Lately I’ve become obsessed with bacon — or, more accurately, with Donald Trump’s obsession with the price of bacon, which has long been his favorite gauge of inflation. For it seems to me that Trump’s false claims about bacon prices, and his assertions about what’s driving them, offer a window into his judgment. And the view isn’t pretty.
It probably won’t surprise you to hear that nothing Trump says about bacon prices is true. It would be an exaggeration to say that he lies as easily as he breathes; adults normally breathe 12 to 18 times each minute, whereas Trump, during his recent Mar-a-Lago news conference, uttered around only two lies or distortions a minute. But he does lie a lot — although to be fair I’m not sure whether he’s knowingly lying about bacon or merely willfully ignorant.
Nor should it surprise you that he keeps saying that bacon costs four or five times more than it did a few years ago, even though this claim has been thoroughly debunked. That is, as Daniel Dale of CNN points out, the candidate’s standard practice: “By virtue of shameless perseverance, Trump often manages to outlast most of the media’s willingness to correct any particular falsehood.”
Yet it seems to me that Trump’s bacon misinformation stands out from the rest of his falsehoods because it’s so easily refuted by everyday experience.
Contrast this with crime. When Trump declares that we’re in the midst of an unprecedented crime wave even though violent crime — especially murders — has been falling since soon after he left office, well, people often imagine that crime is terrible somewhere, even if they don’t experience it themselves. Notably, many Americans believe that New York, a surprisingly safe city, is an urban hellscape.
But almost everyone who buys groceries has at least a rough idea of what bacon costs. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says that in July the average price of bacon was $6.88 a pound. That fits with what I see: My local supermarket is currently offering the store brand for $5.69 a pound, but is charging more for name brands. There are grocery truthers out there claiming that official numbers greatly understate food inflation, but independent, private estimates of changes in grocery prices are basically identical to those from the B.L.S.
Share
Print
