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Food
(hexbear.net)
https://x.com/NathanJRobinson/status/1800915894585147399
Krugman, despite being a neoliberal knows that food is an essential item. So likely he is propagandizing for Biden.
Look at personal savings rate.
Also, the other thing is to look at with this is people eating out generally, there could also be the phenomena of middle class people responding to increased prices by eating fast food more to substitute more expensive take out options.
Another factor is people could generally be living further from work now than 10 years ago due to higher rents. Meaning they're more likely to eat a meal near their office while having less time to cook, hence needing fast food.
This was kind of my first thought. I eat out more when I'm stressed because of the comfort of eating out and the lack of energy to cook for myself, even if it puts me in a worse economic situation. Sometimes you have to cope just to keep alive. Maybe we can coin the term "copeanomics" to describe increased sales of "luxury" items in times of increased societal instability.
I have coworkers who purchase takeout food and/or coffee every single day despite their having literally no money (one coworker actually ran out of money one day and refused like five offers from me to buy him lunch) so I’ve been wondering about this. I make my own lunch and coffee and save immense amounts of money from doing so, but this may also be a form of privilege.