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Economy aside, Joe Biden aside, whatever personal animosity you might have for me aside - my man, what are you doing spending 6.75$/lb for chicken at Costco as 'cheap meat?' Just checked and I spend 1.79$/lb on chicken thighs, something like 2.99$/lb for the organic/ethical stuff at the cheapest supermarket nearby. Chicken breast is still something like 4$/lb for the cheap stuff. For 6.75$ I'm pretty sure I could get a rotisserie chicken. I don't live in Manhattan but I am in a probably top 5 or top 10 CoL area. Costco isn't cheap anymore, it's only good if you want the brand name stuff for slightly less than elsewhere. Local discount chains with store brands or Chinese/ethnic markets are cheaper.
Macroeconomics aside, I always find it deeply weird when I see people's list of prices and it turns out they just pay whatever the rate is other than buying the stuff that's on sale. When I stop and think about it, I know that must be the case, because the not-on-sale stuff presumably isn't just sitting in the cooler until it rots, but it just isn't how I've ever lived life. If ground beef is on sale, we'll be eating burgers or cottage pie. If chicken breasts are on sale, chicken bacon ranch sandwiches or chicken cacciatore it is. And so on. Do other people not care about the prices? Having really strong preferences between meals? Not know how to cook anything other than their two favorite meals? I'm not sure what's going on there.
I am like you, I had an ex who was the other way. When we lived together we fought about it constantly. It would drive me bonkers when she'd buy wonder loaf when tip top - the exact same over processed and sweetened white bread - was on special and half the price, and it drove her mad when we decided to have pork chops for dinner but I couldn't bring myself to spend $20 on two pork chips when a special meant I could get four lamb chops for the same price. We concluded it was an artefact of my being raised poor and her upper middle class, were you raised poor?
When I was real little, we were pretty broke, but just regular young family broke rather than desperately poor. By my teens, my family was solidly middle class. Oddly enough, my parents are the complete opposite of me, they just buy the food they want and pretty much disregard the price. They're now well enough off that it genuinely is basically irrelevant, but so am and I'll still react with a, "$8 a pound for that?" and set something down. I think a huge part of it is that I genuinely don't prefer one thing over another by all that much, so I'll just take whatever's on sale and make a meal that I'm perfectly happy with. Tonight, Buffalo wings. Why? Well, wings are on sale and they're about as good as anything else...
Yeah that's definitely a factor, and I also get a bit of enjoyment out of it - planned meals are nice and easy to do well, but when I see what's on special I often get inspired, and my meals always turn out better when I'm inspired, because I get to be creative and I am more enthusiastic. To be fair to my ex though, it can be frustrating when you are looking forward to a particular meal all day only to learn you're getting something different.
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Gas is at the price he was complaining about it rising from, fresh chicken breast at Target is $2.99/lb. $5 at any Costco literally gets you a rotisserie chicken. I don't know how you do the math to claim that the cited prices are high.
Costco heavily subsidizes their chicken, pizza, and hot dogs so the price hasn't increased since 1985. But the loss-leader is now so expensive that they are struggling to justify not raising the price despite the founder threatening to murder anyone who did.
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As a family that used to regularly get a rotisserie chicken from Costco, Walmart, Harris Teeter, really anywhere they were available when we felt lazy and wanted a quick meal, the price only tells half the story. The chickens themselves have gotten tiny. 25% smaller at a minimum. You can't trust the inflation numbers on any prepared meal what so ever. Portion sizes have plummeted.
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