I’m not a huge New York City fan, but I regularly travel there for work. One of the only upsides I’ve always liked about visiting the Big Apple is the $1 pizza slices that used to be for sale on what seemed like every street corner. You could get delicious pizza right away for a price that always seemed scandalously low.
But the delicious deal is evaporating, thanks to inflation.
“One of the Big Apple’s most recognizable pizza joints is jacking up the price of its famous $1 slice — breaking the hearts of poor college students everywhere,” the New York Post reports. “2 Bros. Pizza announced the death of the deliciously dirt-cheap delicacy, saying it was forced to up the once-affordable option to $1.50 to take a bite out of inflation costs.”
The owners didn’t really have a choice, given how much their prices on the back end have gone up.
“Over the past few years, we had done everything in our power to keep the cheese slices at $1 while refusing to compromise on our quality,” 2 Bros. Pizza co-owner Eli Halali told The Post on Monday. “We were no longer able to break even.”
“Inflation is affecting every single ingredient, every single item we use. Flour, cheese, tomatoes, gloves, paper goods, paper plates, napkins. Everything. Labor is definitely up, as well,” the company’s other co-owner had previously told The Post in November 2021.
While you might still be able to find $1 pizza in some corners of the city for now, many other New York pizza joints have similarly had to raise their prices.
Of course, $1.50 for a pizza slice still isn’t half bad, and pizza prices aren’t the end of the world. But this is just one small example of how runaway inflation hurts the working class the most. Wealthy New Yorkers won’t blink twice at a few extra bucks for their pizza, but a 50% increase in their lunch price is nothing to sniff at for a low-income worker. Especially when it’s just one tiny part of a cost-of-living crisis where everything is getting more expensive and, as a result, their paychecks simply won’t go as far as they used to.
All told, inflation has cost the average family more than $10,000 since President Biden took office. That’s a travesty. And it ultimately has its roots in the Federal Reserve’s decision to print trillions of dollars out of thin air to “stimulate” the economy during lockdowns and the drunken spending binge both parties, but especially Democrats, pushed through Congress in 2020 and 2021.
Inflation is a result of our policymakers’ choices. If we don’t hold them accountable and ensure they don’t repeat these mistakes, we stand to lose a lot more than just $1 pizza slices.