Economic "measurements" are one of worst pseudo-scientific grifts out there. Inflation is perhaps the peak example.
Also carnism is disgusting, unsustainable, inefficient, and literally destroying the planet. I hope meat becomes completely unaffordable as it would be without massive violent enforcement.
Brazil is the largest exporter of meat and Trump is tariffing them 50%
so, more than 2.7% in that category. almost like that claimed 2.7% is an intentionally misleading choice of "measure" of central tendency.
Lab grow all meats. Problem solved. Too bad Trump and his stupid MAGA base are against it. Timeline blows.
Why would a capitalist company making fake beef be any less inclined to upcharge on fake beef compared to real beef?
They both have lines that must go up.
Sure, but if no one can afford to buy artificially inflated real meat prices, that's a good reason to sell fake beef at a price where people can afford it.... And THEN you start to increase the price of that too, but only once a Democrat is president so people can freak out like they did with egg prices
Lab grown meat isn't currently scalable at that level. Wish it were but unfortunately not. Consider not eating meat 👍 it's cheaper
I literally will become anemic if I don't eat meat. I grew up vegetarian for religious reasons; it was hell until my doctor worked with a nutritionist when I was a kid and determined that my body just needs the complex protein density that is provided in lean meat.
That being said, considering the global catastrophe that is the way we produce and distribute meat as a civilization, I'm happy to pay high prices for quality and (relatively) ethically produced cuts.
Of course, <redacted> tariff wars will hurt extra to me and others like myself.
Then why are states banning it on behalf of Big Ag lobbyists? If it’s not a threat, why would they?
as if republicans needed a reason to placate idiots with their legislation
Because here in America we longer innovate, we litigate.
Because it isnt households that want it, its the big companies that make processed meat products or burger chains. If moving to lab grown saves McDonalds 5 cents per burger thats 127 million dollars a year. Imagine how much chicken companies that make cheap breaded nuggets use...
The moment it becomes financially viable to build their own factory they will.
My household wants it, and I’ve spoken to many others who want it. And they’re specifically banning it from sale to direct consumers.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUSR0000SAF112
Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: Meats, Poultry, Fish, and Eggs in U.S. City Average (Seasonally Adjusted)
Entire Time Series (1967+) Normalized to '82-'84 =100:
Last 5 Years (2020+), Renormalized to 100 = Jan 2020:
So, yeah, thats about 35% increase in 5 years, if you specifically look at the Meat Poultry Fish Eggs component of the CPI.
The CPI numbers, the, '2.5%' inflation number... thats ~~month to month~~ the last 12 months, annualized, like an APR, ... and they are a weighted basket of many, many different subcomponents such as this.
Sort of analagous to how a say, 10% APR... well, thats annualized, so to get the monthly interest rate, you roughly divide by 12... but technically it is more complicated, because that monthly interest rate is actually compounding every month over month.
So the acutal monthly rate is:
MPR = [ ( 1 + APR ) ^ ( 1 / 12 ) ] - 1
If you treat an ~35% increase over almost 5 years with this kind of math, then you end up with an average, effective monthly inflation rate for meat and eggs of:
~~6.642%, since Jan 2020.~~
EDIT: I fucked up the math, goddamned javascript based web calculator on shitty mobile phone,.here's something more accurate:
4.984%, since July 2020.
(I'm basically just doing napkin math here, picking specifically July 2020 just because its the 5Y window, normally you'd use a longer period of stability to base this off of, but hopefully ya'll get the idea)
Also worth noting, the latest August numbers are of course backward looking, in time. So, if these price pics in the OP image are literally from today... they may not be reflected in the numbers untill next month.
... Assuming Trump has not destroyed the BLS/FRED by then, who fucking knows.
.........
Why doesn't this line up with broader inflation?
Well, lots of reasons, I'm going to pick probably the biggest one, as opposed to writing an entire PhD level dissertation...
The CPI, the big headline number... is based on an average basket of goods and services that, ie, a weighted index, and uh... that basket, those weights, represent the average, the mean... not the median.
Here's 2022.
Yep thats a household that makes $94k before taxes, $83k after taxes.
In 2022, the US Median after tax household income was... $64k.
So, the entire basket, and thus CPI, is thus weighted toward the spending patterns of people about 1 standard deviation higher than the median household income.
Rich people do not have the same spending basket as poorer people, poorer people disproportionally spend a lot more of their income on food, rent/mortgage, gas / car expenses...
... And as wealth disparity, and wealth transfer to the elites gets worse and worse, the reported CPI thus underreports actual inflation for more and more people.
........
Hope all these fun numbers help explain some things.
.........
EDIT 2:
Without having to doing a bunch of math yourself...
Probably look at the CPI-U series and components instead of the broader CPI... as the U refers to Urban, and something like 80% of Americans live in what is considered an Urban area.
So looking at the CPI-U is probably a relatively easy way to get a somewhay more realistic look at price levels that actual people pay... but the flipside is that the wealthy disparity is even more lopsided in Urban areas... uh, good luck, lol.
.........
The financial news and media still focus on the broader CPI... basically because of outdated tradition.
Much like how they almost never pay attention the BLS employment number revisions... unless they are very very bad.
You don't need to be very smart to have money, basically just lucky. Or ruthless.
.......
EDIT 3
Ok, using the actual numbers from OP Image... maybe this can demonsrate the power of compound interest.
Thats a 1y difference of +45.496%, in $/lb of beef.
All it takes to get that, in one year...
Is an average, compounding, 3.1742% price increase every month, for 12 months.
Exponential equations run away fast, and human brains tend to default to thinking of linear relationships... not exponential... and thats why credit card companies make so much money, lol.
Anyway, yeah, check this CPI U meat/eggs subcomponent next month to see august price levels, and if they do a massive jump, or if data is now considered a woke diversity hire and now banned shrug
They constantly tell you the monthly rate for the same reason as credit card companies (to obscure the long term effects). It's a grift either way. I think that's a point of the comic.
To add to your comment, if anyone is interested in the data series for steaks generally:
You're leaving out the substitution principle.
If a can of Spam becomes cheaper than actual meat then the CPI will substitute them as "equal". Cheese Wiz is just as "cheese" as stuff that comes out of a cow.
CPI is nothing but a gamed statistic. It's fake. Even then they can't pretend all is hunky dory.
Substitution bias tends to overstate inflation, because they only reweight once a year (which is much more frequently than what they used to do). And the reweighting of the components won't change the fact that the individual components continue to be published.
Beef is getting much more expensive than it used to be. In the 90's, ground beef used to be cheaper per pound than chicken breast. In the 30 years since, beef has gotten expensive much faster than chicken, and now ground beef costs almost 50% more than ground beef:
So, the very complicated and expansive version of what you are talking about is Hedonics, Hedonic Adjustments... and lets just say it is so fucking technical and complicated that as I have said elsewhere in this thrrad, I basically have PTSD from trying to have detailed discussions about which elements of this are valid and to what extent they are valid.
Its not quite as simple and straightforwardly bullshit as you describe, but it also does functionally end up resulting in the general bullshit that you do describe... its just that quantifying the exact amount of bullshit happening, due to illegitimate hedonic adjustments... is a statistical and accounting nightmare.
Wouldn't hedonic adjustments go the other direction from what the parent comment is saying? If the quality goes down, then the adjustment should increase the stated inflation.
I read the parent comment as talking about substitution effects in consumer behavior, but the CPI doesn't reweight month to month (it used to only adjust once every few years, but has recently switched to once a year).
So generally, substitution bias makes the CPI overstate the inflation as actually experienced by the typical household.
Beef, in particular, has experienced an intense price shock following a national shortage of cattle, with the national herd at a 73-year low.
This stems from severe drought conditions that have been plaguing the cattle-heavy mountain west for the better part of the last decade. Higher feed prices have also contributed to rising prices. But even beyond that, demand for beef continues to outpace the supply, driving prices upward as the raw supply of cattle falls.
I guess vegans can kinda-sorta rejoice. We're killing fewer cows and wasting less animal product, as the conditions of our country making herding both environmentally and ecologically unsustainable. This has spurred more investment into alt-meats, while also forcing states to grapple with how they're expending diminished water reserves.
But since we live in a plutocracy, I'm not sure we'll get better policy out of these material changes to the ecology. Mark Zuckerberg can keep force-feeding his Austin steers buckets of macadamia nuts while his AI factors belch CO^2^ and guzzle potable water long after the rest of us are living in Gaza-like conditions.
I guess vegans can kinda-sorta rejoice. We’re killing fewer cows and wasting less animal product, as the conditions of our country making herding both environmentally and ecologically unsustainable. This has spurred more investment into alt-meats, while also forcing states to grapple with how they’re expending diminished water reserves.
I switched to being a vegetarian proper about a year ago, and its been a little validating that my grocery bills went down even when meat was more affordable, but now is dramatically cheaper since Quorn and Impossible meat haven't inflated in price at all (and are even more affordable when picked up in bulk on sale for the freezer).
Those two alternatives are astonishingly good, even enabling me to convert my lifelong meat eating family to vegetarianism which was unreal to see. I can't even tell I'm not eating meat in all the meat-based dishes I use them in, they're so damn good. Also nice to avoid the increased cancer risk from red meat.
For anyone else reading this, I massively recommend giving those two meat alternatives a shot. Impossible is 1-to-1, and the Quorn only needs a good vegan bullion cube of whatever meat you're trying to replicate (or Marmite for Beef flavor) and it's perfect for anything.
People need to learn that when they hear 'inflation is down', it doesn't mean things are getting cheaper, it just means that the increase in cost is slowing down.
Is it a psychological tactic that news media is using to make consumers more complacent? Who knows. But, whenever I hear someone mention that phrase like things are improving, I die a little more each time.
How it feels when headlines celebrate that inflation is down:
Tactics like this can be used because the education system has gotten so bad that people have terrible critical thinking skills.
They want us smart enough to push the buttons and pull the levers, but dumb enough to not realize how badly we're getting fucked.
The Titanic is sinking slower! HORRAY!
I just think they're neat!
