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Paul Krugman
Bacon Prices and the Windmills of Trump’s Mind
Opinion Columnist
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.
So when Trump makes wild claims about how much bacon prices have gone up, you don’t need detailed analysis to know that those claims can’t be true. After all, his numbers would mean that a few years ago you could buy bacon for well under $2 a pound; bacon hasn’t actually been that cheap since the 1980s.
Oh, and Trump’s claim that bacon has become unaffordable is clearly false when you compare prices with the earnings of a typical worker. By that measure, bacon is more affordable now than it was during most of Trump’s time in office.
Why, then, does Trump go on about bacon? My guess is that he’s trying to sound like someone in touch with the lives of regular Americans, while inadvertently revealing that he hasn’t actually visited a supermarket lately, or maybe ever.
What’s really weird, however, is Trump’s explanation of what he imagines to be bacon’s unaffordability. You see, it’s all about wind power.
There have been some attempts to turn Trump’s ramblings on this subject into a coherent economic analysis. Wasted effort, in my view. Trump simply hates windmills, and expresses that hatred whenever he can.
And we more or less know why Trump hates wind. It goes back to his unsuccessful attempt to block an offshore wind farm that he claimed would ruin the view from a golf course he owns in Scotland.
All of which goes to show that you can’t talk about this year’s presidential campaign using conventional political language.
Normal candidates, like Kamala Harris, have policy views and policy ideas, which you can analyze and criticize for their accuracy and likely effects. Some commentators have been demanding that Harris provide more detail about her policy proposals, but the truth is that we have a pretty good idea what she will do on most issues if she wins — which can’t be said about her opponent.
For Trump doesn’t have coherent policy views; he has prejudices, some of them based on sheer petulance, that are impervious to facts. And his childishness and lack of connection to reality, while present all along, seem to have grown worse as he approaches 80.
It’s true that we have a good idea what he would try to do on some fronts — notably, impose large tariffs in an attempt to eliminate U.S. trade deficits and round up millions of people in an attempt to rid the nation of undocumented immigrants.
But Trump’s nonsensical views about bacon and windmills are among the many indications that he chooses to believe in (or at least chooses to tell) stories — about the economy, energy, crime and more — that fit his prejudices, and doesn’t change those stories even when it has been repeatedly pointed out that they’re completely at odds with reality. How do you think that will work out if, say, his tariffs don’t cure trade deficits or his plans for mass deportation have the catastrophic economic effects many analysts have predicted?
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Paul Krugman has been an Opinion columnist since 2000 and is also a distinguished professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center. He won the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on international trade and economic geography. @PaulKrugman
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