'A pound of ground beef now costs more than the minimum wage': Fox News

With a cost-of-living crisis raging, Fox News has shared a grim set of numbers: “A pound of ground beef now costs more than the minimum wage,” said a surprised Stuart Varney. “What does that say about the economy?”

Skyrocketing gas prices due to the conflict in Iran, along with tariffs and other market pressures, have pushed costs ever higher, to the point where even Fox can’t ignore the precarious economy.

“The minimum wage hasn’t changed in 17 years, and it’s $7.25,” explained Varney’s guest. He noted that when the minimum wage was raised to its current level in 2009, ground beef cost around $2.20 per pound. “Today it’s $8.34 a pound. Maybe you could argue that the minimum wage could be moved higher, but still it goes to show what food prices have done recently.”

When Trump was elected in 2024, voters overwhelmingly declared that the economy was their top priority. Subsequent research has shown that Trump’s promises to bring down inflation played a key role in securing his victory. But the first year of Trump’s second term was marked by rising costs and general economic dismay. Then he launched war against Iran, which in less than six weeks has driven oil prices up by more than double, bringing a historic energy crisis that surpasses previously bad situations in 1973, 1979, and 2022. With rising gas prices, so climb the costs of just about everything else, and there seems to be no end in sight.

As the Fox guest notes, that’s bad news for those who were already struggling, noting that there are “82,000 people who make minimum wage,” and urging viewers to consider “how hard it is for them to put beef on the table.”