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Comment by cheriot | Hacker News Reader

Before the doomers run away with this thread, real spending on food prepared at home is down. This is more than off set by increased spending at restaurants. This returns to the pre-covid trends.

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This is technically correct ("the best kind of correct!"), but the upward march of that inflation-adjusted trend graph is pretty clear. I'm not a doomer, just trying to be even-handed.

It simply means that people are living a better life and can afford to cook less and eat out more. Positive indicator without any "if"-s and "but"-s.

That's a reflection of a growing economy. Real incomes are higher so people have more to spend.

Edit: add data

Real personal income https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RPI

Real GDP https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDPC1/

I think I'm getting the unit right on this graph. Food at home as a percentage of disposable income: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1aWLA

What in the absolute hell are you talking about?

Groceries are up easily 20-30% over the last few years. Some items more, some have stayed kind of stable.

It's ludicrous.

Would anyone reading this say their grocery bill has gone down since 4 years ago??

That's not what this is saying. It's a long term shift in food spending to restaurants.

I'd love to see a better understanding of why American HN commenters, a cohort that likely makes 2-3x the typical compensation of an ordinary American, wants to catatastrophize a pretty decent to great American economy.

The comments are literally data being "refuted" with anecdotes.

Agreed. There's a lot of smart people on HN, but the economics commentary is consistently not great.

Might be the political characteristics of the tech worker crowd. Big split between the libertarians who have claimed high inflation even when America had objectively low inflation (usually as a justification for crypto), the conspiratorial far-right that thinks that the administration is falsifying economic data because they want to end democracy, and the far-left aligned folks that have to say the economy is bad for in-group signaling even though none of them are acting like the economy is all too bad.

Consumers spending more on food because they're eating out more because they can afford it isn't a sign of a bad economy in any way.

I think that's a lot of it. Even the way econ/finance interpretations of surveys has changed because responses are now driven by politics. People will say their own finances are great, but the economy is horrible.

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