Thanksgiving is right around the corner. By now, you’ve almost certainly been to the grocery store. Your turkey is probably basting in the fridge and your pumpkin pie might be daring you to cut an early slice — you might have even prepped a few sides ahead of time. But one thing is certain: your heart rate spiked as the cashier scanned each additional Thanksgiving staple at checkout. While you know you paid more than last year, the corporate media is determined to make you believe otherwise.
“Thanksgiving will be less expensive this year,” CNN audaciously claimed. CBS reassured consumers that their “Turkey Day feast is likely to be cheaper this year.” “Thanksgiving dinner may be cheaper than you think,” USA Today in an obvious nod to White House talking points. As CNN reported, the White House is “eager to promote” lower costs as Joe Biden heads into the campaign season.
But it was NBC that gave away the game. “Thanksgiving costs are down from turkey to travel,” an NBC headline read, implying price drops across the board. The truth, however, requires you to read between the lines. Turkey prices are indeed down from last year’s high, as an avian flu ravaged the turkey production. Travel costs are down in some areas as well. Yet for just about everything else you will be paying more.(RELATED: KJP Whips Out A Literal Food Menu To Claim This Thanksgiving Is Actually One Of The ‘Cheapest Ever’)
The Consumer Price Index continued to rise in October, while inflation remained elevated at 3.2 percent — up further from the 7.7 percent inflation in October of the previous year. So across the board, costs have risen over 10 percent these last two years. However, according to E. J. Antoni, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, that figure doesn’t even tell the whole story. The cost of Thanksgiving dinner has increased by a whopping 26 percent since Biden took office, the Daily Caller News Foundation reported.
Turkey prices, while modestly down from last year, increased over 30 percent since January 2021. Stuffing, bread, desserts, cranberry sauce, gravy, corn — all rose by 20 percent or more since Biden took office. Potatoes remained relatively stable, at only about 14 percent. Green beans are a bargain, experiencing only 8.9 percent inflation.
And just in time for the holidays – get ready for the most expensive Thanksgiving ever next week, w/ many of staples for America’s holiday up 20% or more: pic.twitter.com/uGfqomxNFt
— E.J. Antoni, Ph.D. (@RealEJAntoni) November 14, 2023
“After two and a half years of abnormally high price increases, Americans are left with the most expensive Thanksgiving ever,” Antoni told the DCNF.
“As the White House’s mouthpieces like to say, ‘That’s Bidenomics in action!’
As Antoni points out, high consumer prices are the logical conclusion of the budgetary blowout that came under Bidenomics. But it’s the White House and media framing that is perhaps even more indicative of the utter catastrophe that is Bidenomics.
The official party line is that “Bidenomics is working” — and if you don’t believe it, that’s your problem. In speech after speech, Biden continues to tout the strength of the economic recovery under his watch. He often cites macroeconomic indicators — the type of figures that academics and bureaucrats study and distort in inscrutable white papers, but that don’t translate to what average people feel as they struggle to put the same Thanksgiving meal on the table that their kids have always been accustomed to. What’s worse, the administration can’t even be trusted to honestly represent those indicators.
Over 13 million new jobs created—that’s Bidenomics. pic.twitter.com/UQPydZMLnE
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) July 28, 2023
For example, job growth is useful for determining a broad economic picture. It complements the unemployment rate, showing whether the typical business is doing well enough to hire new people. High job growth suggests the economy is in a strong position to allocate a job for anybody who wants one. But that doesn’t mean that you, as an individual,will be able to find a job that suits your needs and skills. Neither does it mean that every business is in a position to hire. Without a comparison to other times and conditions, one static figure means little.
Therefore, look slightly below the surface and you might find that solid job growth on paper obscures a much less rosy reality. While Vice President Kamala Harris bragged how Biden dwarfed the Trump economy by “creating” 13 million new jobs, statistics from Trading Economics show that the current employment rate is still slightly low than it was just before COVID hit. Biden’s gains are merely replacing the jobs temporarily lost during Covid. In fact, the rebound occurred at a much slower rate under Biden than it did under Trump.
The same goes for inflation. While Biden is hoping to boast of lower prices this Thanksgiving — the appropriate answer is to ask, “Compared to what?” Yes, compared to last year, the rate of inflation has slowed down, but it is still going up. While prices may have only increased 3 percent this October, they increased over 7 percent last October, and over 6 percent the October before that. The White House truly believes the American people are too stupid to do basic math.(RELATED: ‘But Still’: MSNBC Analyst Touts ‘Low’ Thanksgiving Costs Before Noting How Substantially Lower They Were Under Trump)
In this way, Thanksgiving dinner becomes the perfect metaphor for Bidenomics. Without giving any other context, the White House and their corporate media allies can technically get away saying “prices are down.” They can even point to the cheaper turkey, a veritable benchmark for all things Thanksgiving. But dig slightly below the surface, or even just take a closer look at your grocery bill, and the lies, manipulations, and distortions all begin to unravel.