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.
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 our eggs on normal room temperature shelves.
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
The eggs I buy in my supermarket don't have literally crap on them, but it isn't uncommon that they have bit of dirt or hay/grass on them, and those are bought from a mainstream supermarket chain. I do realize they obviously do a quick cleaning pass regardless, just wanted to clarify that many eggs aren't pristine when bought :)
They are probably washed, but only minimally - sometimes there is still a small feather or some dirt on an egg.
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?"
>"It's one banana, Michael. What could it cost?"
It's funny you bring up that up, because bananas are tropical fruits shipped from thousands of miles away, but somehow cost less than domestic fruits like apples. You might not think bananas are "fancy" either, but it's a miracle it's as cheap as they are.
A dozen eggs lasts months in my house (family of 4). We just aren't egg people. The kids will ask for scrambled eggs occasionally, but it's pretty rare. The only time we use a lot of eggs is when we make Christmas cookies, and an 18-count pack typically does the job there. My point being, it's all relative.
I fail to see any significance of this one chart.
You can see wholesale price per dozen dropped from $3.35/dz in July to $1.17/dz today.
I suppose people who don't understand markets did, yes
In March 2025, I tried to order baby chicks to replace some of my aging flock. Not only was every hatchery sold out, but going in person to farm stores meant waiting in lines on the days shipments were received and dealing with rationing (3 chicks per person, etc).
I opted to order chicks for the fall instead of doing a normal spring brooding and luckily the weather cooperated, but as is normal I ordered some extra chicks as padding. The extras I have now been able to sell locally at a premium, covering my entire cost.
Let me just add I don't think backyard eggs are cheaper, even at the height of price spike, because when externalities like feed and enclosure are calculated the resulting product won't have the economies of scale. But I think many people decided they wanted a steady supply after eggs became hard to come by. I personally keep chickens for reasons besides eggs but I am still happy that more folks are keeping chickens.
Externalities are costs/benefits to someone uninvolved with the chicken/egg transaction (noise or free insect control affecting your neighbor are negative and positive cases).
One of my huskies got out and did $70-80 worth of damage to my neighbor's flock: two laying hens.
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.
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.
This doesn't pass the sniff tests. There are plenty of other goods with equal or greater concentration that don't see wild swings like this, cars and CPUs, for instance.
You can't "manufacture" an egg like you do with a car. Entire egg "production" sites need to be shutdown and millions of chickens killed because of some strain of bird flu for example. And you can't just order 5 million egg laying chickens to substitute the old production with a lead time of a few weeks.
I mean, my CPU had definitely run a virus or two but nothing causing long term damage.
Since 2022 and 2025 are close together, and the latter very recent (the flu outbreak peaked in early 2025, not today)... it's not even suprising to see the non-spike prices of 2023-2024 and late 2025 elevated. Chickens are fungible, but the manufacturing method still has a latency to it.
mc32•3h ago
_heimdall•2h ago
[1] https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2025-02-26/poultry...
okokwhatever•2h ago
gruez•2h ago
_heimdall•2h ago
tomhow•39m ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
elzbardico•2h ago
But, politics in the US are completely dominated by lawyers, everything is about rhetorics and scoring talking points. But problems like that require an engineering mindset.
acdha•1h ago
It was one side. The liberals were trying to have the conversation you mentioned, with extensive discussion about why this wasn’t as severe in other countries due to differences in farming practices or talking about vaccination, but the Republican strategists saw an opportunity in just hammering the idea that Biden had some kind of magic egg price lever in his office. Saying “both sides” is supporting them by reinforcing their framing even though it’s ahistorical.