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Halfway through the week! Have an extra $22 million lying around? Check out this newly listed ranch in Montana, which was once home to a Soviet Union pilot who defected to the West.
In today's big story, we're looking at why pricing is so weird these days.
What's on deck:
But first, that costs how much?!
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If the cost of living in America is giving you whiplash right now, you're not alone.
Over the past few years, we've (perhaps begrudgingly) grown accustomed to dynamic pricing. Whether it's the cost of Ubers, airline tickets, or popular artists' concerts, prices that fluctuate based on market conditions are the new norm.
But after a few years of infecting big-ticket items, writes Business Insider's Emily Stewart, wildly varying prices are coming to everyday items — and it's driving Americans crazy.
Remember Wendy's "dynamic pricing" fiasco? The fast-food chain botched the rollout of its new variable price model and had to insist it wouldn't be used to charge more during peak hours. More recently, Walmart introduced digital price tags, which some people said could be used for variable pricing. (Walmart said its "everyday low price" strategy isn't changing.)
And when prices aren't fluctuating, they're simply higher: Everything from fast food to new homes has shot up in price since the pandemic.
The result can be maddening, especially when we can clearly remember a time when prices felt more reasonable. The constantly changing costs have consumers feeling a sense of price fatigue, Emily writes.
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Sometimes, the only way out is through.
How do you begin to fix — or even just accept — such astronomical pricing? Emily writes that most economists agree that government-mandated price-fixing isn't the way to go about it. And while inflation is getting better, the potential of it getting worse again still looms.
Then there's the problem of AI-powered price gouging.
BI recently reported that companies use artificial intelligence to figure out how much you make, where you're located, and what kind of mood you're in — and use it to calculate exactly how much you'd be willing to pay for something.
And you can't fight algorithms that know you better than you know yourself.
So, as Emily writes, you can't fault anyone for feeling a certain sense of doom and gloom about the economy. Heck, some people have come to feel like the middle-class American dream is out of reach entirely.
In times like this, she says, the only way to get used to such high prices is to try to forget what those numbers were in 2019.
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The Insider Today team: Jordan Parker Erb, editor, in New York. Lisa Ryan, executive editor, in New York. Hallam Bullock, senior editor, in London. Annie Smith, associate producer, in London. Amanda Yen, fellow, in New York.
