You may have noticed by now that there is a kind of low-level partisan warfare taking place between those who think inflation has soured people on the economy and those who say the economy is great and people are being irrational by complaining. The sides in this debate don’t line up perfectly with the usual partisan divide but generally speaking it’s conservatives who are convinced “Bidenomics” isn’t a great selling point and it’s liberals who are convinced things are great and anyone who says otherwise is a lying hack.

Case in point, this TikTok video was published last December and became sort of infamous:

@topherolive #prices #inflation #laborshortage #fastfood ♬ original sound – Topher

This video went viral and then went viral again a couple months ago. It became enough of a talking points that the White House took an interest and then, 11 months after it was initially posted, Taylor Lorenz wrote about it for the Washington Post using unnamed White House sources.

One YouTube video from this month with 2 million views inaccurately describes it as “a Big Mac meal” that cost $16. Posts on Reddit, the conservative site Twitchy and elsewhere tied the cost to President Biden’s economic management: Inflation, the theory went, had gotten so out of control that the price of a fast-food burger was approaching $20.

These stories soon reached the White House Office of Digital Strategy, which tracked the meme as one of many exaggerated examples of the nation’s economic woes, according to a White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to reflect internal discussions. In reality, inflation has been steadily subsiding, and last week the government reported price hikes had eased yet again in October. The average Big Mac nationally as of this summer cost $5.58, up from $4.89 — or roughly 70 cents — before Biden took office, according to an index maintained by the Economist. That’s up more than 10 percent, but it’s not $16.

And yet one anomalous price from one store in Idaho 11 months ago was ripping through people’s social media feeds as if it explained the entire economy. One Democratic official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations, said: “What are we supposed to do, tell the president or Chuck Schumer to send a tweet saying, ‘Hey, most Big Macs aren’t that expensive?’ It would look ridiculous.”

If this sounds crazy/hilarious to you then…yes, I agree. But also, did you notice how stealthily dishonest the Post’s description was. For one thing, they fault a YouTuber for calling it a “Big Mac meal” and then in the very next paragraph cite the cost of a Big Mac (by itself), which is obviously going to be much cheaper than the double quarter pounder with large fries and a drink meal ordered by the guy in the TikTok video. The average cost of that meal is not under $6 but closer to $12. The point is, if you’re going to complain about people making apples to orange comparisons, don’t make apples to orange comparisons.

All of that is just a preface to something I noticed today on X. The same fight has broken out, this time over the price of chicken soup. The argument actually started with a days long fight between Nate Silver and someone named Will Stancil (and others). Silver is in the ‘voters are rational’ camp and Stancil is in the ‘people be crazy’ camp.

Yeah, the story is that the high inflation of 2021 and 2022 left many workers objectively worse off at the end of the period than the start. In 2023 the balance of news has turned positive, though infation high-ish by historical norms. Fortunately for Biden there's still 2024. https://t.co/iIqjBO0p9B

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) December 13, 2023

There is also a secular trend toward greater negativity in news coverage, which helps to explain why the incumbency advantage is declining. That has some effect at the margin. But "voters still feel skittish about the economy" isn't hard to explain.https://t.co/L2OUn3tRoV

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) December 13, 2023

The alternative point of view is that people are being influenced not by facts but by bad vibes about the economy. Some are calling it the vibecession.

This is a crazy take. People today say they feel much worse about the economy than they have felt about objectively far worse economic situations in the past. Consumer sentiment was lower in Nov. than it was in April 2009, at the depths of the Great Recession. That's vibes. https://t.co/7PPMJhclAJ

— James Surowiecki (@JamesSurowiecki) December 13, 2023

This is a genuine puzzle that has baffled many scholars and experts (read: not Nate) who have looked at it. As many others have pointed out, you can run a basic regression with indicators like wage growth, and predict economic sentiment.. until 2020, when the model just implodes. pic.twitter.com/ovttRh3H2A

— Will Stancil (@whstancil) December 13, 2023

Stancil’s take is that the media is at fault.

ME: "The media keeps publishing stories about economic doom and it's making everyone doomy."

OTHERS: "That's stupid. That's impossible!"

CBS NEWS: "Compared to an impossible standard we made up and has never existed in reality, the economy sucks and you'll never be happy." pic.twitter.com/kLLMX75UnI

— Will Stancil (@whstancil) December 13, 2023

But Dems, who absolutely refuse to think about this message-transmission aspect of politics because it hurts their heads or something, continually try to triangulate between the people who they CAN win over and the people who literally NEVER praise them, no matter what.

— Will Stancil (@whstancil) December 13, 2023

His faith in this seems to border on being unfalsifiable.

Certainly the most superficial explanation for discontent is high prices; that's what people say in every survey and overwhelmingly what you hear one-on-one. But the degree of anger seems way greater than the actual prices merit, and econometrics confirm that.

— Will Stancil (@whstancil) December 13, 2023

And that, finally, brings us to Megan McArdle’s chicken soup. Note she was retweeting a complaint about restaurant prices sort of similar to the McDonald’s TikTok above.

Lot of cackling at this but I paid $50 today for a loaf of cheap French bread, a container of lettuce, and the ingredients to make chicken soup from scratch. This was at a Giant, not some twee organic market, and it was not an elaborate recipe requiring a dozen special items. https://t.co/51tFdOB1wW

— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) December 14, 2023

Stancil demanded receipts, literal ones.

If you’re going to do this sort of thing you should just post your receipt! Otherwise we’re all suspicious, because people have proven their price expectations are frequently insane https://t.co/ioVXW441KK

— Will Stancil (@whstancil) December 14, 2023

No of course not. But it’s genuinely pretty difficult to spend $50 dollars on chicken soup in most of the country, so supporting evidence is helpful if you make a claim like that. Otherwise people are going to do what they’re doing: show why chicken soup DOESN’T cost $50.

— Will Stancil (@whstancil) December 14, 2023

So we’ve gone from people are influenced by media vibes to think the economy is worse than it is to people are lying about what they spent on groceries? Stancil backed away from calling her a liar. Well, sort of. Maybe he’s saying she’s confused.

Over the past year there countless examples of someone paying more than they expect (a $16 McDonald’s hamburger!) and immediately using it to bolster the “inflation is out of control” narrative, and when you check the details it’s some special situation.

— Will Stancil (@whstancil) December 14, 2023

Recently, shoplifting trutherism has been my favorite twitter, but grocery trutherism is even more deliciously insane. Merciful heavens, folks, go outside and touch grass.

— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) December 14, 2023

It’s an interesting debate but it’s also immediately clear that Will Stancil is not really open to argument. Yes, the $16 McDonald’s hamburger was a special situation but not that special. The point is that while inflation may be back down to 3.1% prices are still high which does create all sorts of special situations that wouldn’t have been possible four years ago. People notice these things. But for some, that’s not good enough. Show us the receipts!

Jonathan, what is the point of this? If you would like me to concede that I did not buy the very cheapest chicken that I could have hunted through the bins for, very well, I concede it. What have you won?

— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) December 14, 2023

I bought … bulk chicken thighs. Giant brand. In sufficient quantities to first make stock, and then make soup. If you think saying "Well, that's a luxury purchase!" is somehow going to endear Biden to voters in 2024, you people have lost… your…. damn….. MINDS.

— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) December 14, 2023

I think the “people aren’t being rational” people fail to appreciate the degree to which they seem a bit obsessed with this, probably for reasons that aren’t primarily about economics.