Repeat After Me: Always Adjust for Inflation. Always Adjust for Inflation.


Over at Wonkblog, Lydia DePillis shows us the chart on the right, which comes from a recent study of the effect of corporate mergers on the price of beer, and says this:

This looks like a scary graph of beer price increases. The researchers determined, though, that the rise is largely not attributable to consolidation in the industry; there may be other factors at play.

Urk! What this really shows is the result of inflation. I’ve overlaid in red the CPI for food and beverages since 2007, and beer prices match it exactly. The economists who wrote the study may have used nominal prices in their chart instead of real prices because that’s what they needed as input for their statistical manipulations, but this is a classic case of why you have to watch out for this kind of thing. What the researchers say they found is that the merger of Miller and Coors produced a 2 percent increase in prices that was offset by a 2 percent decrease in transportation costs, but that has nothing to do with the increase you see in the chart. That’s all inflation.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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