Whoa...prices are so high

(Bob M) #1

I’m thinking of making my own “white chocolate”, which uses cacao butter. I used to buy 2 pounds for $25. Now, 1 pound is over $40. What happened?

Eggs are still 3 times what they used to cost where I live. And those are the crappy, mass produced versions. I don’t even attempt to buy good eggs.

Beef prices are so high, particularly for steaks. On sale, they’re $15-20/pound.

As someone who eats a lot of beef, this is shocking. Dinner of steaks for a family of 4 is $60+ if we make it ourselves.

When or will these prices come down?

(Bean) #2

Not sure, but a chef friend told me the tariffs are murdering their food cost. Cocoa and a lot of cheap American beef comes in from South America. Eggs are still recovering from the last round of bird flu, I think. Lots of flocks had to be destroyed.

(Edith) #3

Sigh, I believe prices follow a hysteresis curve. Once they go up, they never come back down to where they started.

(Central Florida Bob ) #4

Because we always measure inflation on a year over year basis, and compared to what a dollar bought 5 years ago, 25 years ago, and all the way back, the dollar is worth less. (Yes, I’m one of those “end the Fed” and “real money” guys - and I won’t bore you with that.)

The eggs I buy have finally come down a bit from the peak they hit a year ago (? - not sure), but they went from $2.80/doz up to $5.70 and now down to about $4.50. Still way more than a couple of years ago, but a little better. Yes, the supply is down because of them killing off the chickens due to the threat of bird flu, so “supply and demand” is in there somewhere.

(Pete A) #5

It’s been awhile now.

(Edith) #6

My conspiracy theorist side says that the middlemen (probably not the producers themselves) like the higher prices so they never let them go back to where they were prior to whatever caused the price hike in the first place.

(Central Florida Bob ) #7

I absolutely can’t disprove that, and “middlemen” could well be part of it. I just don’t think it’s all of it. Even if the federal reserve bank were those middlemen.

It’s hard to make the comparison, but there is nothing that costs what it did before the Fed was created (1913) and not even since the 1971 complete abandonment of the gold standard. The Fed has talked about keeping a “constant, benign” 2% inflation but hardly ever keeps it there.

What does that mean? As an example, a pre-1965 dime with 90% silver content is worth $2.78 today. The Rule of 72 (72/APR) says prices would double in 36 years for 2% inflation. Since 1964 + 36 was 2000 (Y2K) and another doubling (36 years) is 11 years from now, it’s pretty obvious, it shouldn’t be costing 27.8 times its 1964 price. All other things being the same, a 1964 dime would be worth 40 cents in another 11 years. That’s IF it was the 2% inflation they advocate for.

There’s more going on, but it gets murkier from here.

(Edith) #8

I’m not sure if precious metals is a fair comparison since at lot more goes into their value than plain inflation. Precious metal prices also have a fear component built in. And of course, there is the problem of location. In areas that are more popular to live, inflation / cost-of-living has gone up more than less desirable locations. It’s all so complicated. I think the cost of food stuffs could be a good comparison. I remember my mom giving me a dollar to run into the store to guy a gallon of milk and I would get some change. How much does a gallon of milk cost these days? In my area it is about $6. That’s a six fold increase in 50 years. I guess milk is more precious than silver. :grinning:

#9

Cocoa went up a lot in the last 1-2 years, yeah… And my SO partially lives on chocolate, he eats it every day, usually multiple times… Oh well. The amount isn’t THAT high especially in fruit season.

Beef always was luxury item, I simply never eat any.

Eggs have a good price, I mean they aren’t cheap but they are worth it! And I don’t eat 7-8 per year as before.

I still don’t understand why prices matter so much for people who don’t need to spend the majority of their money on food, far from it. If it’s just a tiny fragment, it should be fine even with way bigger other costs. Maybe I never will understand this - though I do understand the impact when things simply gets way more expensive suddenly. But it’s especially painful for me when my precious dairy suddenly gets twice as expensive… It went back a little but only a little.
And I am used to high inflation. It’s not as high in general but for foodstuff? Ice cream (the stuff in the cone) costs 2-300 times as much as in my childhood, that one has a particularly big one actually. I am shocked every time I saw any, of course I would never buy one. I can make my own and while that’s not cheaper than the stuff in boxes, it’s pretty good. 2025 is the year when I have learned to make super good ice cream and it’s super easy. I don’t cook yolks, that rarely ends well and it’s such a bother. (Maybe one day.)
I do need to be mindful of the fat but my portions aren’t huge so if I keep eating lean pork, it’s fine.
But I digress.

I am just glad I still can eat good food. I still eat too much (just a wee bit! probably around maintenance calories, I haven’t tracked since ages but the food feels really little to me and it’s leaner than ever) so there is way to lower the costs… There is coffee too but it’s not very much nowadays.

We had this with butter and cheese. Eggs stayed up but it was only a price doubling once, it stays there since…
Meanwhile my number one food item, pork had almost no price changes in the last 5 years. Okay, it was the price cap first but it haven’t went up much even afterwards.
And we got another round of the government food price policy things so some basic food items (like milk) got significantly cheaper. I am in my milk phase so it’s nice. Cream is luxury I suppose so it didn’t get the same treatment, unfortunately.

Eggs had the bird flu, yes but the feed got much more expensive too, the egg lady says. At some point she wanted to stop keeping hens but it didn’t happen. I can buy good eggs from multiple sources now. Eggs are worth the money so, so much!

Our currency never worth much and whatever happens in the world, it affects it negatively, apparently. So our prices have this extra problem…

Yeah, you guys have such a minuscule inflation…!!!
IDK milk prices from my childhood (like 25 years ago) but buns cost 50-100 times as much? They usually don’t go up so much, that’s why. I talked about the ice cream but I only remember those 2 prices from my childhood… Oh and bubble gum! One ball costed 1 HUF, no idea what could I compare to it now, do we still have ball bubblegums and if we do, are they more expensive due to the retro/nostalgic factor? But they didn’t go up so very much either I suppose.

I have looked it up. 45 years ago, milk just got more expensive. Now it costs about 80 times as much (for the cheapest but not low-fat kind). Possible 100 times as much as 50 years ago. Nothing special then. It’s Hungarian food inflation for important items. Well, nowadays… There were other times. I forgot the worst inflation in the world that we had, it was zillion (IDK, many zeros after 1) percentages per day… Why there was money then IDK as it was most useful as toilet paper…
But bread had the same price for 28 years once! Then it got a big raise and it keeps getting more expensive and at some point, the quality dropped too, I simply stopped buying bread at that point, baking isn’t very difficult just requires some practice and patience.
1978: 3.60, 1979: 4,40, 1980: 5,40, 1988: 10.40.
Then socialism ended and we have a big range now. No idea about bread prices.
1998: 104, 2007: 215, 2019: 307. It went over 400 in 2022, probably, the article is from 2021. Of course, the type my SO would be willing to eat costs way more.

It totally is, you can’t eat silver and it even oxidizes unlike gold… But food tends to go up more than most other things… Except a few popular items. Gas have a reason to go up like crazy though there was a time when it slowed down… At some point it was the same on every gas stations…
Electricity is still cheap, the price is artificially kept low since long. Good as I heat with it (it’s still the most expensive one to heat with and the quota is smallish too - it gets more expensive if we use much - but we manage). Of course it doesn’t keep me from people moaning about its price. Hungarians LOVE complaining (about prices, their own health - bragging about who is sicker, that’s a wildly popular hobby - , politics but that’s understandable). Sadly, we have many reasons for it too but many do it when there isn’t.

(Ellenor Bjornsdottir) #10

Yes, as a rule this is the case. Once prices have been inflated, they tend to not get uninflated unless there’s an economic catastrophe which dramatically reduces the effective supply of money.

Meanwhile, working class people’s wages are, in the main, not growing. begins murmur-singing «arise, you, prisoners of starvation…»

(Joey) #11

Without the Fed, our populist elected officials would be screwing with the money supply to a far greater extent. At least there’s some restraint through its independence.

The larger problem is that the voters want lots of government spending and little tax revenue. If that doesn’t cost us inflation, I don’t know what would.

#12

May want to tell your chef friend to start educating himself on the subject before certain news networks tells him what his opinions are.

The only place we import beef from in South America is Brazil, which is one of the smallest beef importers we have, it’s also not tariffed right now. While there is a proposed 50% tariff that’s supposed to start in August, like all of Trumps Tariff strategies, it’s to use leverage to get better trade deals on our end, which so far has been working.

Austraila is our largest beef importer, then Canada and Mexico, keep in mind (all) of our total beef imports is only around 10% of our actual supply, so hardly a concern. The majority of our pricing issues is the damage to the supply chain which still hasn’t completely reversed yet.

#13

Former Fed employee here… where do you even get that? The Fed is “independent” on paper only! The Fed themselves need’s to be doge’d, it’d be one of the biggest jackpots going.

If you thought the IRS spending millions on K-Cup coffee a year during the years of everybody working at home was great, that’s nothing!

When I was there they decided to get us really nice keyboard and mice, nice Logitech RF ones, we got in PALLETS of them, 10’s of thousands worth, then, only after the fact somebody decided it was a security risk, you’d think being sealed pallets, maybe return them? Sell them? Do something else? Hand them out to employees and be nice maybe…nope! TRASH!

Upgrade hundred of nice LCD monitors, what about all the old 24" inch ones that nothing was wrong with? TRASH! (Can you tell I was in IT?). They’re as wrecklessly wasteful as any other department of gov’t that gets to spend other people’s money with zero accountability, I can assure you of that.

What was nice was all the brunches at Brazillian Steakhouses, though! No shortage of those, or putting us up in super expensive hotels when we travelled with corporate cards that unless we bought a car with… nobody was saying anything!

(Bean) #14

Ah, so you are a chef now? The imported beef is more greatly represented in the food service supply chain and in some of the lower-cost markets (example the grass fed beef at Aldi the last time I bought it there).

Please don’t tell people to “get educated” unless you want to start creating citations on your posts. And I will not have political discussions with you. That’s not why I’m here.

(Joey) #15

@lfod14 Quite the rant, eh?

Most of us come to here to enjoy the keto-related topics. Meat price inflation felt relevant as a point of discussion since most of our forum members are big meat-eaters.

Let’s refrain from debating whether the Fed, as most large bureaucracies go, is wasteful - and just stipulate that they are.

Instead I’d like to return to the larger point:

If the US President and/or Congress ever got their hands directly on the rudder over at the Federal Reserve, US price inflation would be higher - not lower.

And this would further affect @ctviggen’s beef dinners. Which was the original point of his thread. :peace_symbol:

(FRANK) #16

Do they still hang people for cattle rustling?

#17

No Reddit level troll, nor do I need to be as that’s a publically available statistic. Not my problem if your buddy, or you, is too lazy to Google something before making something up.

(Joey) #18

It’s unfortunate how @ctviggen’s observation on rising beef prices has devolved into an unkind ad hominem exchange.

How about we lock this thread down and move on? :v:

(Joey) closed #19