A Cornucopia of Cartoons (Thanksgiving Inflation Edition)

"Thanksgiving dinner under his administration will be about 25% cheaper than under Biden." — President Donald Trump

"Thanksgiving dinner is up 10% this year and some staples are up nearly 60%." — Randi Weingarten

"I mean, it's one banana, Michael. What could it cost, ten dollars?" — Lucille Bluth, Arrested Development

If you’ve been on social media this past week, you know the fact-checkers are running around calculating, pushing back, and recalculating claims about the cost of Thanksgiving in America. Forget the whole story. This one is all about the details.  

The cartoonification of Thanksgiving is upon us. 

The rules are simple: figure out the point you want to make, then assemble a basket of goods that justifies it. 

Everybody is playing. Everybody is winning. And everybody is technically telling the truth, even if none of the truths agree with each other.

How? Let’s compare some tasty takes. 

Walmart's basket, which Trump built a "mine is cheaper than Biden’s" comment around, showed a full meal for 10 at $55 in 2024. By 2025, a slightly smaller meal cost $40. That's $15 less, which is real money, and 27.3% less if you care about presenting the math for maximum impact. 

The American Farm Bureau Federation posted their official annual report too. They said a 10-person meal in 2025 would cost $55.18, down from roughly $63 in 2024. That's an $8 drop, or 12.4% - still meaningful.

Fact-checkers quickly noted that each of these baskets had fewer items, and different items. One cornucopia is not like the other. And nobody should be surprised. Trump wants to keep beating Biden. The Farm Bureau wants to protect farmers. Walmart wants to win the consumer. Each chose what to count. Each has their own menu of issue-winning facts. 

For fun, I built my own Personal Thanksgiving Inflation Report - easier to replicate next year than chasing down retroactive prices. I'd encourage you to do the same

My personal basket is based on a 10-person dinner with standardized items at Walmart and Whole Foods. My Walmart meal: $11.40 per person. Whole Foods: $16.79 per person. Compare that to the Farm Bureau's $5.52 per person or Walmart's promotional $4.00 per person.

Do I have fancier taste? Sure. Or at least, the AI prompt I created to put this together does, but so be it. It’s also kind of the key point here. Everyone has different tastes. And when you get to choose which groceries count, you get to control the narrative. The abstraction is the weapon.

None of these priced-out menus are conspiracy theories. They just represent choices. See them that way. 

So what if Walmart removed items and replaced them with cheaper brands - they’re always rolling back prices. And Trump caught that wave too - no surprise. It’s the Farm Bureau's standard basket that’s the only report showing the actual mix: turkey cheaper (down 16%), carrots and sweet potatoes more expensive. There’s the tension nobody leads with. How the net numbers get netted - there’s an actual story. 

Whenever somebody tells you Thanksgiving is different this year, remember that they're not pushing a conspiracy, but they are choosing what to count. 

If you really care, or want to claim to, track your own data. It will tell you a truth - and not some cartoonified abstraction.

P.S. From the still relevant 2018  Epsilon Theory note, “The Icarus Moment,” 

"We model the model in order to instill fear or greed or pleasure or patriotism. Constantly. Everywhere... The abstractions themselves have become abstracted farther and farther away from their ostensible real-world source, such that the abstractions have become—and I'm using this word in its technical sense—cartoons." — Ben Hunt