• gedaliyah@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    38
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    5 hours ago

    In a sense, it is semantics. It’s mathematically wrong but it’s correct in terms of messaging. If you say that prices increased by 100%, then decreased by 50%, to a lot of people it sounds like they are still higher than the original.

    It’s sort of like how the 1/3 pound burger failed in America because people thought it was smaller than the equally priced 1/4 pound burger.

    People are dumb is the point.

    And if there is one competency Trump has, it’s communicating to dumb people.

    • stebo@sopuli.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      1 hour ago

      It’s sort of like how the 1/3 pound burger failed in America because people thought it was smaller than the equally priced 1/4 pound burger.

      I’ve never heard of this. What? The average American doesn’t know how fractions work? This country never ceases to amaze me.

      • Betty_Boopie@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        45 minutes ago

        A&W tried it in the 80’s and apparently more than half the people in the focus group thought the burger was smaller because 3 is less than 4. They renamed it the 3/9th burger so dumbass Americans wouldn’t feel like they were being ripped off. Americans have been leading the world in dumbassery for the decades at this point.

      • CalipherJones@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        27 minutes ago

        Had a guy swear up and down that 2/3 is larger than 3/4. This was brought up because he was telling me he was teaching his son math. Guy was at least 45+.

    • D_C@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      2 hours ago

      It was probably about 30 egg mcmuffins.
      We all know how much Tubby tlTiny Hands loves his McD’s.

  • friend_of_satan@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    42
    ·
    edit-2
    5 hours ago

    I just had breakfast at Tony T’s Coney Island and they paid me $36 to eat a three egg omelette. Of course I had to pay for coffee.

  • Mothra@mander.xyz
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    25
    ·
    10 hours ago

    Stupidity highlighted in the post aside - that’s not my country, is it true that eggs now cost $2 when they used to be $8?

    • Doom@ttrpg.network
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      3 hours ago

      They didn’t. At least not for me. I work in the kitchen industry, cookie dough, liquid eggs, certain breads are expensive/hard to source atm. Egg prices went down a little, at one point we were paying $80 for a case that used to be $30ish. Last I ordered it was $68.

    • disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      33
      ·
      8 hours ago

      In NY, a dozen has come down to $6.99 from $12.99 in March. They were ~$5.99 per dozen under Biden when MAGA could not shut up about them.

    • P00ptart@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      46
      arrow-down
      4
      ·
      9 hours ago

      $3.99 here. I can almost guarantee what happened to drop the price is that they stopped testing for bird flu. Milk also halved in price at the same time. I haven’t seen milk this cheap in 20+ years.

      • Maeve@kbin.earth
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        3 hours ago

        Milk prices have crept up at our grocery chains, remained stable for the last year at dollar stores, but still up from COVID days

      • HeyJoe@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        5 hours ago

        I feel like i have not seen milk move in price since the start of covid. Before covid I could get it for $3 at costco and $4 in stores. Now it’s been about $5-$6 ever since.

      • jatone@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        12
        arrow-down
        5
        ·
        edit-2
        7 hours ago

        😂 milk/eggs are the same price here in my state. You guys were/are just getting fucked by standard capitalist behaviors. Nothing has fundamentally changed this year for those price drops.

        I assure you testing for bird flu in no way results in a 20% price drop, let alone whats being claimed by this admin. Testing is dirt cheap likely less than a fraction of a cent per egg.

        The reasons prices sky rocketted is because the flu killed off the chickens not because of testing.

        • blarghly@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          15
          ·
          5 hours ago

          Tests don’t cost money. Positive tests cost money, because then you have to kill a bunch of chickens to stop the spread of the disease. Stymieing the spread of bird flu requires both higher egg prices and costly culling for farmers. If the admin stops testing, egg prices come down because farmers can’t be told to cull chickens which they don’t know are sick. So egg prices come down. But also bird flu spreads out of control and we might create a new pandemic.

        • Maeve@kbin.earth
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          3 hours ago

          EPI reports profits hundreds of percents higher, every year. They are nonpartisan.

          • jatone@lemmy.dbzer0.com
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            18
            arrow-down
            3
            ·
            edit-2
            7 hours ago

            Dude, ive literally been in meetings where were it was decided to increase prices by 80% based on the zipcode you were from.

            It absolutely is normal market behavior. These fuckers pull this kind of shit all the time. Hell during trumps last admin they killed some worker pay thing and immediately businesses gave a bonus to workers that was worth a fraction of what the bill would have given workers as a ploy.

            Hell in this thread alone you can see the massive variability of prices based on regions and no, its not because of mysterious market forces. You dont go from 8 to 2 dollars in a couple months due to market forces for a product that has a lead time of 3-4 months (the time it takes for a chicken to mature and produce eggs)

            What has happened here is essentially: flu killed off a truck load of chickens, prices sky rocketted due to supply/demand and farmers redirecting to chicken production to restore the supply. Then as the chickens matured prices stabalized back down. And during this period middle men jacked up the prices because they had cover of a supply issue to blame beyond what the reality dictated.

            But this took awhile to occur and started well before this admin. Has nothing to do with testing as you asserted with 100% confidence, in fact trsting is how we managed to limited the damage. Nor does it justify 12.99/dozen prices in one region and 4 in another were both regions magically reverted by 50+% to the baseline.

            • P00ptart@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              3
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              7 hours ago

              actually that’s quite normal if something like a disease were to come through a region. The variability in price by region is inherent in the deterioration of all food stuffs. It’s why avocados are cheaper in the SW and oranges are cheaper in the SE. Eggs are also regional, but they’re in every region. This is why there’s wildly different prices in eggs, because bird flu might be wreaking havoc 2 states over, but isn’t a big deal where you live.

              That being said, eggs dropping 50% and milk by more than 100% in any one market? That is unusual market behavior.

              • jatone@lemmy.dbzer0.com
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                6
                arrow-down
                3
                ·
                edit-2
                6 hours ago

                Sigh, please stop talking you don’t know what you’re talking about.

                Here are where eggs are produced in the US

                The cost of producing/shipping eggs is basically constant. For example: if I ship go from penn to NYC, and then distribute to the rural areas from the nyc hub. Its cheaper to deliver to the city than the rural areas.

                And yet you’ll see prices in NYC are much higher (probably where that $12 figure came from) than the rural areas.

                So effectively our production, shipping, real estate, and labor costs are effectively constant in both regions and yet both experience a 200% price increases due to a supply shortage? Sorry fam, but the price isnt reflecting the cost to produce. Its reflecting what businesses think they can get away with.

                The fact is prices were jacked up as high as they could get away with for local markets while they had the cover of a supply shortage. And in no way reflects the cost of the actual disruption, and have nothing to do with your absurd original claim about testing or anything to do with market forces unless you count unrestrained greed as a market force.

                The USDA covered farmers for their loss of chickens/production the farmers didnt see a fucking penny of these price increases.

                Edit: just to be clear, im not saying variability based on region doesnt make sense. Im asserting that in the case of a disruption in production you’d see a constant price increase across the board, since only production was impacted. So NYC would see $0.05 and so would a town in northern NY.

                What you absolutely would not see is a 100%+ hike in prices across the board.

                • P00ptart@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  5
                  arrow-down
                  2
                  ·
                  6 hours ago

                  Except that that’s not how market adjustments work, buddy. They never go down that abruptly, pal. They adjust slowly to find the happy medium that maximizes profits, guy. That big of a drop in that short of a time isn’t a market adjustment, friendo. You’ve got a lot to learn before you start talking down to people, champ.

      • 4am@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        10
        arrow-down
        8
        ·
        7 hours ago

        Food safety inspection (including bird flu testing) does not make up that much of the cost of eggs.

        Capitalists are passing their fuckup costs in to you. A shitload if birds died any you paid to float them until new birds were ready. Why is this so hard to understand? Why are you subtly astroturfing this “actually it’s Biden’s fault because they did egg testing” shit? Fuck off with this neocon propaganda.

        • blarghly@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          5 hours ago

          It is Biden’s “fault”, in that testing for bird flu requires farmers to cull chickens (many of which would test negative) in order to stop the spread of the disease. This would result in an egg shortage, and therefore a price increase. This is unfortunate for egg prices, but is necessary to protect the egg supply long term and to ensure the bird flu doesn’t jump to humans and kill us all. But Biden didn’t order this, so much as he simply allowed existing government agencies to do their jobs.

          Additionally, we should give the Biden admin credit for increasing the power of the FTC to investigate more possible instances of collusion and price fixing, like what may have happened with eggs.

          If Trump stops bird flu testing, we would very much expect egg prices to come down - at the expense of allowing bird flu to run rampant.

        • P00ptart@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          9
          ·
          7 hours ago

          I can’t even formulate an argument to your unintelligible drivel. Go back to the flat earth hole you crawled out of.