In the News
On any given day, Groundwork's analyses, op-eds, reports, and commentary are featured in leading publications and on the most influential news programs and podcasts.
On any given day, Groundwork's analyses, op-eds, reports, and commentary are featured in leading publications and on the most influential news programs and podcasts.
This week, Dictionary.com added 1,700 new or updated definitions that included “mid,” “girl dinner,” and an important new word: “Greedflation.” The addition comes as new polling from Navigator Research shows that four in five people identify corporations raising prices as a cause of inflation, with three in five people deeming it a “major” cause.
Today’s Consumer Price Index report showed that headline inflation dropped to 3.1%, while shelter inflation accounted for more than two-thirds of inflation. “The only responsible path forward is for Chair Powell to cut interest rates now.” Groundwork’s Chief Economist Dr. Rakeen Mabud states.
The falling cattle inventory could push beef prices amid forecasts that demand may fall in 2024, and it may be thanks to the weather. For American consumers, more than 7 percent of grocery expenses go to beef, according to a February report from the think tank Groundwork Collaborative.
High interest rates tighten financial conditions and exacerbate the housing market’s affordability crisis. They also stifle clean-energy investments and stress household balance sheets, says Rakeen Mabud, chief economist at the Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive economic advocacy group. “It’s pretty clear to me that the Fed needs to cut rates immediately,” Mabud says, and she isn’t alone.
Food companies were quick to pass along their rising input costs to consumers, says Lindsay Owens, executive director of the progressive economic advocacy group Groundwork Collaborative. Now those costs have come down, but “they are not quick to pass along their savings,” she says.
Rakeen Mabud is chief economist and managing director of policy and research at Groundwork Collaborative. They have new work on what’s driving grocery prices, that doesn’t involve getting mad at people using food stamps. We’ll hear from her today on the show.
Readers were interested in Groundwork Collaborative’s new report, “What’s Driving the Rise in Grocery Prices – and What the Government Can Do About It,” that claims to identify the underlying causes of recent grocery price inflation, including corporate profiteering, supply chain shocks and climate change.
As corporate profits remain at all-time highs, a new report shows that more than half of rising consumer prices in 2023 were caused by corporate greed, or "greedflation." Elizabeth Pancotti - strategic advisor with the DC-based think tank Groundwork Collaborative - said before the pandemic, corporate profits drove just 11% of price growth.
"The inputs to making this food for producers has gone down pretty significantly and yet those companies are not passing those savings off to consumers," explained Groundwork Collaborative Strategic Advisor Elizabeth Pancotti. "They’re not hiking sticker prices by very much, but they’re keeping them high even as their costs come down."
Grocery prices are now 25% higher than they were before the pandemic, according to inflation data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This is due to a number of factors including climate change, supply-chain disruptions stemming from the war in Ukraine, and “corporate profiteering,” the Groundwork Collaborative said.