Fans of Home Alone, along with a few critics of "Bidenomics," are using a scene from the Christmas movie to vent their frustrations over the price of groceries.
In the famous scene from the holiday classic, 8-year-old Kevin McCallister, played by Macaulay Culkin, is shopping alone after his family accidentally leaves him at their home in Chicago while they've flown off to Paris.
"Are those microwave dinners any good?" the youngster asks the clerk as she rings up his items. "I have a coupon for that," he informs her about one item.
The child's haul from his trip to the market includes plastic food wrap, a bag of toy Army men, milk, bread, toilet paper, laundry detergent, fabric softener, mac and cheese, Tropicana orange juice and the turkey TV dinner.
The total cost for the items in the 1990 film was $19.83.
Last year, TikTok user Rochelle Chalmers purchased the same goods at a Kroger grocery store for $44.40, an increase of 123.9 percent. And this year, TikTok user Geoffrey Lyons did likewise in a video viewed 4.3 million times. His total was $69.99.
While some of the nearly 7,000 commenters on the Lyons video weren't surprised by the increased cost, given it's been more than three decades, others weren't so generous.
"Old man on tv says we have a thriving economy," one wrote. "Welcome to Biden's America," wrote another. Some others called inflation a wash, given that the federal minimum wage has increased 91 percent from 1990 to 2023, and more in some states. In California, for example, it's up 265 percent.
Also this year, NewsNation, an all-news cable network reaching about 80 million homes, ran the same exercise at a store in Rockford, Illinois, about 90 miles from Chicago, and it came to $57.27 (though it had to go to Amazon to purchase the Army men).
It also ran the numbers at a Chicago store and it came to $72.28, an increase of 264.5 percent over what Kevin paid in 1990.
According the U.S. Inflation Calculator, which measures the buying power of the U.S. dollar over time, an item costing $19.83 in 1990 would cost about $46.68 today, a 135.4 percent increase.
Last month, Republican members of the U.S. Senate Joint Economic Committee used the Consumer Price Index and Consumer Expenditure Survey and other government data to conclude that Americans needed an extra $11,400 annually to maintain their standard of living compared to January 2021 just prior to inflation hitting a 40-year-high.
In June, though, the White House issued a statement declaring that, "Bidenomics is working: the president's plan grows the economy from the middle out and bottom up—not the top down."
The document noted that inflation had fallen for 11 straight months and the economy added 13 million jobs.
"There were more than 10 million applications for new small businesses filed in 2021 and 2022 — the strongest two years on record. America has seen the strongest growth since the pandemic of any leading economy in the world," the document states.
But such data isn't stopping critics from using the scene from Home Alone to criticize the president.
"Bidenflation is crushing family budgets this holiday season," a reporter at Breitbart News wrote in a story about the price of groceries when the movie debuted 33 years ago compared with today.
Source (Archive)
In the famous scene from the holiday classic, 8-year-old Kevin McCallister, played by Macaulay Culkin, is shopping alone after his family accidentally leaves him at their home in Chicago while they've flown off to Paris.
"Are those microwave dinners any good?" the youngster asks the clerk as she rings up his items. "I have a coupon for that," he informs her about one item.
The child's haul from his trip to the market includes plastic food wrap, a bag of toy Army men, milk, bread, toilet paper, laundry detergent, fabric softener, mac and cheese, Tropicana orange juice and the turkey TV dinner.
The total cost for the items in the 1990 film was $19.83.
Last year, TikTok user Rochelle Chalmers purchased the same goods at a Kroger grocery store for $44.40, an increase of 123.9 percent. And this year, TikTok user Geoffrey Lyons did likewise in a video viewed 4.3 million times. His total was $69.99.
While some of the nearly 7,000 commenters on the Lyons video weren't surprised by the increased cost, given it's been more than three decades, others weren't so generous.
"Old man on tv says we have a thriving economy," one wrote. "Welcome to Biden's America," wrote another. Some others called inflation a wash, given that the federal minimum wage has increased 91 percent from 1990 to 2023, and more in some states. In California, for example, it's up 265 percent.
Also this year, NewsNation, an all-news cable network reaching about 80 million homes, ran the same exercise at a store in Rockford, Illinois, about 90 miles from Chicago, and it came to $57.27 (though it had to go to Amazon to purchase the Army men).
It also ran the numbers at a Chicago store and it came to $72.28, an increase of 264.5 percent over what Kevin paid in 1990.
According the U.S. Inflation Calculator, which measures the buying power of the U.S. dollar over time, an item costing $19.83 in 1990 would cost about $46.68 today, a 135.4 percent increase.
Last month, Republican members of the U.S. Senate Joint Economic Committee used the Consumer Price Index and Consumer Expenditure Survey and other government data to conclude that Americans needed an extra $11,400 annually to maintain their standard of living compared to January 2021 just prior to inflation hitting a 40-year-high.
In June, though, the White House issued a statement declaring that, "Bidenomics is working: the president's plan grows the economy from the middle out and bottom up—not the top down."
The document noted that inflation had fallen for 11 straight months and the economy added 13 million jobs.
"There were more than 10 million applications for new small businesses filed in 2021 and 2022 — the strongest two years on record. America has seen the strongest growth since the pandemic of any leading economy in the world," the document states.
But such data isn't stopping critics from using the scene from Home Alone to criticize the president.
"Bidenflation is crushing family budgets this holiday season," a reporter at Breitbart News wrote in a story about the price of groceries when the movie debuted 33 years ago compared with today.
Source (Archive)
