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At the Wall Street Journal, it’s always a good day to write about inflation

Published on 37 Comments on At the Wall Street Journal, it’s always a good day to write about inflation

When it comes to inflation reporting, the Wall Street Journal can always find a hook:

I can only imagine how this went down. After scouring the detailed CPI numbers for weeks, an intern finally noticed that a couple of the items near the top were breakfast staples. Huzzah! We've got our story, boys! I hardly need to add the punchline, do I?

Inflation in groceries was under 2% for the entire year of 2024.

37 thoughts on “At the Wall Street Journal, it’s always a good day to write about inflation”

  3. jte21

    People tend to notice price increases on stuff they buy every week -- milk, eggs, peanut butter, juice, hamburger, etc. If the price of cucumbers or steel-cut oats or sardines is staying low, that's nice, but you probably only buy those things occasionally and its just not on your radar screen.

    I agree, though, that these stories will completely disappear after Jan. 20. I think Kevin had a chart the other day showing that stories mentioning inflation had all but disappeared on Fox as well right after the election. Funny that.

    1. TheMelancholyDonkey

      The problem with this argument is that the basket of goods used to determine the inflation rate is weighted by how much of each item is bought by consumers. So, if the things people buy every week are priced higher, then the prices of things that are bought rarely must have fallen to almost zero.

      2. cephalopod

        A lot of the commonly bought items are pretty cheap. You may notice that eggs went up by 50 cents a dozen, but even if you buy a dozen eggs every week, that's only $26 a year in added expense. Last time I was in the grocery store I was shocked in the other direction - I couldn't believe how cheap strawberries were in December. I took a look at the BLS and fruit and vegetable inflation was nearly zero last month. Cereals, bakery items, and dairy actually went down.

        While there are "rare" grocery items that have had less inflation than eggs & meat, we're all buying a fair number of rare items each week - it's just that the exact array of rare items changes from week to week. That's how you can get pretty low inflation overall for groceries even when a couple of weekly staples go up quite a bit.

        Interestingly, my bus fare is going down starting today...by the price of 1 egg per bus ride.

      1. rick_jones

        Bird flu spreading in various places around the country does not seem like an apt time to suggest people keep chickens. Especially if said chickens are going to be given outdoor space in which to roam in the name of humane treatment, rather than being kept indoors and so away from wild birds.

      1. rick_jones

        You mean to say the "bulletproof" Cybertruck succumbed to some fireworks? Is the vehicle hard on the outside, but weak between the "bed" and the "cab?"

        Kevin is kind enough to allow links in comments, so the source for:

        “We have confirmed that the explosion was caused by very large fireworks and/or a bomb carried in the bed of the rented Cybertruck and is unrelated to the vehicle itself. All vehicle telemetry was positive at the time of the explosion, according to the post on Musk’s X account that was sent out around 2:12 p.m.

        may be given: https://www.8newsnow.com/news/local-news/elon-musk-posts-on-social-media-that-cybertruck-explosion-was-caused-by-fireworks-or-bomb/

        Personally I would prefer a report from a source other than one with a vested interest.

  5. Martin Stett

    Haven't had anything in the picture for breakfast in months--by choice--except coffee, and making your own at home cuts the cost steeply.

  7. D_Ohrk_E1

    A dozen eggs are $5.99. 🥚 Something about Avian Influenza and chickens coming home to roost or thereabouts. 🐔 Can't wait to see what happens during Easter. 🐣 Protests in the churches, perhaps? ⛪

  8. frankwilhoit

    Several things are going on here.
    1) Restaurant prices are a lagging indicator of food inflation; some of them seem to try to hold the line on prices as long as they can, and then raise them suddenly and substantially.
    2) A couple of our favorite places have not raised their prices at all, which makes me wonder how they are absorbing their costs.
    3) A few places have rolled back some of the increases that they put in place at the height of the panic -- mostly quietly, in one case boastfully.

    We live just down the road from one of the largest egg farms in the country, so we get the market fluctuations, in either direction, immediately and without any buffering by stockpiling or transportation costs.

    But whereas sheer and overwhelming economic self-interest compelled the industry to adopt effective preventative measures against bacterial pathogens, which are a constant threat, those measures are not effective against viri, viri come in outbreaks on a scale of years and thus are more of a crapshoot, businessmen always think they will get lucky, and the industry has completely captured the state-level regulators, so they are unprepared for what is happening now. But they are not panicking today the way they did last time, ~~2007, an outbreak that turned out in retrospect to have been much less bad than it initially threatened to be.

    1. DButch

      Well, in Whatcom and Skagit counties (WA), we have a fair number of local producers. My wife and I didn't really notice a lot of disruption in eggs and other stuff like poultry where a lot more of our local produce came through farmers markets and COOPs from local regular suppliers. No notable disappearance of poultry from avian flu. (Hooray for modest size poultry and egg producers...)

      What I do notice is that I can pay 5-6 dollars or (much) more for a half gallon of milk from premium "pricers", or get "O" organics for $3.99. With a nice source of coupons from various vendors, we can knock a dollar or more off even the bargain brands. And with rare exceptions - the quality is good. (And the most recent exception was from a supposedly "prime brand" - we got a couple of half gallons in succession that clabbered earlier than normal.)

      But if you really like cheap produce I can probably get you a killer deal from Skagit for a 100 lb bag of brussels sprouts starting in late fall any time. You pay for transport.

  9. AlHaqiqa

    Here in Massachusetts the inflation is crazy. I track all of my spending - I have for the last six years. I used to include everything I bought at the grocery store as "groceries", but two years ago I added a new category of household to include everything from the grocery store that wasn't edible. Everything we eat is about the same, except I'm being more careful about what I buy and not throwing away as much. My grocery bill has increased an average of about 8% each year between 2018 and 2024 (from $494 to $755 per month). We rarely eat out - and during the same time period, that has doubled, from $63 to $131.
    In spite of global warming, our energy costs have increased from $618 to $912 per month. During that time we have added three heat pump units, expecting that would bring our energy costs down. It actually did - during the warm weather. They don't work in New England winters.
    On the other hand, things that we don't need have dropped in price - TVs, computers, household goods, etc.
    We are senior citizens on a fixed income, so our increase in Social Security doesn't even start to cover that. Increases in Medicare ate up all the Soc. Sec. increases, anyway. The annual distribution has increased by less than 1% per year over the same time period.
    It's harder to compare medical expenses, since those are health dependent.

      1. DButch

        First off - heat pump needs to be defined as one way (usually heat boost only) or two way (supports heating and cooling)

        There is also a relatively new type these days.

        The newer European (and flat exterior wall mounted) heat pump units are designed for multiple unit installations (in a single house). I've seen a number of installations where there are two units for a modest size house, and a couple where at least 3 units were visible. (And I had no idea what might be going on out of sight n the back.)

        If I understand correctly you might have a small heat exchanger feeding 1-3 interior heating/cooling units. The heat exchangers are less expensive than a single major heat exchanger unit, the installation is a lot simpler, and, if you want to go heat exchanger only in relatively mild climates, they are pretty good.

        In really cold climates you will, just like with "old fashioned" single home heat exchanger units without a furnace, have to add electrical powered heat-strip boosts to the system.

        We upgraded our rickety one-way heat pump (and furnace) in our house in Whatcom county (installed in 2006 - we bought it in 2019) with the highest efficiency furnace AND two-way heat exchanger we could afford at the time. I didn't realize just how big it was - more than eight times the size of the original unit. We did that in 2020 just before the pandemic settled in - and fortunately almost all the work was in the garage and outside. Only one worker came in to install the new thermostat and he masked carefully as we did.

        Our furnace rarely comes on until the temp drops quite a bit. Since we are near Puget Sound, going below freezing is rare, and way below freezing quite rare.

        1. PaulDavisThe1st

          > In really cold climates you will, just like with "old fashioned" single home heat exchanger units without a furnace, have to add electrical powered heat-strip boosts to the system.

          Debatable. Modern cold-climate heat pumps can function down to the -15F range. If you're in a cold climate and install units that only operate down to, say, 15F, then sure, you're going to need some backup. But if you're in that climate and did that, you or your system planner either made a mistake or did not understand what the goal was.

          A reminder: heat pumps can extract (and move) heat from any environment that is **warmer** than the refrigerant temperature at the exchanger.

    2. DButch

      We throw very little away (we're in WA). There's a life cycle we frequently follow (as a two person outfit):

      1. Cook a new big dish, save the leftovers, carefully separated.
      2. Have some of the leftovers with salad/legume/potato/etc. sides. (Some of which might be the remains of (1) plus nice fillers. Might be able to get two more full meals and still have some good leftovers.
      3. Create a frittata - two more meals.

      Intersperse the plan so we don't get bored. Repeat with different starting big dishes.

      Caution: This may not work well with finicky eaters - but since both my wife and I are pretty damn eclectic, it works for us.

  10. Rattus Norvegicus

    Eggs are in short supply because of bird flu, coffee is in short supply because of crop failures in Brazil and Vietnam, two of the largest coffee producing countries. I wonder what that does to coffee and egg prices?

    1. JohnH

      Thank you for that. Even this late in the comments, the increases have been take for granted. Maybe Biden was responsible after all, but somehow (how?) his economic stimulus that spared us the worst of Covid and other policies that made inflation less awful than in Europe just happened to target the wrong foods for "ordinary Americans."

      But goodness. This is not about Democrats who don't care about the working class as if somehow Trump really cares. It has nothing to do with them. Every month in a basket of goods, some will be outliers. And if you wait long enough and choose your outliers maliciously, you can (finally) prove whatever lies you like.

        1. Salamander

          To be honest, that's a lot of everything for one breakfast I wondered, too. Seemed too regularly rectangular for fried potatoes, and too numerous for hash browns. Wrong shape for sausages, although maybe. There were probably clues within the article, which would have been behind the WSJ paywall. Of course.

  12. kenalovell

    Headline you can expect to see some time early next year:
    TRUMP BEATS INFLATION IN THREE MONTHS AFTER FOUR YEARS OF BIDEN PRICE MISERY

  13. Anandakos

    Well, technically speaking, "it's always a good day to write about inflation", UNTIL January 20th at which time a hiatus lasting four, eight, or an infinite number of years will descend on "writ[ing] about inflation".

    You could take that to the bank.

  14. emjayay

    Wait until they notice that gas at the pump prices all over NYC is now around $3.10 a gallon and as low as $2.90 in some places.

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