{"id":28672,"date":"2026-08-05T15:06:22","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T10:06:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=28672"},"modified":"2026-08-05T15:06:22","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T10:06:22","slug":"check-the-data-doom-and-gloomers-food-costs-arent-what-you-think","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=28672","title":{"rendered":"Check the data, doom-and-gloomers \u2014 food costs aren&#8217;t what you think"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<br \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content%2Fuploads%2Fsites%2F2%2F2026%2F08%2F2026-brooklyn-borough-new-york-135685502.jpg?quality%3D90%26strip%3Dall\" \/><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Voters have a God-given right to complain. That\u2019s why we have politics.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>It wouldn\u2019t hurt, though, if we occasionally took a minute to place our problems in historical context.<\/p>\n<p>Otherwise, we risk falling into a doom-and-gloom spiral that threatens to undo our grasp on reality.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Take grocery prices.<\/p>\n<p>Polls\u00a0show\u00a0that two-thirds of the American public consider groceries to be \u201cunaffordable.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The anxiety over prices is driving people to embrace socialist ideas like <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/02\/25\/us-news\/mamdani-wants-nyc-to-spend-70m-on-feasibility-study-for-city-run-grocery-store-pet-project-sources\/\" id=\"smartlink-7vscf017\">Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s $70 million city-owned supermarket chain<\/a>.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"single__inline-module aligncenter wp-block-nypost-editor-primary-tag\">\n<\/aside>\n<p>And it\u2019s the reason why many right-wing economic populists are pestering President Trump to stop fighting Iran so he can \u201cfocus\u201d on lowering food prices.<\/p>\n<p>Sorry, but they\u2019re all wrong: We\u2019re not living through an unprecedented food crisis.<\/p>\n<p>In 1901, the average American family spent 42% of its disposable budget on food, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.<\/p>\n<p>In 1945 it was 23%. In 1965 it was 15%. In 1985 it was around 12%.<\/p>\n<p>Today, per <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2025\/11\/30\/opinion\/the-illegal-orders-minefield-a-food-price-win-for-americans-and-other-commentary\/\" id=\"smartlink-1cdywyy2\">Agriculture Department calculations<\/a>, it\u2019s\u00a09.7%.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"single__inline-module alignright\">\n\t<\/aside>\n<p>That number is driven by a\u00a0historically high rate of\u00a0dining out and having food delivered.<\/p>\n<p>If we remove\u00a0eating out\u00a0from the equation and measure only grocery and supermarket shopping, the average family spends\u00a0just 7.9%\u00a0of its\u00a0budget on food \u2014 and a discriminating shopper can probably do better.<\/p>\n<p>None of this is even to mention that modern consumers have access to an amazing array of products and delicacies from around the globe that would have blown the minds of previous generations.<\/p>\n<p>The American diet is the most diverse in the world, incorporating a wide variety of cuisines and year-round availability of products that were once seasonal.<\/p>\n<p>Because of highly efficient global supply chains, a person can go to any big-box store in the nation and buy affordable produce from Central America, or beverages from Asia, or salmon from Scandinavia or curry from India.<\/p>\n<p>Even with all this, Americans spend far less of their income on food than any people in any other nation on Earth, the USDA has found.<\/p>\n<p>Yet most voters are apparently functioning under the mistaken notion that everything about our economy, particularly food costs, is getting exponentially worse.<\/p>\n<p>Since Trump\u2019s inauguration, the cost of food has risen at a slower pace than overall inflation and is now well within the normal pre-COVID range.<\/p>\n<div class=\"single__inline-module inline-module inline-module--newsletter aligncenter inline-module--nypostbusinessunit aligncenter wp-block-nypost-editor-newsletter\" data-source-unit=\"Inline Newsletter Module Post Opinion\">\n<div class=\"inline-module__inner\">\n<div class=\"inline-module__title-wrapper\">\n<div class=\"inline-module__unsubmitted-title-wrapper\">\n<h3 class=\"inline-module__title headline headline--combo-sm-md\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGet opinions and commentary from our columnists\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/h3>\n<p class=\"inline-module__cta\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to our daily Post Opinion newsletter!\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><h3 class=\"inline-module__title headline headline--combo-sm-md\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\tThanks for signing up!\t\t\t\t\t<\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Even in the best of times, retail food prices\u00a0rise\u00a0between 2% and 3% year over year.<\/p>\n<p>In 2025, overall food prices were up 3% \u2014 but only 2.4% in supermarkets and groceries.<\/p>\n<p>Thus far\u00a0this year,\u00a0we\u2019ve seen a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/05\/23\/lifestyle\/10-states-revealed-where-family-of-4-spends-most-on-groceries\/\" id=\"smartlink-1xd33ioo\">3% rise overall<\/a>, with a 2.7% increase in home grocery prices.<\/p>\n<p>We don\u2019t need state-run supermarkets: Try brown-bagging it from time to time and you\u2019ll save plenty.<\/p>\n<p>It also seems that voters believe food prices have risen faster than their wages have.<\/p>\n<p>For most people, that\u2019s simply\u00a0untrue.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"single__inline-module alignleft\">\n\t<\/aside>\n<p>Over the past decade, which includes the COVID pandemic, American wages\u00a0rose\u00a0over 46%, while <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/07\/19\/lifestyle\/kroger-tops-list-for-cheapest-prices-over-walmart-and-aldi-new-study\/\" id=\"smartlink-j2durboy\">food prices rose around 34%.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s no question that we\u2019re still living with the inflationary domestic policy instituted by Washington during the pandemic, which affected nearly everything.<\/p>\n<p>Inflation is cumulative, of course, and it\u2019s unlikely we\u2019re ever going to see prices roll back to pre-COVID levels.<\/p>\n<p>Many recent hits on grocery bills, though, have little to do with government policy.<\/p>\n<p>The outbreak of the <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/07\/01\/business\/big-egg-producers-artificially-inflated-prices-as-americans-struggled-to-buy-groceries-must-now-pay-3-3m-doj\/\" id=\"smartlink-ji5azw16\">avian flu spiked egg prices<\/a>, for instance, and a long drought has boosted the cost of beef.<\/p>\n<p>But there\u2019s very little a president can do about such environmental impacts, or about normal levels of inflation.<\/p>\n<p>Trump recently <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/08\/03\/us-news\/trump-lashes-out-at-big-oil-for-making-too-much-money-during-iran-war-they-ought-to-give-some-of-that-back\/\" id=\"smartlink-142t4z71\">blasted Exxon and Chevron executives<\/a> for making \u201ctoo much money,\u201d and demanded those companies lower gas prices.<\/p>\n<p>The harangue was surely for voters\u2019 benefit, since <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/07\/03\/business\/big-oil-heads-for-biggest-profits-in-years-as-trump-pushes-for-lower-gas-prices\/\">oil is a\u00a0fungible commodity<\/a> whose price is dictated by the world market and not CEOs.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But the president can\u2019t berate supermarkets \u2014 because while profits have fluctuated greatly in the fossil fuel industry, the grocery business is consistently one of the <em>least<\/em> lucrative in the country, with profit margins around 2%.<\/p>\n<p>So far in 2026, supermarkets have seen a meager\u00a01.32%\u00a0net profit.<\/p>\n<p>Grievance politics might be popular, but Big Grocery isn\u2019t ripping you off.<\/p>\n<p>Every generation lives in the context of its own experiences. I get it.<\/p>\n<p>Still, for 300,000 years of human existence people were perpetually teetering on the edge of starvation.<\/p>\n<p>Today, multi-billion-dollar industries exist\u00a0for the sole purpose of helping us eat <em>less<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>So take a moment\u2019s break from the intense pessimism of modern politics and appreciate the extraordinary truth: We\u2019re living in an era of astonishing affordability and abundance.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><em>David Harsanyi is a senior writer at the Washington Examiner. X: @davidharsanyi<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Voters have a God-given right to complain. That\u2019s why we have politics.\u00a0 It wouldn\u2019t hurt, though, if we occasionally took a minute to place our problems in historical context. Otherwise, we risk falling into a doom-and-gloom spiral that threatens to undo our grasp on reality.\u00a0 Take grocery prices. Polls\u00a0show\u00a0that two-thirds of the American public consider&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28673,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/08\/2026-brooklyn-borough-new-york-135685502.jpg?quality=75&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pics-news"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}