A Wall Street Journal article suggesting people simply stop eating all meals in a day to save money is ruffling feathers.
After decades at this point of being told that millennials are ruining the economy by buying avocado toast instead of the houses we can’t actually afford as the distribution of wealth shifts more and more to the 1%, it’s difficult to be surprised by any clickbait headline suggesting the middle and lower class are simply budgeting incorrectly.
And make no mistake: the WSJ headline was no surprise to anyone.
“To Save Money, Maybe You Should Skip Breakfast,” the headline suggests, the text of the article hidden behind a paywall.
Fortunately, there are ways to get around those (sorry, WSJ, I prefer to spend my money on bacon and eggs). The article itself focuses on basic facts about how much prices of breakfast food has increased in recent months — eggs are up over 70% in just a year, frozen orange juice is pushing 13%, and cereal has bumped up 15% in the last twelve months.
“Breakfast lovers might be better off just having a cup of coffee,” the article peters out.
The article may not chide people frustrated by the giant leaps in food costs for continuing to purchase and consume food, but it does make note of the suffering that has befallen the providers of these goods — usually corporations. And in doing so, suggests things like bird flu and hurricanes are to blame for the increase while making no mention of the record profits these companies are raking in.
And the headline is, quite frankly, obnoxious enough, even with the knowledge that it was likely designed to be controversial in order to entice people to click and share. It still betrays an attitude towards average Americans that is exhausting, and encourages empty arguments among ourselves rather than anger at the CEOs of companies driving these prices up while keeping wages low.
Fortunately, people at least managed to pull together the energy to mock the absurdity of this kind of suggestion.
That last one sounds like a pretty great idea, doesn’t it?
