White House needs to talk turkey about inflation

NEW YORK, Nov 22 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Hey, White House. Let’s talk turkey. Not the meat Americans eat on Thanksgiving. Rather, the other kind: let’s have an honest conversation about inflation. It stinks. As people sit down to carve birds on Thursday, they’ll have some hard feelings about it. First, grocery bills are still too high. Second, paychecks aren’t quite keeping up. And, third, communications from U.S. President Joe Biden could be more genuine about all that.

His office issued a press release on Tuesday touting “lower prices” this Thanksgiving, the U.S. holiday where people stuff themselves silly with bread, meat, and pie. The release noted that lower inflation was among the things that Americans should be thankful for. And it’s true that price increases have slowed and, for some items, prices have even fallen. Gasoline prices, for example, are down a quarter from their high in June 2022, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The price of the average Thanksgiving meal has dropped from last year, too.

Trouble is, Americans are still paying over 50% more to fill a gas tank than they did when Biden took office in January 2021. Meantime food prices in the average U.S. city are up a fifth since December 2020, according to the St. Louis Federal Reserve. The cost of a typical Thanksgiving meal hit a record high last year, per calculations by the American Farm Bureau Federation, which the administration is citing. That they’ve edged down a little since then is only meager help when they are still a quarter higher than they were in 2019.

Its true, as the administration points out, that higher wages help. But not enough - the average hourly earnings of employees in the private sector are up just 14% since December 2020. And for the average American, it matters a lot. While many economic indicators suggest that U.S. citizens are doing pretty well overall, people don’t really feel that way. According to an October poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, nearly three-quarters of respondents say the economy is “ poor ”. Biden might argue that their pomegranate martini glasses are half full. In return, they might feel he’s serving up baloney.

CONTEXT NEWS

The U.S. White House issued a press release on Nov. 21 saying that “We have a lot to be thankful for this Thanksgiving—including more progress bringing down inflation.”