“The high price of eggs may have incentivized a burglar to heist 100,000 eggs from the back of a trailer in Pennsylvania. Have eggs ever been more expensive? The surprising answer is yes—much more. In 1919, eggs were five to six times more expensive: A dozen eggs were 61 cents, or around 5 cents per egg. Wages for unskilled workers at the time were around 25 cents per hour, so these workers had to spend around 12 minutes to earn the money to buy one egg,” notes The Doomslayer:
Eggs at Walmart at the time of writing (Feb 14) are $8.32 per dozen, but unskilled worker wages and benefits have increased to $17.17 an hour. That would put the time price for one egg at 2.4 minutes. The time price for unskilled workers has decreased by 80 percent since 1919. For the time required to earn the money to buy one egg in 1919, unskilled workers get five today. They’re 400 percent better off.
How about blue-collar workers? Wages for blue-collar workers in 1919 were around 43 cents per hour, so an egg cost them 7 minutes. They’re now earning $37.15 an hour, so their time price for one egg is 1.1 minute. The time price for skilled workers has decreased by 84 percent since 1919. They get 6.33 eggs today for the time it took to buy one egg in 1919. They’re 533 percent better off.
Yes, the money price of an egg today compared to 1919 is high, but the time price is much lower. Always compare the money price to hourly wages to see the time price, since that is the true price we pay for things.
Chicken has also become much more affordable. A century ago, it was a luxury for many people to eat chicken. As The Daily Record notes,
In 1928, ads for Herbert Hoover’s presidential campaign promised, “A chicken in every pot.”…What many people don’t know is that when Hoover made that promise 80 years ago, having a chicken in the pot for a Sunday dinner really was a big deal. You see, chicken was on the expensive side back then, and having a chicken dinner would have been considered a bit of a luxury. Why was it expensive? In a nutshell, because grain was expensive to purchase, and most farmers were “cash poor.” (Sound familiar?!) They had land, animals, food for themselves, etc., but raising chickens to sell as meat was more expensive than many farmers could justify. The occasional ill-fated rooster or worn-out laying hen was about all the chicken most people enjoyed. A good chicken dinner really was a treat! Enter science, and World War II. At about the same time the war began to make other sources of meat scarce, science was discovering new ways to “better” house, feed, breed, ship and store chickens. (Don’t forget that electricity and refrigeration were not widespread throughout the nation’s rural areas until well into the 1930s and beyond.) All of these advances served to make chicken more plentiful, popular and cheaper.
A genetically-modified chicken lays eggs that people allergic to eggs can eat. Genetic engineering recently produced pork and bacon that people who are allergic to pork can eat.
In the 1970s, many people expected the world to run out of oil, as the number of people and cars rose rapidly. Yet, gasoline became more affordable as world population tripled and cars multiplied 30-fold.
By contrast, things subsidized by the government often become less affordable.
