The price of food at home has risen much more rapidly than the price of food away from home. The prices that are rising most rapidly in the economy are not the ones where we would expect to see a big impact from labor costs. Energy prices are not a function really of American wages at all or not to any significant extent. And other services, we're seeing very little price rises. So if we had a story about this is all about wages, we would see a very different mix of price increases.
In this Live Interview from 7/8/22, we break down US media's inflation discourse that places the blame for rising food and gas prices squarely on the shoulders of greedy Burger King cashiers living high on the government hog. With J.W. Mason, Associate Professor of Economics at John Jay College, City University of New York and a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute.