Between groceries and restaurants, Americans are spending more of their income on food than they have in 30 years.
That’s according to the latest data from the USDA, which shows that U.S. consumers spent more than 11% of their disposable income on eating — whether at home or at a restaurant — in 2022, the highest percentage since 1991.
“This is really a metric that’s about the share of our disposable personal income which the USDA tracks, and which recently was at essentially a 31-year high,” Jesse Newman, food reporter for the Wall Street Journal, told CBS News.
Experts say painfully high food prices, and ongoing inflation more generally, help explain why many Americans are down on the economy despite low unemployment, rising wages and steady economic growth. Inflation is expected to continue slowing this year, with the National Association for Business Economists on Monday forecasting that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) — a basket of common goods and services — will decline to an annual rate of 2.4% this year, compared with 4.1% in 2023 and 8% in 2022.
2% inflation isn’t designed to hurt workers, it’s meant to encourage investment in the economy. It helps workers and people who are net borrowers.
If you are a net borrowers, you pay that back with future dollars. Inflation reduces the value of future dollars. Let’s say you get a 3% raise but inflation is 3%. Your boss is being stupid and you basically didn’t get a raise.
But if your mortgage is $2,000 per month, you now have 3% more money to pay it off. That’s because your mortgage doesn’t increase with inflation. So the inflation helps you pay off your loans.
It’s the same with businesses. Investors could either loan money out or invest directly in businesses. Higher inflation makes them more likely to invest in their businesses, because money sitting in the bank loses value due to inflation. This causes them to hire more people.
2% is a good sweet spot that encourages borrowing and investing in businesses, but isn’t too high. Obviously the problem now is that inflation remains above 2%, and there has been no relief from past increases. It would be much better if minimum wage was increased to help out people at the bottom deal with them.
my mortgage does go up with inflation because the central bank raises rates to fight inflation, and i live in a stupid country where a 25yr amortized mortgage isn’t really a 25yr mortgage… you need to renew it every 5 years at whatever interest rates the banks dream up.
Why would a 25 year fixed rate loan not exist? It hurts borrowers when rates are low and lenders when rates are high.
Although it saves you the trouble and expense of refinancing in five years when rates are low again.