$6.20 for a dozen eggs still sounds like a good deal. Think about the amount of work to get those onto a refrigerated shelf in the supermarket. It's amazing.
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Egg prices vs. Consumer Price Index since 1980
11–20 of 80 posts
Re: Egg prices vs. Consumer Price Index since 1980
#12Eggs and milk used to be staples people “needed” they were just few alternatives in the food market. Now they are basically luxury goods with staples being things like chicken nuggets and colas.
I’m not saying it’s good or bad either way, but if the price of eggs were increased 1000% it wouldn’t effect people’s quality of life as much as a 1% increase in the cost of education or healthcare.
Re: Egg prices vs. Consumer Price Index since 1980
#13$6.20 for a dozen eggs still sounds like a good deal. Think about the amount of work to get those onto a refrigerated shelf in the supermarket. It's amazing.
No it isn't. A dozen can fly by for a single person or a small family. You'll probably need at least two dozen a week. Hell, a lot of recipes ask for 2-3. So now you're looking at almost $50 a month just for eggs (2dozen/week @6.20.)
That might be easy for you when you're working at Microsoft and making $500,000 a year, but that's a significant amount of money for a lot of people in the United States. And eggs aren't some fancy item. They're eggs.
"It's one banana, Michael. What could it cost?"
Re: Egg prices vs. Consumer Price Index since 1980
#14I appreciate this graph as a (very partial) rejoinder to the inflation truthers. I could believe that there is some modest measurement error in how we calculate inflation, but, picking relatively arbitrary dates that I happen to remember, the idea that 2000-2025 inflation was double the reported numbers doesn't pass the sniff test.
I don't have a horse in this race outside of general skepticism of official numbers (though inflation is particularly difficult to fake since you can literally just buy/assess the basket of goods the figures represent yourself), but I don't think this is the rejoinder you're looking for. Eggs went from 0.975 to 3.587, a 3.68x increase. CPI went from 1.69 to 3.23, a 1.9x increase. So the price of eggs increased 93% more than nominal inflation.
Re: Egg prices vs. Consumer Price Index since 1980
#15$6.20 for a dozen eggs still sounds like a good deal. Think about the amount of work to get those onto a refrigerated shelf in the supermarket. It's amazing.
> refrigerated shelf in the supermarket Wow, today I learned that in some countries, the supermarkets keep their eggs in the refrigerator! Apparently there is a protective coat on eggs that sometimes gets washed away, and when it is, you need to store the egg in a cold environment otherwise bacteria gets in. In other places, eggs aren't washed (that much at least) so the protective coat is still there, so we store ou…
No comment about refrigerated eggs goes unanswered.
Re: Egg prices vs. Consumer Price Index since 1980
#16Out of all thousands of products, goods and services you will find plenty that track the official number "fairly well" out of of pure chance. I fail to see any significance of this one chart.
The retail price of eggs was a significant talking point in the campaign for the last US presidential election (which I'd forgotten until I saw this post).
Re: Egg prices vs. Consumer Price Index since 1980
#17$6.20 for a dozen eggs still sounds like a good deal. Think about the amount of work to get those onto a refrigerated shelf in the supermarket. It's amazing.
> refrigerated shelf in the supermarket Wow, today I learned that in some countries, the supermarkets keep their eggs in the refrigerator! Apparently there is a protective coat on eggs that sometimes gets washed away, and when it is, you need to store the egg in a cold environment otherwise bacteria gets in. In other places, eggs aren't washed (that much at least) so the protective coat is still there, so we store ou…
That much is the key.
They're still washed, otherwise they would have all kinds of crap on them (literally, chickens only have one hole), they just aren't subjected to chemicals and scrubbing etc.
Having very low salmonella rates in the flock makes it really unnecessary
Re: Egg prices vs. Consumer Price Index since 1980
#18I appreciate this graph as a (very partial) rejoinder to the inflation truthers. I could believe that there is some modest measurement error in how we calculate inflation, but, picking relatively arbitrary dates that I happen to remember, the idea that 2000-2025 inflation was double the reported numbers doesn't pass the sniff test.
What dates? 2000 August–2025 August gives 3.18%/year for the consumer index and 7.12%/year for egg prices. Even if you assume egg prices will come down to $3/dozen, it's still 6.24%/year.
Re: Egg prices vs. Consumer Price Index since 1980
#19This chart seems off, for some reason. It shows the average price for a dozen eggs as hitting $1.20 in 2019. I don't remember ever paying that little in my adult life for eggs, and I've lived in small towns during that time frame too.
Also this should be noted: Large white, Grade A chicken eggs, sold in a carton of a dozen. Includes organic, non-organic, cage free, free range, and traditional.
Egg options in grocery stores today are way more diverse than they were when I was a kid in the 90s. Organic eggs were rare. None were cage free. Today's options include soy-free, cage free, free range, etc. I pay a premium for soy free, free range eggs. This wasn't even an option in 1997 or 2005 or most of the years listed here.
Re: Egg prices vs. Consumer Price Index since 1980
#20Out of all thousands of products, goods and services you will find plenty that track the official number "fairly well" out of of pure chance. I fail to see any significance of this one chart.
The retail price of eggs was a significant talking point in the campaign for the last US presidential election (which I'd forgotten until I saw this post).
That's because they slaughtered a huge amount of chickens due to bird flu. As you can see from the chart, the egg prices have plummeted as chicken populations have recovered.