Live data from Hacker News

Eggs are 60% more expensive than last year in the US

semafor.com

131–140 of 389 posts

Re: Eggs are 60% more expensive than last year in the US

#131
post #48

Cream prices have more than doubled. At Target, the 32oz Heavy Cream that was $2.99 in Oct 2021 is now $6.49. And there's a cream shortage in any case. Inflation and supply chain issues.

I don't think this is 'inflation'. A few companies have realized that there is effectively no consumer protections when it comes to price gouging, they will continue to raise prices until they experience some pain in this regard.

The issue is an anti-trust issue and consolidation.

Re: Eggs are 60% more expensive than last year in the US

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's not just eggs. My grocery bill has definitely been greatly outpacing the official inflation figures, which are already high. Double or triple that rate, I'd say.

How could we tell if the published inflation rate was just completely bullshit?

I dunno what else is in the bucket they use to calculate it. Maybe that other stuff is cheap (TVs? Furniture? Other stuff I don't need to buy all the time, I suppose?). I've always felt like grocery costs were going up quite a bit faster than inflation, since I started shopping for my own groceries in the early '00s. Like, they definitely weren't rising at merely 2-3%/yr in the pre-Covid years. It's just super-painful now because the increases are so extreme.

Re: Eggs are 60% more expensive than last year in the US

#133
post #37
post #29

It would be nice to see more people allowed to keep backyard chickens (hens at least, since roosters can be noisy). Since getting some at our place I’ve been surprised how fun they are to have around and easy to care for. Our compost from the kitchen goes to them too, which could help people divert scraps from the landfill or from being picked up (big gas usage) for municipal composting. Their waste is also great fer…

I'm a huge proponent of backyard chickens and had them for years, but they are, generally speaking, not a "more cost effective" way to get eggs, at least in north america if you are feeding them mostly store-bought feed. Then again, this change in egg prices may change that. But they're great for redundancy (more & varied egg supply reduces the impact of supply chain shocks), to get the best quality eggs you can, and…

They are probably not "worth it" when accounting for the care required, but I get feed for about $20 a bag and a scratch block for $20 every 3 months or so for 4 chickens who generally give me an egg/day each. 4x30x3=360 => 360/12=30 dozen eggs so that works out to less than a dollar per dozen which is below market cost 5 years ago.

Re: Eggs are 60% more expensive than last year in the US

#134
post #36

My wife has a cottage baking business and would buy 15 dozen eggs from Costco Business Center. Already high, a few months back in cost about $45 for the box. Just last week it was $110. She doesn't recall but it fairly certain the box was between $20-30 before inflation hit. However she said they had chicken legs that were .49/lb which is a great price but hard to reconcile with the narrative that avian flu is the ca…

I do a good deal of baking, and I buy a lot of my supplies from Costco. I also have spent a fair amount of time very diligently tracking my family's grocery expenses. (I have a spreadsheet of almost 3 years of just about all groceries we bought.) In 2019, I picked up 15 dozen eggs for $8.69, and the 5 dozen was $8.99 at that time. (There were times when they didn't stock the 15 dozen, so I had to opt for 5 -- a much…

> I picked up 15 dozen eggs for $8.69, and the 5 dozen was $8.99 at that time.

Is there a typo?

Re: Eggs are 60% more expensive than last year in the US

#135
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

12 weeks for most chickens we eat. It’s honestly crazy lol

I don’t know whether to be amazed at this agricultural feat that brings cheap, tasty, high-protein meals to the masses of humanity, or sickened by an abomination of nature that turns a living thing into a bio-engineered fast-growing blob. I guess both?

Do you consider plants to be living things?

Re: Eggs are 60% more expensive than last year in the US

#136
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do a good deal of baking, and I buy a lot of my supplies from Costco. I also have spent a fair amount of time very diligently tracking my family's grocery expenses. (I have a spreadsheet of almost 3 years of just about all groceries we bought.) In 2019, I picked up 15 dozen eggs for $8.69, and the 5 dozen was $8.99 at that time. (There were times when they didn't stock the 15 dozen, so I had to opt for 5 -- a much…

> I picked up 15 dozen eggs for $8.69, and the 5 dozen was $8.99 at that time. Is there a typo?

No, those numbers are correct.

Re: Eggs are 60% more expensive than last year in the US

#137

Lydon Johnson had an answer (via George Will): In 1966, the price of eggs rose to a level that President Lyndon Johnson judged, God knows how, was too high. There were two culprits – supply and demand – and Johnson’s agriculture secretary told him there was not much that could be done. LBJ, however, was a can-do fellow who directed the US surgeon general to dampen demand by warning the nation about the hazards of cho…

Early in my career, I consulted for Coke to ensure sugar taxes failed and soda was included in food stamp funding.

I say Coke's policies are evil because I saw inside the room.

The first step in playbook was paying the NAACP + other civil rights groups to call opponents racist

Coke gave millions to the NAACP and the Hispanic Federation - both directly and through front groups like the American Beverage Association.

This picked up in 2011-2013 - when the Farm Bill and soda taxes were under consideration. https://nutritioninsight.com/news/cspi-report-criticizes-big...

The conversations inside these rooms was depressingly transactional:

"We (Coke) will give you money. You need to paint opponents of us as racist."

The effort was successful, and the message was carried in thousands of articles between 2011-2013.

Coke's position was clear: soda is one of the cheapest ways to get calories - a flagrantly inaccurate statement when factoring in the health consequences.

I watched as the FDA funneled money to professors at leading universities - as well as think tanks on the left and right - to create studies showing soda taxes hurt the poor. They also paid for studies that say drinking soda DIDN'T cause obesity. https://reuters.com/article/us-usa-drinks-tax/soda-tax-war-t...

Soda companies are deeply embedded in the USDA - so much so that the agency carries discredited talking points like "there are no bad food, only bad diets."

This ignores fact that sugar is highly addictive and has negative nutritional value.

In the end: racial tensions flared, soda spending was kept in SNAP funding, and many of the soda taxes were defeated...

https://twitter.com/calleymeans/status/1609929026889711617

Re: Eggs are 60% more expensive than last year in the US

#138
post #29

It would be nice to see more people allowed to keep backyard chickens (hens at least, since roosters can be noisy). Since getting some at our place I’ve been surprised how fun they are to have around and easy to care for. Our compost from the kitchen goes to them too, which could help people divert scraps from the landfill or from being picked up (big gas usage) for municipal composting. Their waste is also great fer…

You can lay eggs without a rooster, but if you do, one of the hens will become dominant and needlessly bully the other hens. This will stress them out and you’ll get health issues in your hens. Source: I come from a farming family.

I have 6 chickens in my back yard right now and this is not a problem and hasn’t ever been a problem in the years I’ve had them.

Re: Eggs are 60% more expensive than last year in the US

#139
post #29

It would be nice to see more people allowed to keep backyard chickens (hens at least, since roosters can be noisy). Since getting some at our place I’ve been surprised how fun they are to have around and easy to care for. Our compost from the kitchen goes to them too, which could help people divert scraps from the landfill or from being picked up (big gas usage) for municipal composting. Their waste is also great fer…

You can lay eggs without a rooster, but if you do, one of the hens will become dominant and needlessly bully the other hens. This will stress them out and you’ll get health issues in your hens. Source: I come from a farming family.

Does the dominant rooster not cause the hens similar stress for some reason?
Post reply on HN