Prices are up relative to January 2021, but not relative to January 2024:
Figure 1: CPI – food at home (blue), ERS forecast as of January (red triangle), ERS forecast as of July (light blue square), Chained CPI – food at home (light green), all normalized to 2020M01=1.00. Source: BLS, USDA ERS, and author’s calculations.
Of course Trump wants you to believe bacon prices are soaring. He of course is lying. Little Brucie Hall has been trying to tell us beef price inflation. It isn’t. Now is Brucie lying or is he just so stupid to rehash whatever lies Faux News spews?
I often praise Kevin Drum’s blog post on economists but today. His latest is Bruce Hall style STUPID starting with the damn question:
Are grocery stores gouging us?
https://jabberwocking.com/are-grocery-stores-gouging-us/
OK Kevin, the operating margins for retail stores are not that high. No one said they were. For the 100th damn time, Team Harris is talking about the oligopoly power of the food processing sector. Now I get MAGA morons like Bruce Hall don’t get this. I have said the press is beyond pathetic. But Kevin Drum too? Come on man!
Never been a fan, and boy does he attract the village idiots to his comment section. Good for humor maybe.
I learned all I needed to know about Drum when he claimed he left Mother Jones for health reasons, then didn’t skip a half beat before doing a very prolific blog. Spells out phony to me.
Drum’s claim that Harris is “gunning for grocery stores” is the kind of crap that gets dished out when bloggers become obsessed with producing ANY content, with little concern over what the hell they are saying.
Well at least one of Kevin’s readers gets it:
‘cmayo
August 16, 2024 – 1:30 pm at
As another commenter put it elsewhere, it’s not Giant and Aldi gouging prices, but Kraft and Nestle.’
Thank you cmayo!
I Googled Tyson Foods Anti-Trust and got a flurry of links including this one:
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/tyson-foods-to-pay-2215-million-to-settle-claims-in-broiler-chicken-antitrust-litigation-2021-01-20
Tyson Foods to pay $221.5 million to settle claims in broiler chicken antitrust litigation
This one involved how Tyson and its fellow oligopolists rigged the market to drive up the price of goods. Others talked about Tyson’s monopsony power driving down Tyson’s payments to farmers. This is all consistent with that 2020 economic study which apparently people like John Cochrane, Noah Smith, and yes MAGA moron Bruce Hall have not read.
Fellows before you attack Kamala realize this. Her team of economists are aware of this market power. Even if you fellows are too stupid to do so.
We need another 2-3 weeks of the morons attacking Harris on this and on inflation – then the democrats can begin their attack with examples of monopsonies driving up prices, and their own profits, through the roof. This will be a winner because it connects a problem everybody hates (higher prices) with a villain everybody hates (big corporations) and a politician with a plan to fix it (Harris). While we are waiting the GOP puts itself in the position of defending the villain and attacking the savior.
Back in the 1990’s we heard all the time the alleged ties between Bill Clinton and Tyson Foods. Of late – not a single word. One has to wonder how much the Tysons gave to the Republican crowd!
Speaking of this sector and partisan politics!
Meat processing industry worked with Trump administration to stay open during COVID crisis, according to House report
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/meat-processing-industry-worked-with-trump-administration-to-stay-open-during-covid-crisis-according-to-house-report
During the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the meat processing industry worked closely with political appointees in the Trump administration to stave off health restrictions and keep slaughterhouses open even as the virus spread rapidly among workers, according to a congressional report released Thursday…Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn, who leads the subcommittee, said U.S. Department of Agriculture officials and the industry prioritized production and profits over the health of workers and communities as at least 59,000 workers caught the virus and 269 died.