.99 price sign, it looks like in the smaller type it says $1.99. As this was taken in the Watchung Square Stop & Shop, that would indicate the price WITH the store card. My guess is that there is no real difference between S&S and ShopRite when you get to the register.....the tale, as they say, 'is in the (register) tape'.
Olddoc -- I remarked to a friend the other day that the interesting thing is that Richard Nixon would be considered far too liberal to ever be a candidate for national office in today's Republican party.
How times have changed.
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