Grocery items in first “Home Alone” now 264% HIGHER after taxes despite Biden’s “strong economy” claims

 The prices of grocery items featured in the first "Home Alone" movie, which hit theaters in 1990, have increased since then.

The movie starred Macaulay Culkin, then eight years old, as protagonist Kevin McCallister. The young McCallister had been mistakenly left home alone on Christmas Eve, prompting him to make a trip to the grocery to buy food. He bought milk, bread, toilet paper, laundry detergent, fabric softener, cling wrap, macaroni and cheese, a turkey TV dinner, orange juice and a bag of plastic toy soldiers – all for $19.83.

NewsNation's Nick Smith recently ran an experiment by buying the same items Culkin's character purchased at Chicago grocery store Happy Foods. He paid a total of $72.28 after taxes, which is 264 percent higher than the price during the holiday season 33 years ago. In 2022, TikTok user Rochelle Chalmers also purchased the same items at retail giant Kroger – shelling out $44.40 in total.

People aren't convinced of the Biden administration's "strong economy" claims based on the results of a Harris Insights poll conducted for the Guardian in September. It found that two-thirds of American respondents are unhappy about the economy. Moreover, it also found that 65 percent believe the economy is worse than the mainstream media makes it out to be – in contrast to the 35 percent who believe otherwise.

In October the U.S. Department of Agriculture said food prices are expected to increase between three and four percent this year. Economists appeared to back this view, noting that prices could continue to climb as the holidays approach.

Moreover, Breitbart News reported that the average American household needs to spend an extra $11,434 per year just to maintain the same standard of living they had only a few years ago before inflation hit record highs under the Biden administration. 

Reluctant Fed may stop hiking interest rates

The U.S. Federal Reserve appears to stand firm that it would no longer hike interest rates amid soaring prices. Analysts believe officials may have admitted that they don't need to keep raising the rates to cool down inflation. However, they are holding back in declaring the end to hikes, even starting a discussion about lowering rates.

At the start of December, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said during his remarks at Spelman College in Atlanta that their policy setting is "well into restrictive territory, meaning that tight monetary policy" is slowing economic activity. But he cautioned: "It would be premature to conclude with confidence that we have achieved a sufficiently restrictive stance."

Powell claimed that the current slowdowns in inflation and wage growth provide evidence that the Fed's rate increases were succeeding and that they are expecting the economy to cool further. He added that it was too soon "to speculate on when policy might ease," agreeing to financial market participants' growing expectations that the Fed will lower rates as soon as next spring.

He also confessed that after hiking so rapidly, officials are moving forward carefully because the risks of raising rates too much or too little are better balanced now than previously.

John Williams, president of the New York Fed, said at a previous conference that monetary policy is at its most economically restrictive setting in 25 years and it will need to stay tight "for quite some time."