And yet, if you check it out for real, you'll find most food could be a lot cheaper (some countries have regulations for basic foods to be excepted from most regulation and taxes, and there's a large price difference)
Especially meat could be a great deal cheaper if these countries wanted to make that happen.
Food in the west is only cheap in one sense of the word, and even then if you compare how much of the cheapest bread today you can buy for the average monthly pay today versus how much of the cheapest bread in 2000 you could buy for the average monthly pay in 2000 it's almost a factor 2 less.
But yeah, that's still very cheap: nobody's going hungry at the increased prices.
Agricultural productive capacity hasn't changed that much in the past 25 years. Looking at the longer term, food prices have dropped enormously. At the beginning of the 20th century, the average American household budget was 40+% food. Today it's around 10%.
>the average American household budget was 40+% food. Today it's around 10%.
Does that mean food prices have dropped enormously or could it be that families have to spend more money on eg. rent, gas, and health? Adjusting for inflation, the price of milk have only decreased 1.1%[1]
[1] https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/milk-prices-...
Your link only shows back to 1995, whereas the figures you quoted are about 1901. Even using your link and 1995, milk prices dropped 15% over that period, not 1.1%.
If we look at 1901, milk was around 6 cents per quart according to https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/bulletin-united-states-b.... Adjusted for inflation, that's about $2.29/quart today, or $9.16/gallon. That's over twice what I pay and over twice the average according to https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000709112.
Yes of course you can buy cheap and bad quality milk but you should strive to buy good product. Same goes for meat. If you do not invest in yourself then you are wasting money
Are you suggesting that milk was higher quality in 1901? I’ve read enough of The Jungle to doubt that greatly.
Well, people say milk used to taste better and forget that getting bacterial infections from milk was very common. Infections from milk and bread were a significant cause of death.
True, the situation that changing government relations (international relations, tarrifs, boycotts, taxes, ...) are the biggest factor in the economy is nothing new anymore.