OK, I can remember when you could get a six-pack of white beer cans with the block, black letters of "Beer" written on them. Yes, generic beer. The price was right and, let's be honest, by the time you scrounged into your pockets for dimes and quarters to pool enough money together to buy some generic beer, the taste did not much matter.
You used to be able to buy all kinds of products that were white with the word of the product just simply written on the packaging, as if you were living the egalitarian future of some Orwell-esque novel. You do not see as many plain white "generic" products as much any more, but what you do see is the store brand items. And they are popular. I mean, after all, why spend more money on a brand name when you can get the exact same medicine, food etc. in the store brand. (And, in case you have trouble with the thought process, the stores usually include a very helpful "Compare to..." sign that basically says, "Hey, don't be a dummy. Why would you spend more for the same product just to get the fancier packaging.)
It is no surprise that during this 4-year-long pustule called the economy, the popularity of store brand products has jumped. So, if you know about demand in a capitalist (sort of) society, you know that it drives up prices. Apparently that is happening to our generic items, to the point that, in some cases, the generic items are more expensive as the brand name.
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that some stores are raising the prices of their private-label goods, by as much as 5.3 percent on nonperishables and as high as 12 percent for perishables. Name brand prices aren't rising at the same pace.
So, before you automatically grab for the store brand item, take a few extra moments to compare the pricing difference. Most of the time you'll find that the store brand/generic item is still the better deal - WSJ reports that brand names still cost on average about 29 percent more than generic brands - but it behooves you to make sure.
