The Wall Street Journal blares:
The Supermarket Aisle Where Prices Are Still Soaring
They're talking about highly processed foods like potato chips—which, in fact, are up only 3.5% since January. Not precisely soaring. And they admit that inflation has eased elsewhere.
What they don't admit is that food inflation is gone. Since the start of the year, the overall inflation rate for food at home is below zero. In some cases, prices have very noticeably dropped. So why not a story about the supermarket aisle where inflation hasn't just eased, but prices have declined since the beginning of the year? For example:
Since the start of the year food prices have gone down. Not just flattened. Gone down. Why are there no blaring stories about that?
Why? Because it would ruin the story that Republicans are pushing about out of control inflation.
BINGO!
You nailed it, sir.
The Narrative™ states that inflation is out of control and senile ol' Joe Biden can't fix it somehow. Now if The Narrative™ were to change all of a sudden, journalists would have to get up, do more research, look at new numbers, consider the wider context, and think of new words to write and so on, and it would be a huge pain in the ass. And headline writers, who pretty much have "Inflation worries continue to dog Biden campaign" worked into their muscle memory by now would have to retrain themselves, and so on.
I make $100h while I’m courageous to the most distant corners of the planet. Last week I worked on my PC in Rome, Monti Carlo at the long final in Paris. This week I’m back inside the USA. All I do fundamental errands from this one cool area see it. For more information,
Click on the link below… https://GetDreamJobs1.blogspot.com
Because it would ruin the story that Republicans and the owners of the MSM are pushing about out of control inflation. I came to the conclusion years ago that the notion of a bumbling, or cowed, or whatever the flavor of the day the excuse is, the real reason for these sorts of stories is that the MSM is actively hostile when it comes to the policies Democrats (also, Democrats) want to implement. Don't let these guys off the hook when it comes to these lame 'the dog ate my homework' excuses.
Kevin has developed a habit of asking questions to which the answers are bleedin' obvious. The media - especially the Murdoch media - has been predicting since early 2021 that this would be Jimmy Carter's second term. While America might be enjoying five minutes of economic sunshine, a 1970s style combination of recession and high inflation was inevitable and imminent. Consequently while the non-Murdoch press might grudgingly report data which suggest that narrative was wrong, nobody is about to highlight it.
Kevin's commenters consistently act like they've never heard of the concept of a rhetorical question.
I don't know why you bother reading the Wall Street Journal. Are you going to start watching Fox "News" and blog about it every day?
You mistaken the mood. They're complaining about the cost of their Oreos. I keep telling you, it's about the highly processed foods.
Perishable food--sell it or lose it. The bird flu had a major impact on food prices, as did the wrong packaging (institutional vs home) which meant a lot of food was lost. Now things are mostly back to normal, so more can be sold and prices will drop while profits are still good (less loss and prices still above pre-pandemic norm).
Should note: the drought/flooding out west still causing problems--that will bounce things around for a long time.
Well, there's the fact that nearly everyone's wages are not indexed to inflation. So just because inflation has stopped doesn't mean people aren't still feeling it. They previously budgeted for eggs and milk (or whatever necessity) at X price, and now it's 110% of X (or whatever it actually is), but their pay certainly didn't go up, so they now have to fit that 110% by shrinking other expenditures.
That's why inflation stories still hold sway.
Just like they fail to report when the price of gas or milk go down. Oh, but the second they go up, they are all over it.
Potato products were hit especially hard during the pandemic when institutional food sales in particular fell off a cliff -- think cruises, hotel conventions, sporting events, etc. Idaho and Washington farmers were just plowing under thousands of acres of unsalable potatoes in 2020 and 21. For about a year, it was hard to find a lot of varieties of frozen french fries and hashbrowns, for example. It's mostly recovered now, but the prices are noticeably higher. I don't eat potato chips very often, so I didn't notice if there were issues there, but I can only assume there may be lingering issues as the supply chains get rebuilt.
And of course they could just be charging more because, what the hell, you still need your Lay's, amirite? As Kevin showed the other day, there's always a good dose of greedflation mixed in with the actual shortages caused by the pandemic.
Americans are USED to bad news.
"traffic flowing smoothly" on I95 gets no viewers, but have a tanker truck fire that causes an overpass to collapse? it's on the front page for a week and is
on the local news UNTIL the lanes re-open, but that news is fleeting.
remember the old adage? "No news is good news"? that just doesn't sell advertising.
This goes for both "liberal" and "conservative" news outlets
Kevin says "food inflation is gone" but this is not quite right - it is prices *at home* (a special BLS category) that have gone down as his chart shows. According to the BLS's CPI for food overall:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=16Tui
prices have gone up somewhat but inflation is heading steeply down (the WSJ piece gives the correct year/year inflation rates).
But Kevin is right that the story is absurd. All signs are that inflation is decreasing. Producer-price inflation has been negative. Weekly wage growth is still decreasing and was never high enough to be a major cause of inflation anyway.
This isn't hugely different from Kevin on Friday, stating that a jobs report that showed lots of positives - headline unemployment down to 3.6%, more jobs created than needed for population growth, wages going up, etc. - was still somehow a bad sign for Biden.
Kevin has huge blinders on to his own negativity, and while I don't think Kevin does it because he actively wants to tank the Biden Admin like WSJ does - Kevin does it to maintain some kind of centrist street cred - it's just as toxic to spew negative spins on positive news for whatever motive.