GroceryGate: The Price of Chicken Soup Gets Debated on X

(AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File)

You may have noticed by now that there is a kind of low-level partisan warfare taking place between those who think inflation has soured people on the economy and those who say the economy is great and people are being irrational by complaining. The sides in this debate don’t line up perfectly with the usual partisan divide but generally speaking it’s conservatives who are convinced “Bidenomics” isn’t a great selling point and it’s liberals who are convinced things are great and anyone who says otherwise is a lying hack.

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Case in point, this TikTok video was published last December and became sort of infamous:

@topherolive #prices #inflation #laborshortage #fastfood ♬ original sound – Topher

This video went viral and then went viral again a couple months ago. It became enough of a talking points that the White House took an interest and then, 11 months after it was initially posted, Taylor Lorenz wrote about it for the Washington Post using unnamed White House sources.

One YouTube video from this month with 2 million views inaccurately describes it as “a Big Mac meal” that cost $16. Posts on Reddit, the conservative site Twitchy and elsewhere tied the cost to President Biden’s economic management: Inflation, the theory went, had gotten so out of control that the price of a fast-food burger was approaching $20.

These stories soon reached the White House Office of Digital Strategy, which tracked the meme as one of many exaggerated examples of the nation’s economic woes, according to a White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to reflect internal discussions. In reality, inflation has been steadily subsiding, and last week the government reported price hikes had eased yet again in October. The average Big Mac nationally as of this summer cost $5.58, up from $4.89 — or roughly 70 cents — before Biden took office, according to an index maintained by the Economist. That’s up more than 10 percent, but it’s not $16.

And yet one anomalous price from one store in Idaho 11 months ago was ripping through people’s social media feeds as if it explained the entire economy. One Democratic official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations, said: “What are we supposed to do, tell the president or Chuck Schumer to send a tweet saying, ‘Hey, most Big Macs aren’t that expensive?’ It would look ridiculous.”

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If this sounds crazy/hilarious to you then…yes, I agree. But also, did you notice how stealthily dishonest the Post’s description was. For one thing, they fault a YouTuber for calling it a “Big Mac meal” and then in the very next paragraph cite the cost of a Big Mac (by itself), which is obviously going to be much cheaper than the double quarter pounder with large fries and a drink meal ordered by the guy in the TikTok video. The average cost of that meal is not under $6 but closer to $12. The point is, if you’re going to complain about people making apples to orange comparisons, don’t make apples to orange comparisons.

All of that is just a preface to something I noticed today on X. The same fight has broken out, this time over the price of chicken soup. The argument actually started with a days long fight between Nate Silver and someone named Will Stancil (and others). Silver is in the ‘voters are rational’ camp and Stancil is in the ‘people be crazy’ camp.

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The alternative point of view is that people are being influenced not by facts but by bad vibes about the economy. Some are calling it the vibecession.

Stancil’s take is that the media is at fault.

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His faith in this seems to border on being unfalsifiable.

And that, finally, brings us to Megan McArdle’s chicken soup. Note she was retweeting a complaint about restaurant prices sort of similar to the McDonald’s TikTok above.

Stancil demanded receipts, literal ones.

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So we’ve gone from people are influenced by media vibes to think the economy is worse than it is to people are lying about what they spent on groceries? Stancil backed away from calling her a liar. Well, sort of. Maybe he’s saying she’s confused.

It’s an interesting debate but it’s also immediately clear that Will Stancil is not really open to argument. Yes, the $16 McDonald’s hamburger was a special situation but not that special. The point is that while inflation may be back down to 3.1% prices are still high which does create all sorts of special situations that wouldn’t have been possible four years ago. People notice these things. But for some, that’s not good enough. Show us the receipts!

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I think the “people aren’t being rational” people fail to appreciate the degree to which they seem a bit obsessed with this, probably for reasons that aren’t primarily about economics.

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Jazz Shaw 8:30 AM | October 06, 2024
John Sexton 6:20 PM | October 05, 2024
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