Paywalled, which is really a shame, I'm sure there's a need to offer a solid rebuttal to each very reasonable argument in the article.
Egg prices increased 8.5% in January from a month earlier and are up 70.1% over the past year, the highest annual rate since 1973. The deadliest avian-influenza outbreak on record has devastated poultry flocks across the U.S., leading the price of eggs to rise more than any other grocery item in 2022, according to Information Resources Inc. U.S. egg inventories were 29% lower in the final week of December 2022 than at the beginning of 2022, according to the USDA. Frozen, noncarbonated juices and drinks—a category that includes frozen orange juice—rose by 1.5% in January from a month earlier, and the 12.4% annual increase is the highest in over a decade. Florida orange growers are harvesting their smallest crop in nearly 90 years, the result of a freeze, two hurricanes and a citrus disease that is laying waste to its groves. Breakfast cereal increased more modestly in January from a month earlier—just 0.4%—but prices in the category were up 15% over a year, in part because of elevated global grain prices resulting from disruptions related to the war in Ukraine. Breakfast lovers might be better off just having a cup of coffee—but go with roasted, not instant. Prices for roasted coffee declined by 0.1% last month, but instant coffee rose by a 3.6% monthly increase for instant coffee. Several breakfast staples saw sharp price increases due to a perfect storm of bad weather and disease outbreaks—and continued effects from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Thanks for the wrecking ball to the paywall. I'm quite familiar with all of the supposed explanations, but this entire situation is, on its face, absurd. Yes, some wages have gone up, but not on pace with inflation, and the people these price hikes hurt the most are working for an offensively stagnant minimum wage. I know that our collective food supplies are sensitive to disruption in service of low prices, to large degree, but when we have problems like these, there is never any accountability at the CEO or shareholder level. All cost increases are passed on and profit margins are preserved. And the increasing monopolization of grocers and suppliers is NOT helping. So fuck yeah, take away breakfast! Whatever we need to make people angry enough to riot like the French when faced with a 2-year retirement age increase. It's going to come to that or worse, at this rate, within about a decade or less, I'll wager.
If it wasn't clear, the WSJ was being tongue-in-cheek. Rich wypepo definitely cried wolf too many times on this one; you can only make so many snide comments about avocado toast before people assume any food canard is serious. If they were real about it, however, they would talk about how millennials are increasing the cost of business travel by driving up the operating expenses for Embassy Suites through their overindulgence in the limited resources of eggs and cereal.
Oh, please. The true "learned man's" morning routine is fentanyl counteracted by pre-workout stimulants for some whore fuckin' before my great dane brings me a physical copy of the Wall Street Journal from the end of my 3-km-long driveway after the guardhouse opens the gate for him (temporarily), and then when I'm done with the crossword I call the Wall Street Journal to donate somewhere between $20k - $30k (every day) depending on how much they shit on the working class within the first eight pages, but somehow I'm still angry so it's an hour in the sauna before the sun's high enough in the sky for tanning, after which I'm off to my anti-aging facility, cocktails on the way home with B-dawg, hit the cancer gala for hors d'oeuvre, home for my nightly two wine bottles, scold the kid, stream English Premiere League live, pass out, very productive day. I earned this, and all I had for breakfast was whore, so you can skip 1/3 of your daily meals too.
Clickbait by the WSJ: Clickbait by Fortune: Fortune has toned their title down so maybe they felt a little heat there but the clip art shows that they're definitely shouting at clouds.
Only U.S. conservatives can currently get away with saying "just don't retire yet because of the political party we oppose!" while pretending that cuts to entitlements aren't something being seriously considered by their own party. But I have 100% faith that the rest of the wealthy western world will catch up soon. Modern monetary theory and federal debt aside: Why we're not in a full-blown recession yet is beyond me. btw, the need for cheap labor clashing with anti-all-immigration rhetoric is so hilarious to me. Sitting in the Diogenes Club, whispering "I say, old chaps, the racism's gotten a bit out of hand, no??"
mmmmmno, actually. From Hannah Arendt to Benedict Anderson to Jason Stanley to Johnathan Haidt, the reality is populists and nationalists everywhere can get away with saying "we oppose whatever we want to oppose with the thinnest of justifications" because that's the way it works. Liberals ally over ideas. Conservatives ally over traditions. And because traditions are fluid, "our people don't do that" is whatever you need it to be. It's a double-edged sword: Trump fully took the Republicans from "here's a constellation of memes that we all generally believe in and beat each other to death with while we jockey for position" to "does Trump like you." Burned a lot of people to the ground, that did. Then Trump tried the most half-assed coup in the history of democracy and now, the party whose memes were all flushed, is busily wallpapering over the void to see who gets to conduct the barking. That's why Biden did something unprecedented at the State of the Union - he called out one of their memes, the one that they all hold closest to their hearts in close company but disavow loudly in polite company, and made them take a position in public. If you're a part of the memepool it was super annoying and I hate you I hate you I hate you but if you're running in a district where you might possibly be opposed, you now have to answer to non-believers. Couple ways to look at this: 1) Because we move the goalposts on "recession." If we were using '90s rules we entered a recession in November. 2) Because Claudia Sahm and others have done an effective-enough job of calling the Fed out for their Phillips Curve worship that the Fed is no longer going "we will raise rates until more people lose their jobs." I think normies believe there's an iron-clad definition of "recession" that we either hit or we don't, rather than understanding that recessions and depressions have always been called at least 90 days after the fact using metrics that are reorganized and reconfigured on the spot for political purposes. The Republican Party is currently in the throes of zealots whose prophet has been discredited. Since that prophet had no religious tradition and left no clear successor, their only recourse is an inquisition. It's a good time to avoid Spain - and what comes out of it may be virulent and powerful. But the most likely outcome of an internecine war is weakness and attrition.Only U.S. conservatives can currently get away with saying "just don't retire yet because of the political party we oppose!"
Why we're not in a full-blown recession yet is beyond me.
btw, the need for cheap labor clashing with anti-all-immigration rhetoric is so hilarious to me.