simpsonsshitposting

The American economy is three pyramid schemes in a trench coat

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.

https://www.bls.gov/cex/tables/calendar-year/mean-item-share-average-standard-error/cu-income-before-taxes-2022.pdf

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

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.

Brazil is the largest exporter of meat and Trump is tariffing them 50%

They use a "basket of goods" that conveniently has nothing to do with how real people actually live.

2.7% for the rich, they don't care what the serfs eat

Lab grow all meats. Problem solved. Too bad Trump and his stupid MAGA base are against it. Timeline blows.

Grow your own food.

Start supporting your local animal farms and find yourself a butcher.

It’s time to become self dependent and we are in a unique period of time where we have the knowledge and material to do it on an individual and hopefully local level.

A lot of people already do this, just not the ones in your circle!

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'm gonna drop this here. No reason. Probably the same no reason they chose this topic last week.

Planet Money (podcast)

What happens when governments cook the books
August 8, 202510:48 PM ET
By Mary Childs, Sally Helm, Jess Jiang, Sam Yellowhorse Kesler

https://www.npr.org/2025/08/08/1256971798/bls-bureau-labor-statistics-greece-argentina