President Joe Biden couldn’t be bothered to submit to a pre-Super Bowl interview with friendly CBS News, but he did have time to record a video complaining about “shrinkflation” that conveniently ignored his own role in causing the phenomenon.
“It’s Super Bowl Sunday,” Biden announced at the start of the 48-second video posted on his official X page Sunday morning. “And if you’re anything like me, you like to be surrounded by a snack or two while watching the big game.”
Apparently, Biden is used to buying some exceptionally large snacks if he can be “surrounded” by just one or two. And this year, which is just coincidentally a presidential-election year, he’s noticed that it takes more than one or two to besiege him.
“You know, when buying snacks for the game, you might have noticed one thing: sports drinks bottles are smaller, a bag of chips has fewer chips, but they’re still charging us just as much,” said Biden, adding that “what makes me the most angry” is that it’s happened to ice-cream cartons, too. (The even-wealthier former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is surely also irked by the fact that it costs more to stock her famous $24,000 freezer.)
“I’ve had enough of what they call shrinkflation,” declared Biden. “It’s a rip-off.”
Who could disagree? Paying the same price for less product means our dollars don’t go as far. Everyone would like to see it stop.
To properly treat the disease of shrinkflation, however, one must first come to the correct diagnosis of its cause. On that count, Dr. President failed miserably. In the video, he claimed that “companies are trying to pull a fast one” by surreptitiously shrinking their product sizes and simply demanded that they “put a stop to this.” That’s like telling a person who’s dying of cancer to make his tumors stop growing.
Shrinkflation, like price inflation, is a symptom, not a cause. When the government cranks out currency, it reduces the value of all the currency in circulation, which drives prices up and causes businesses to seek ways of keeping their selling prices down to retain customers. One way of doing that is by shrinking their product sizes.
“Don’t let President Biden gaslight you,” the Heritage Foundation posted in response to Biden’s video. “‘Shrinkflation’ is not the problem, Bidenomics is.”
The think tank linked to a December article by Research Fellow EJ Antoni pointing out that, when it comes to inflation, “businesses have gotten the short end of the stick.”
The producer price index is used to measure inflation on the products and services businesses buy — sometimes called wholesale inflation — and that index has risen 17.5% since Biden took office. Conversely, the consumer price index, the widely cited metric for inflation faced by American families, is up 17.1% over that same time.
Businesses have actually been sheltering consumers from some cost increases in an effort to maintain market share and not lose customers. That also explains why, according to the Biden administration’s Census Bureau, total corporate profits have fallen for the last six quarters after adjusting for inflation.
And this isn’t merely a recent phenomenon. In not a single month of Biden’s presidency have the cumulative cost increases to consumers caught up to the cumulative cost increases faced by businesses. And yet, Biden has the gall to demand “greedy” corporations stop “price gouging.”
Only die-hard Democrats, it seems, were taken in by Biden’s transparent attempt to deflect blame from his own policies, including the typically misnamed Inflation Reduction Act, which even he confessed had “nothing to do with inflation.”
Everyone else responded to Biden’s shrinkflation video with either disbelief or scorn (or both).
National Review senior writer Charles C.W. Cooke quipped, “Imagine how little respect you must have for voters to try this.”
“Joe Biden couldn’t do a Super Bowl interview because it would have been passed [sic] his bedtime,” remarked Seattle radio host Jason Rantz, “but he did have time to post a propaganda video hoping you won’t realize shrinkflation is a result of inflation courtesy of Bidenomics.”
“The reason we are seeing such high prices is because you and your corrupt administration are giving billions of tax payer [sic] dollars away to Ukraine and illegal immigrants while your own citizens cannot feed or house themselves,” commented Right Angle News Network.
The satire site U.S. Ministry of Truth responded: “The $5.2 trillion we printed had nothing to do with it.”
“Is this a joke?” asked columnist David Marcus.
Unfortunately, it isn’t. If it were, though, Biden might well win the prize for this year’s most guffaw-inducing Super Bowl spot.
