Wall Street Journal Says You “Should Skip Breakfast” to Save Money

A click-bait article on food costs gives the opportunity to talk about price gouging and our late-stage capitalism death spiral

There’s a social media phenomenon known as “engagement bait,” which when reading the definition or how Facebook is seeing it, gives the impression that just about everything on the internet could be slapped with the label. In pursuit of “authentic communication,” Facebook is trying “to identify whether or not they were posting spam or trying to game feed by doing things like asking for likes, comments or shares” and promote stories “that people consider genuine and not misleading, sensational or spammy.”

Social media sites — and even Medium itself — have been attempting to curb the sensationalism and click-baiting that is as much a part of the online world as URLs, Google searches, and cat videos.

But sometimes, reality can be insane.

These days, it is getting more and more difficult to decipher whether a story is from the genius minds at the Onion or real reporting on something depressingly bizarre.

For instance, the Wall Street Journal recently had a viral article with the headline “To Save Money, Maybe You Should Skip Breakfast.”

When following the link, one finds the story paywalled. Only the beginning paragraphs are visible and one can see that they’re about surging food costs. I’m definitely not going to pay for that Rupert Murdoch-owned rag, but I’ve seen commentary that that is what the article is actually about.

Apparently, they weren’t necessarily recommending people skip breakfast; the article was a bit of engagement bait.

In that respect, it was very successful.

The insane headline was shared all over Twitter with most people naturally horrified that the billionaire-owned newspaper was recommending the peasants stop eating to save money.

Some, like Republican Senator John Kennedy, took the opportunity to score political points and blame the Biden Administration.

In my opinion, that critique is semi-fair seeing as he is in the White House and Democrats had control of DC for two years and have done nothing to stop corporate domination or price gouging, which is the real issue, but obviously, having a Republican dish out the criticism is rich because they’d do nothing differently to rein in corporations or bring down price margins.

The GOP loves to scream about real issues but never has a step two. Naturally, they’d recommend lowering taxes on egg producers and then billionaires, corporations, and Wall Street while they’re at it, and then claim victory.

But, of course, that wouldn’t get to the heart of the issue of runaway food prices — again, what the Wall Street Journal piece was apparently about.

Neither corporate-owned political party in America is going to do much to bring down prices because, as many economists and even the freaking Fed itself have pointed out, price gouging is the principal issue in higher costs and our current inflation rates.

And that should be the topic of discussion.

Americans are being ripped off in all areas because companies are taking advantage of the inflation scare and increasing their margins above and beyond any cost increases they might be experiencing.

Egg prices, in particular, have gotten quite a bit of coverage.

Neither corporate-owned political party in America is going to do much to bring down prices because, as many economists and even the freaking Fed itself have pointed out, price gouging is the principal issue in higher costs and our current inflation rates.

Vice reported, “According to the Bureau of Labor, a dozen eggs cost an average $4.25 last December compared to $1.78 a year ago. In some parts of the country, the average price is $9.73.” That is an insane increase, and producers are naturally placing the blame on inflation.

Of course, that is not the whole story.

Advocacy group Farm Action recently wrote a letter to FTC Chair Lina Khan alleging that “a collusive scheme among industry leaders to turn inflationary conditions and an avian flu outbreak into an opportunity to extract egregious profits reaching as high as 40 percent…Contrary to industry narratives, the increase in the price of eggs has not been an ‘Act of God’ — it has been simple profiteering,”

Again, that is something that is happening across the economy.

It has been pointed out time and time again, and yet, the mainstream media mostly ignores the issue of price-gouging.

The Vice article goes into greater detail about the timing of the avian flu outbreaks not coinciding with the massive increase in prices, and they also note that the USDA showed the same thing back in May.

Price increases were larger than any decrease in production.

Furthermore, once the avian flu outbreaks were over with, rather than ramp up production to bring down prices, “the industry was keeping production pared back” to allegedly keep consumer prices high.

This piece says it all, “Feed and fuel costs also went up between 2021 and 2022 by about 22 percent, according to an investor call from Cal-Maine this month, but you would hardly know it from the company’s ten-fold increase in profits, which went from $50 million to $535 million in 2022. Its gross margins — the money leftover after paying for direct costs — likewise went up 40 percent.”

None of this is surprising.

It’s like that old parable of the scorpion and the frog.

The kind-hearted frog is hesitant to take the scorpion across the river but relents when the scorpion points out that they’d both sink and die if it was foolish enough to sting the frog. Then, of course, in the middle of the journey, the scorpion attacks the frog, dooming them both, and when asked why he did it, replies something like, “I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist. It is in my nature. I am a scorpion.”

That is a corporation.

They have a fiduciary duty to f*ck over Americans.

They know they’re doing it. Some of them are smart enough to realize they’re tearing the nation apart at the seams, but they cannot help themselves.

A corporate charter is a death oath that demands psychopathy.

No externalities should be taken into consideration. It’s all about shareholder value maximization. That is it. That is all.

That’s why tobacco companies could lie for decades while they knew exactly what they were doing, why Exxon scientists could predict global warming fifty years ago but then do marketing campaigns designed to confuse the general public, and why egg producers wouldn’t increase production to lower prices.

It’s the reason we’re in a late-stage capitalism death spiral.

Shareholder value maximization ideology is a malignant cancer that has metastasized into every part of our lives.

We’re seeing the consequences in our broken corporate news, social media feeds, toxic train derailments, poverty, medical debt, and everywhere in between.

And because we’ve been so indoctrinated and swimming in “free market” cool-aid for decades, most don’t even realize the source of our dismay.

The Republican answer is further deregulation and lowering taxes on the very corporate parasites creating the problems while the Democratic answer — because they have the same donors — is to sit down with the corporations and kindly ask them what to do, the solution they find inevitably being some fake-ass “public-private partnership” that is really just giving more public funds to those corporations.

Any real solution or attempt to reduce corporate power is labeled “communism” and quickly dismissed.

And the death spiral continues.

So the Wall Street Journal article may have been clickbait, but it was true. And it does reflect how the oligarchy thinks.

Don’t have money peasants? Skip breakfast.

The headline perfectly captures the late-stage capitalism decline the West is on.

It also fits well with these other gems — shoutout to Alan MacLeod for being legendary on Twitter.

Not to be all doomsday and end on a depressing note, there are positive movements happening out in the world.

The Global South is coming together in ways that will hopefully benefit humanity as a whole.

The union movement in America is growing — and apparently young people are vibing on it as well.

And these dystopian headlines get the horrified response that they should. That gives me a bit of hope. That energy just needs to be organized into a political movement for change.

Fingers crossed for the rest of the 2020s.

In the horror show, there’s an opportunity for positive change or maybe most of us will spend the next decades skipping breakfast and lunch.