He points to food prices having gone up about 20% since Biden took office, here, because this index is up that much since Biden took office. He wonders why food prices are actually up much more than that.
He obviously doesn't understand how this works.
On a quarterly measure, and year over year, the increases for this index are as follows after Biden taking office in 1Q2021:
2Q2021 0.9%
3Q 3.3%
4Q 6.1%
1Q2022 8.7%
2Q 11.6%
3Q 13.2%
4Q 12.1%
1Q2023 9.9%
2Q 5.9%
3Q 3.0%.
Assume the worst example from the shopper's list:
"A pound of turkey breast went from $3.14 to $6.72, a 114% increase" from late 2020 until now.
$3.14 goes to $3.17 in 2Q2021, and so on down the list until you come up with $6.41 by 3Q2023, pretty close to the $6.72 from the example. Remember this index is for all food at home, not turkey specifically nor any other individual food item. Some food prices go up more than others.
There's actually a turkey index. It's up a whopping 214%, not 20%. The shopper could be paying a lot more than $6.72 right now. Year over year prices were up 20% in 2021, and 72% in 2022 in the wake of an avian flu epidemic which wiped out the supply. In the first half of 2023 prices were up another 47% year over year.
Unless there's actual deflation in overall food prices, that is, sustained negative year over year reports instead of quarterly increase yoy after quarterly increase, higher prices are here to stay.
