JD Vance was roundly mocked online over a trip to the supermarket where he bemoaned the steep price of eggs — and botched the photo opp.
The Republican vice presidential nominee stopped by a supermarket in Reading, Pennsylvania, with his sons over the weekend to illustrate how grocery prices have been impacted by “Kamala Harris’s policies” when he claimed a dozen eggs cost $4.
The problem? When footage of the visit emerged, Vance was quickly called out by viewers who spotted the price tag of a dozen eggs behind him was actually $2.99.
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I mean, I think that he’s got a valid broader point that egg prices haven’t been great for a couple of years.
However…that’s not really due to anything that Biden has done, much less Harris.
A lot of it was due to major avian flu outbreaks:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bird-flu-outbreak-egg-prices-2024/
April 24, 2024
A multi-state outbreak of avian influenza, also known as bird flu, is leading to a jump in the price of eggs around the U.S. — an unhappy reminder for consumers that a range of unforeseen developments can trigger inflation.
As of April 24, a dozen large grade A eggs cost an average of $2.99, up nearly 16% from $2.52 in January, according to federal labor data. The price increase comes as nearly 9 million chickens across Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico and Texas have been discovered to be infected with bird flu in recent weeks, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That is crimping egg supplies, leading to higher prices.
https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/egg-prices-rise-bird-flu-farm/
September 9, 2024
LONG LAKE, Minn. — Minnesota shoppers may be experiencing some sticker shock as eggs again emerges as a hot commodity.
According to the USDA, the average wholesale price for a dozen large Grade A eggs reached $4.26 in the Midwest region. That’s up $0.09 since last week, but up roughly 20% compared to what was recorded in last summer’s consumer price index.
“I’m not surprised by the volatility,” Loree Kinney, store director at the Orono Market explained. “There’s volatility in milk, there’s volatility in dairy products, and in meat. There’s not much you can do about the supply and demand.”
Indeed, economists have for months pointed to a bird flu outbreak as a key reason for dwindling supplies of eggs across the U.S. coming from major producers.
You can’t really lay that much at Harris’s feet, though.
I do kind of wonder how practical it would be to have some company just store powdered eggs if the prices are going to be jerking around that much. Can’t do a sunny-side-up egg or anything like that, but for baking, it should be fine.
Exactly. Egg prices have gone up in large part because factory farming is unsustainable and we’re starting to see that with flu outbreaks. Who’da thunk.
Yes, eggs should be from small farms with 12 chickens max each, that should solve everything, quality control, diseases and the high prices on eggs.
Same with everything else, factories make shitty products, you should rather order from a craftsman.
/s
PS:
Oh yes BTW, AFAIK the flu outbreaks started in nature, not on farms.
Edit:
The ignoratum around here is staggering.
I never argued that we shouldn’t improve the conditions for chickens, but to argue we can have production in mostly any kind of farming today that isn’t heavily mechanized and factory like is extremely ignorant. How else do you feed 300 million people in USA or 700 million in EU efficiently?
I’m downvoted for speaking the truth, and seemingly most people here wants to live a fantasy denying reality.
I personally buy organic eggs, and never from cages, but even that is factories, they just have slightly better conditions.
I know people who have their own chickens laying eggs, but even they can have diseases, so regulation for having your own has been increased a lot here (EU) lately for that too.
You do what you want, but to claim it’s feasible to get rid of the “factories” is wishful thinking.
We can however improve the factories, so the chicken get better conditions. And we’ve been doing that already since the 60’s.
Zoonotic diseases require frequent contact with large amounts of animals with large amounts of workers to have enough opportunity to make the difficult cross-species jump, so yes, factory farming is 100% the problem and giving both the animals and the people caring for them more space and making sure the workers have the time to do things right would make a huge difference. You’re making a reducto ad absurdum argument by intentionally using absurd quantities and time periods that are not required to accomplish this goal.
I’m no vegan by far, but I’ll definitely grant them that the modern animal product industry is unsustainable on numerous levels. Also whether or not humans are “meant” to eat meat, we’re definitely not supposed to eat this much. There are aspects of other agriculture that are similarly so, however. A good example is produce such as avocados and citrus fruits that require a tropical climate but that spoil relatively easily meaning they have to be quickly transported to other areas to be consumed. They should be a relatively rarely eaten delicacy in places they don’t normally grow, not something you can just pick out of a giant pile at the supermarket.
Plastics in general are another great example. You can’t make a biodegradable anything that does what plastic does because not being biodegradable is exactly what makes plastics so useful to the modern lifestyle. They mean you can package something in a way that will stay sealed and fresh through all kinds of temperature and humidity changes when especially moisture is exactly what you need a biodegradable material to respond to. Plastics mean you can get exactly the flavor of doritos you’re craving from the gas station at 2am. Plastics = convenience and that’s the one thing that will be the hardest for all of us to give up.
Saving the planet and treating other humans better is just going to require a radical change in (particularly) western culture where we’re used to just getting whatever we want whenever we want, and while the rich are certainly the most egregious offenders, one of the biggest ways they’ve suckered the rest of us into going along with it is by getting us addicted to small-scale versions of their unsustainable consumption habits.
- Unlike the similarly awful 2014 outbreak, you correctly point out that these outbreaks are originating in the wild. And keeping chickens in awful, inhumane conditions where they live in their own filth jam-packed among thousands of other chickens is basically the perfect vector for a pathogen.
- Getting chickens out of factory farms is a good unto itself, but I doubt you’ve ever watched any footage or done any research to familiarize yourself with the sorts of horrors you pay for when you buy eggs from a factory farm. Let alone based on your callous attitude that you would actually care about those horrors.
- Weird strawman that the two kinds of farms that exist are late stage capitalist hellholes where billions of chickens go every year to live a life of unfathomable torture… and your Aunt Betty’s backyard chicken coop where every chicken gets a wacky name and their own posts on Facebook documenting their antics.
My mother raises hens and a dozen birds can actually make so many eggs that our entire family has trouble using them all. A bird lays on average one egg a day, and pasture-raised eggs are so rich as to be almost unpalatable to eat directly.
I don’t think every farm needs to have some strict limit like that, but more numerous, smaller, more localized farms would be better for everyone in almost every way. Better environmentally, more humane to the birds, people get fresher and higher quality eggs, and more people are employed. Also more limited damage from diseases, droughts, and so on.
Our current system isnt just bad because “factories bad.” It’s bad because it’s heavily centralized and top-down controlled. This is much cheaper to operate and funnels money towards the owner much better, but is so much worse in every way that local farms are better.
We’re making millions of birds suffer and getting shittier, more expensive product because of it so less than a dozen people (the real bad eggs) can stay filthy rich.
On the other hand, I can get free range eggs cheaper than your factory made ones in the most expensive parts of the EU, and our population is greater than that of the US, we are feeding more people, yet I can safely eat them raw without the risk of salmonella.
Thing is, Biden has been paying farmers for their losses and ramping up inspections to detect and stop spread.
Egg prices would be even worse if Biden was sitting on his ass. We’d have even more of a supply and demand discrepancy.
But, maybe Trump wants to propose injecting chickens with bleach.
Not to mention the price spike on eggs specifically is also way less than he would like to make it appear. Yes, in 2020 dollars, a dozen eggs was $1.50. But adjusted for inflation to today’s dollars, that 1.50 is actually about 2 dollars today (inflation being a much broader issue and highly affected by covid). So the price didn’t jump from 1.50 to 4 dollars, an increase of 167%, nor even from 1.5 to 3 dollars, an increase of 100%. It only went up from 2 dollars to just under 3 dollars (given the signs), an increase of just under 50 percent. Considering all the avian flu outbreaks that is an entirely reasonable price hike on a high demand good.
I see the point you are trying to make, but inflation doesn’t quite when that way.
Comparing the prices of the same commodities at two different points in time is literally how inflation is calculated, the increase from $1.50 to $4 is real.
Now, what the inflation-adjusted dollars are telling you is that if eggs had only increased in price commensurate with general inflation, they would have gone from $1.50 to $2. The extra $2 increase is above what a consumer would expect given the general increase in the prices of everything else. If someone (magically) had a salary that increases with inflation, they would find eggs today to be a larger fraction of their spending if they kept the same level of consumption.
Eggs are more expensive both in absolute and relative to other products. The reasons for this are complex, but due in no small part to people continuing to buy large quantities of eggs even when they were heinously expensive in the early days of the pandemic. The market absorbed that information and came to the conclusion that eggs were previously undervalued.
First, you missed the part where the actual price now is not 4 dollars? He lied. It was 3 dollars, per the sign right behind him.
Second, national inflation is calculated off a broad spectrum of goods and services providing insight into the relative buying power of tthe dollar itself, so it is not missing the point to compare based on the adjusted buying power of the dollar. It is a more accurate reflection of the true rise in cost of this individual good comparing how its rise in price has outpaced the average rise in costs across the board. It reflects the extra pressures put on the egg market from the avian flu outbreaks and possible other factors rather than the general inflation of the entire economy.
Third, if Vance’s goal was to demonstrate that inflation in general had gone up tremendously and blame Harris specifically for that (despite how ridiculous that is), using eggs as a specific measure of the effect of their policies when the price hike on eggs have significantly outpaced other goods and is clearly due to non-policy related circumstances outside anyone’s control is obviously disingenuous. And that was before he lied and tried to add another 30+ percent on top of the already inflated price.
They haven’t done anything to better it, either. I can’t find numbers for this year, so we’ll probably have to wait until next. https://www.yahoo.com/news/profits-largest-u-egg-producer-180807947.html
He said his three kids—7,4 and 3 years old—eat “14 eggs every single morning”. Either he’s an idiot or the toddlers are training to fight Dolph Lundgren.
I am sure the actual quote is even stupider than I can imagine but:
Three kids. Let’s assume 3 sunny side up eggs for him, 7, and 4. That gets 9. Then whatever his couch eats so let’s say 10-11. Then another 3 or 4 for a “big pile of scrambled eggs” for the 3 year old and for the 4 year old to actually eat because yucky runny eggs. And then whatever his servants are able to sneak off to feed themselves.
It is very reasonable for a household that doesn’t care about money or food waste.
I mean … Vance is an idiot, but I have three boys. Between me, my wife, and my three kids, we each eat 2-3 eggs worth of scrambled eggs some mornings. 5x2 is 10, 5x3 is 15. That’s right in line with his claims, if he counts himself and wife, which he probably is and just being an idiot again.
That said, I don’t have eggs EVERY DAY. FFS my cholesterol would be sky high. I do buy 10-15 dozen eggs at a time, though, because the local farmer’s market sells 15 dozen for $25-30 and eggs will keep for 6-10 weeks in the fridge that is consistently the same low, near freezing temp (perfect for the outdoor, secondary fridge).
FFS my cholesterol would be sky high.
Cholesterol intake is not directly correlated with blood cholesterol. Eat all the eggs you want. The bigger problem is saturated and trans fat.
Further, in the specific circumstances where eggs are the source of dietary cholesterol, an improvement in dyslipidemias is observed due to the formation of less atherogenic lipoproteins and changes in HDL associated with a more efficient reverse cholesterol transport. However, if the cholesterol sources are consumed with saturated and trans fats, as happens in the Western diet pattern, increases in plasma cholesterol may be observed.
https://64.media.tumblr.com/bda1fe3b9784777fd550b776d1e89364/tumblr_inline_ow6sw7yn1j1spja7s_400.gif
(Hecc, not sure how to make that embed)
Why did Kamala Harris choose for there to be an avian flu epidemic that led to many bird deaths/culling? I can’t believe she’d write that into policy!
The lying about the price aside, fucking morons, I swear to god.
Do we know that’s actually the reason the prices doubled (and is jt still a valid reason)? Or is it mostly just unchecked gouging like almost all other groceries?
First one, then the other, and that’s why Kroger is getting their asses sued off by the FTC under Biden appointee Lina Khan. The avian flu issue was a legitimate supply/demand squeeze for a little while, until it wasn’t, and Kroger didn’t back down an inch, so the FTC is stepping in.
It’s probably both. You find an excuse to raise prices, you build in some extra margin so you only have to raise the price in one big go instead of smaller increments that better reflect market prices. Your competitors do the same, and you just tell everyone there’s nothing you can do, it’s just inflation.
Why is this dude this bad at being a politician? I feel like if you pick a random person off the street and swapped places with Vance, they would have more charisma, and also more experience with groceries and donut shops.
Yeah at the time he was picked it was purely a gesture of goodwill towards Vance’s techno-capitalist sponsors (Thiel and co). I am confident trump thought they had it in the bag against sleepy Joe and his team wasn’t thinking too hard about strategy at the time.
Now they’re scrambling but it doesn’t seem to be working. they’ll probably just try another coup after the election
I feel like if you pick a random person off the street and swapped places with Vance, they would have more charisma, and also more experience with groceries and donut shops.
Well, ANYONE would be better than Putin. Even most drunk alcoholic from streets.
Wait, you were talking not about Putin?
Quote: “now a dozen eggs will cost you around four dollars thanks to Kamala Harris’ inflationary policies”.
Checks source: Average cost $4.10.
Edit: I’ve updated this post to reflect the point of it being posted in News.
The problem? When footage of the visit emerged, Vance was quickly called out by viewers who spotted the price tag of a dozen eggs behind him was actually $2.99.
– Vance is being called out for saying eggs cost around $4 while standing in front of eggs that costs $3 when in fact the average cost for eggs he is standing in front of is $4.10.
I hate that this is the bullshit we spend our time arguing over.
good post. i hate vance and I don’t think inflation is bidens fault but i wish everyone would stop acting like clowns.
Strong agree. I think most people just go for the low hanging fruit because they don’t actually care enough to be invested in policy. The vast majority of “news” is just trash to generate clicks and engagement and we all suck it up like calorie-free frappaccinos.
I posted earlier in response to his full comment regarding the “inflation explosion act”. This is something worth reading about - that the Inflation Reduction Act has not had any immediate impact on inflation to date (up or down). Others here have accurately commented about the disease spreading across poultry farms which has most impacted the costs of eggs in particular.
It’s also worth pointing out that bird flu is increasingly having an impact on cattle. https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/09/bird-flu-is-spreading-rapidly-in-california-infected-herds-double-over-weekend/ So, expect dairy prices to slowly and steadily increase.
Well the Democrats are running a campaign on Joy and “Look how shitty and Dumb those guys are”.
So I am not expecting good political discussion around this election.
Everyone seeks the validation they crave, of being right before they ask any questions or have to look at reality. And that means ignoring issues to prove they are the most morally connected to their side of righteousness.
Each side is gonna provide their snippets to their sycophants to feel superior.
I just want to point out that the box he is holding… well it’s not a dozen eggs. That’s more like… 30 eggs? or something. 5 rows times 6 rows, if my eyes aren’t deceiving me. No idea how many eggs are in all those boxes behind the price tags, of course, but still. Saying a dozen when you’re holding two-dozen or more is also a lie. :p
Edit: or is it 6 x 6 rows? That’s 3 dozen eggs he’s holding. Edit2: not sure why the downvote. I’m not making it up, you can see him holding the box.
I fail to see how that is relevant at all. He could be holding a steak or a roll of paper towels standing in front of bananas or at a car dealership and speak about the cost of a dozen eggs.
What is relevant is his claim that “Harris’ inflationary policies” had an impact on the price of items at grocery stores. This is untrue.
I think I get it. The internet wants to call out every detail in an image as if they’re true crime detectives. They want to be more right than everyone else. But only based on the most simple piece of content possible. If it requires reading a few paragraphs, or finding your own source material that a news outlet fails to provide, or using a middle school degree of reading / listening comprehension that’s too much work. I did that here, and hate that it needed to be done, to back up my previous comments elsewhere in this thread.
I responded to a post that took a bunch of price tags and calculated an average price of $4,10 for a dozen eggs. I pointed out that we can’t even see how many eggs are in each of those boxes behind the price tags, so the conclusion that a dozen eggs cost on average $4,10 is bullshit (and I used Vance himself holding a box of 3 dozen eggs as proof, because it shows that obviously not all those boxes hold only a dozen eggs). Simple math would show that when you put any of those price tags on a box of 3 dozen eggs, the average price of a dozen eggs goes down significantly.
And you can hold off on the weird insults. I don’t even really care. Not American, I have no horse in this race. Just wanted to point out that the average price conclusion was wrong.
