Today is National Hamburger Day. Americans eat over 50 billion burgers per year. The hamburger originated in Hamburg, Germany. But the hamburger sandwich as we know it developed in Seymour, Wisconsin. The association with Hamburg stems from a 1758 recipe for a dish called the “Hamburger Sausage.” But others believe that the word originates from a cruise company known as the Hamburg America Line, which served its customers similar sandwiches in the mid-1800s.
Numerous diners and delis claim their establishment is responsible for inventing the hamburger sandwich. But the hamburger as we know it truly gained popularity at the 1904 World’s Fair in Saint Louis, the gathering that also gave the world the ice-cream cone.
The hamburger since has spread all over the world. People in Uruguay eat the most hamburgers every year, followed by Argentina, then Hong Kong, then America.
The price of a hamburger has risen substantially under the Biden administration. Ground beef costs 15% more than it did last year.
Various restaurants lay claim to having the best burger, such as Bleecker in London (which touts its Bleecker Black Burger), The Burger at Raoul’s in New York City, Fat Bob’s Bar & Grill in Melbourne, Australia (home of the Jackie-O burger) and Gordon Ramsay Burger in Las Vegas (home of the American Burger).
Many Americans are less able to afford hamburgers than they were last year. While prices are going up, people’s savings are shrinking. Their savings accounts are earning interest rates of less than 1%, which fails to keep pace with an inflation rate of over 8%. Effectively, people’s savings accounts are losing 7% of their value each year.
The U.S. economy shrank at a rate of 1.5% in the most recent quarter, reflecting a huge rise in America’s trade deficit. American exports decreased by 9.6%, while imports grew by 17.7%. U.S. productivity dropped at a 7.5% annual rate, the most since 1947.
Inflation is higher in America than it is in Europe. Under Trump, the U.S. economy outperformed Europe, especially during the pandemic year of 2020, when Britain, France and Italy experienced much sharper economic declines than the U.S. The U.S. economy shrank 3.5% in 2020. The economy shrank much more in Europe: 7.9% in France, 9.9% in the United Kingdom, and 8.9% in Italy.
But that has changed under Biden. While America’s economy was shrinking recently, France’s economy was growing in 2022, and France’s inflation rate is lower than America’s. A finance professor describes the current era in the U.S. as “The Biden stagflation,” combining high inflation with economic stagnation.
Biden’s policies caused inflation, according to even Democratic economists like Larry Summers and Obama advisor Steven Rattner. As Rattner noted in the New York Times, Biden has spent “an unprecedented amount” of taxpayer money, which resulted in “too much money chasing too few goods.”
