The cost of living crisis has made the UK a poorer, more anxious nation – and worse is yet to come | Andy Beckett

Instead of buy-one-get-one-free offers, everyday life now involves carefully comparing prices and feeling increasingly powerless Under capitalism, prices are supposed to be the centre of everything. They are the key agreement between buyer and seller. They are the one clear and reliable piece of information, on which the whole often opaque and unstable system depends.So it struck me as strange when some of my local London shops stopped displaying the prices of some goods a couple of years ago. I