It feels pretty good to me, locally, but to the extent Americans don't feel that way, the months of reporting on nightmare inflation followed by months of reporting on the "100% certain impending recession" now followed by more scare pieces on grocery and fast food prices even as inflation rapidly declines hasn't helped.
I'm personally seeing grocery prices actually come back down to pre-pandemic levels for some items as stores and manufacturers realize they milked the "record inflation" story too much. There were some supply constraints, but once the "inflation" story took off, lots of places raised prices way too much, thinking they could just blame inflation. But when they do it so fast that even folks in the top 10% of income start becoming price-conscious and bargain hunting, they've gone too far.
I'm personally seeing grocery prices actually come back down to pre-pandemic levels for some items as stores and manufacturers realize they milked the "record inflation" story too much. There were some supply constraints, but once the "inflation" story took off, lots of places raised prices way too much, thinking they could just blame inflation. But when they do it so fast that even folks in the top 10% of income start becoming price-conscious and bargain hunting, they've gone too far.