Last Wednesday, we got an amusing intervention into the “real economic pain” vs “bad media vibes” debate from Sean Trende, who observed that it now costs about $125 dollars to have a multi-course restaurant meal featuring steak and lobster tails delivered to your home.
I think this illustrates an important subsidiary point in this dialogue: Leftists talking down the economy does not help progressives causes. Trende is not a leftist. He’s a Republican who wants Joe Biden to lose the election, Mike Johnson to expand his House majority, and Republicans to gain control of the senate. Like most partisans, he has sincerely held and deep-seated beliefs about American politics that have nothing to do with the ups and downs of the business cycle, and he believes — rightly — that emphasizing the negative aspects of the Biden’s economy will serve those ends. And that’s what he’s doing here.
Looking on the brighter side, I think what we’re seeing here, at least in part, is life in a society where incomes and spending power are high. Like everyone else, I prefer a cheap lobster tail to a pricey one. But we’re talking about a scenario in which a restaurant is charging its customers a high price for meal because it believes its customers can and will pay.
Inflation-adjusted spending on food services and accommodations is at an all-time high. We saw something quite different during the Great Recession — people spent less on restaurant meals in 2008 than they did in 2007, and restaurant spending fell even further in 2009. It rose in 2010, but was still below the 2007 level. Not until the third quarter of 2011 did inflation-adjusted restaurant spending exceeded its Q4 2007 level.
I don’t think it makes sense for me to tell people how to feel about the economy.
What I can say is that there’s a clear difference between “people are so flush with cash that they are dining out more than ever despite higher prices” and “people are so squeezed financially that they’re cutting back on dining out,” and to me, the former feels like a better economic situation than the latter. If you feel differently, that’s fine — you do you. But if your idea is that you want to inspire people to be frustrated with longstanding features of the American social and economic model and interested in advocating instead for a more comprehensive European-style welfare state, then I don’t think this whining about the cost of DoorDash is really going to help. If Democrats defy the polls, win back the House, hold the Senate, and keep Joe Biden in the Oval Office, they will expand the welfare state at least a little bit (maybe more, depending on what happens). If they lose, Republicans will pare it back to some extent (maybe a lot, depending on what happens).
But if you have no ideological motives and just sincerely wants to pay less for lobster tails at Outback Steakhouse, it’s important to understand that electing Donald Trump isn’t going to help with that.
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