When I was in Boy Scouts back in the ’80s, we got a lecture on frugality by one of the kid’s mom, who assured us – when one of the kids asked her about what seemed to be missing from the meal she was teaching us how to make – that “meat is a rich man’s food.” We kids laughed at this because we all ate meat regularly – because in those days, meat was not a rich mans food.
It’s getting to be just that.
Have you noticed that a Downer Cow steak – a sketchy slice of a cow that probably had to be forklifted to the processing plant – now costs as much as a quality steak cost just a month or so ago? At my local supermarket – Kroger’s – a Downer Cow strip steak that cost around $8 three weeks ago is now $13. A package of ground beef that cost $5 is now close to $10.
It’s even worse than that.
Four years ago, I used to be able to get grass-fed ribeyes at the frou frou Earth Fare supermarket for $5 on sale. That cut of meat is now a rich man’s food. So also the grass-fed ground beef, which is now $7.99 per pound, as of yesterday. Granted, this is local and anecdotal but I am just reporting what I’m seeing and I do not like what I am seeing.
I’ve written several columns about cars – ordinary cars – becoming luxury item. Now food is becoming that. Have you gone to a fast-food joint lately? I bought two singles with cheese at Wendy’s last week; they cost me almost $13. If I’d added fries and a drink the tab would have been closer to $20. For a bag of fast food for one man. A bag of fast food for a man and his wife and two kids would be closer to $50. This is so halting it is hard to even deal with it and what it implies, so most of us don’t think about it and what it implies.
Trump may have beaten Harris but that does not mean we won’t be eating ze bugs. Indeed, he election of Trump may hasten our eating of them. It is possible it may have been the plan all along and not one we ought to have trusted.
We are assured by the newly appointed jobs/economy stats czar – it is interesting that we now have “czars” running things – that the economy is just booming and everything is great again in America. Do you see it? I do not see it. I do not know a single person who says the cost of living has gone down and they are feeling less financial pressure now than they did before Trump won the election. And the cost of Trump’s tariffs – which are nothing other than taxes – have yet to be fully felt. That feeling is coming.
I find myself wondering, as I shop at Kroger’s, how the other people in the store are able to buy what’s in their carts. A $100 bill buys two small plastic bags of nothing-special. A bag of cat or dog food is now $20. Cat litter is $15. Basic staples and not even counting the meat that has become a rich mans food. I have watched people ahead of me in the checkout line pay $400 for a shopping cart full of groceries that $100 used to pay for and I wonder to myself how are they able to pay for that? I notice that most are using cards (rather than cash) and that tells me how. The accruing debt load bearing down on the shoulders of Homo Americanus Averengus must be stupendous.
A demoralizing New Abnormal has set in. People are grateful that a gallon of regular unleaded costs “only” $3.00 now. They have forgotten that it used to cost half as much and not all that long ago.
There are pretty women in jeans ads again and no men in drag trying to sell men beer but who can afford either? People are being pushed out of the cars they have due to the doubling and likely soon tripling of the cost of the “coverage” the government says they must buy; same goes for being forced out of their homes via “coverage” that costs twice or more what it did two years ago and just wait until next year. Plus property taxes – the rent you must pay to the state in order to not be evicted from the hone you will never own – which also continue to escalate.
Meat is a rich man’s food, indeed. And so it seems everything else is, too.
. . .
If you like what you’ve found here please consider supporting EPautos.
We depend on you to keep the wheels turning!
Our donate button is here.
If you prefer not to use PayPal, our mailing address is:
EPautos
721 Hummingbird Lane SE
Copper Hill, VA 24079
PS: Get an EPautos magnet or sticker or coaster in return for a $25 or more one-time donation or a $10 or more monthly recurring donation. (Please be sure to tell us you want a magnet or sticker or coaster – and also, provide an address, so we know where to mail the thing!)
If you’d like a Baaaaa hat or other EPautos gear, see here!
If you are a student of history like I am, you see parallels. Over time little actually changes.
For the most part, history is pretty dark and deadly. It just is. It’s a fact that won’t change, no matter how much history is whitewashed.
People learn very little from history, especially those on the top or the elite. In the past that got them killed, when the peasants have had enough. At some point it will happen again. It’s the timing part that is hard to predict.
RE: “If you are a student of history like I am […] Over time little actually changes.”
Perhaps, you need better guidance? You couldn’t be more wrong.
“… Western standards of morality have been decisively shaped by the Catholic Church…. The insistence on the uniqueness and value of each person, by virtue of the immortal soul, was nowhere to be found in the ancient world. Indeed, the poor, weak, or sickly were typically treated with contempt by non-Catholics and sometimes abandoned altogether. That, as we have seen, is what made Catholic charity so significant, and something new in the Western world.” …
https://www.hprweb.com/2009/04/what-civilization-owes-to-the-church/
There are other URL’s about how Christianity changed the world in a radical way & how ‘The West’ would be what it is today without it. Perhaps, do a deep dive?
In spite of the best efforts of The Power Elite, we do indeed live in revolutionary times.
Where’s my editor? SHould be: “& how ‘The West’ wouldN’T be what it is today without it.”
…Could you even imagine ‘The West’ without Christianity?
Nobody in the current administration cares about you unless you’re worth NINE figures.
Worry over inflation?
They don’t.
We finally got the government of plutocrats who are ushering in THEIR new ‘gilded age’
Hmm, RE: “Nobody in the current administration cares about you unless you’re worth NINE figures.”
You think they, ‘care’?
I guess the word, ‘care’ is open to interpretation.
…I doubt they, ‘care’ about anything except themselves. …If that. …Psychopaths roll like that.
RE: ” a gallon of regular unleaded costs “only” $3.00 now. They have forgotten that it used to cost half as much and not all that long ago.”
…Hmph! Just about Every time I fill up, I think of the ‘Gas Wars’ of the 1980’s. I think: 79 Cents was the lowest, but often, 99 Cents. People would mob the gas station with the lowest price.
…Those were The Days.
The car load of girls I had could order cheap non-bad breath french fries cooked in lard & beef tallow while us guys would get a couple of skinny 49 Cent burgers at an off joint like ‘Grampa’s’ because we wanted to save some beer money by avoiding the ‘pricey’ 99 Cent Big Mac’s at MacDonald’s which seemed thicker & juicer than the x-tra cardboard they sell nowadays.
Then, swing by and have the -then – legal aged, cause-he-was-draftable-age-to-fight-in-a-war 18 year old among us to buy some 99 Cent quart bottles of beer. ‘Cause, back then, 70 year old people didn’t get ‘carded’ and common sense, was sorta common.
…We didn’t know how good we had it, then.
Check out the chart, here:
https://www.oftwominds.com/blogaug25/generational-inequality8-25.html
‘Estimated % of 30-Year-Olds Who Are Both Married and Homeowners (1950-2025)’
…Super Fuckery, is afoot. Our overlords & elders have gone culture-destroying power-mad.
This chart shows the result of the grift on steroids. A direction back to the direction of serfdom.
Yep. Caused me to think of this bit:
‘Resilient, Self-Reliant Life Is Hard’
https://charleshughsmith.substack.com/p/resilient-self-reliant-life-is-hard
..Is the Alpha Generation going there? …Idk.
Who is Jim Bell?
Who is John Galt???
Rich people, both? Idk. Who cares?
‘”Learn To Code” Propaganda Turned Out To Be Terrible Advice’
“The NYT pointed out that unemployment among computer science and engineering grads has risen as high as 7.5%, which is more than double that of art history or biology majors.”…
https://www.zerohedge.com/ai/learn-code-propaganda-turned-out-be-terrible-advice
Fuckery afoot.
…Misleading, misdirecting, flat-out-bad advise masquerading as wisdom, everywhere.
Yeah, being a 160 IQ programmer got me a very solid lower middle class life. Ain’t technology wonderful. It doesn’t help that almost all engineers, programmers, and scientists are semi autistic nerds with zero people skills. As soon as one of us tries to make a profit, the others will clamor to do it cheaper, mostly for geek points.
Insightful. Ernie.
“The printing press will fix everything!”
And they’ve got ‘experts’ to prove it!
Ultra-smart academic economists have concluded that as long as the government can print, it can never go broke!
Also, running large deficits is absolutely necessary so everyone can be rich! Otherwise, how would people get any money, if the government did not ensure constant supply of it?
It’s the ‘Modern Monetary Theory’ man!
It even sounds scientific!
It worked for Zimbabwe!
Where’s that ‘Thumbs Up’ button?
…Oh, sigh. The struggle against ignorance and willful blindness.
…Do you think we’re making a difference in any way?
They’re screwing with the food the cattle eat. My area here in Central WA grows high quality hay but is totally dependent on irrigation water for the growing season April to mid October.
That irrigation water from three reservoirs feeding the Yakima River is subject to “save the salmon” hysteria cemented via treaty rights with the Indian tribes. Sure enough those fish are the excuse to shut down irrigation supply early (August 13) while the Yakima River flows at spring runoff rate all summer, gotta keep the fish from overheating down at the confluence with the Columbia River. No plans to expand reservoirs or build new additional reservoirs. Then of course blame “climate change” for so called drought conditions. No evidence on the fish condition presented, “trust the science”. Fish too warm? How about dredging the silt buildup down at the end for deeper water cool fish areas? Nope. How did the fish survive when rivers ran nearly dry in pre dam days?
Hmph, They’re not, “screwing with the food the cattle eat” they’re fucking with the people.
…’The People’ – most of ’em – are oblivious to it all. Willfully so.
I don’t get it, why they are like that. Like they are under a Spell?
After reading the comments (many great suggestions) and reading previous articles about maintaining older vehicles, it’s beginning to feel a lot like Cuba.
@Eric – Does the package in the cooler at Kroger actually specify “Downer Beef” or is it coded to disguise the origin?
As I posted by mistake in the Tahoe review, groceries are another racket of Capo Geico Gecko. He owns 8% of Kroger and supported the merger of the company with Safeway.
When considering places for relocation out of The Woods, privately held grocery chains should be one of the criteria to consider.
My local grocery store have two sizes of shopping carts; the small working man cart and the large “regular” cart for the EBT (food stamps) for the most part. They also have the hand baskets for the Social Security customers. While the price of gasoline fluctuates around a the $3 mark, diesel fuel prices remain consistent and more expensive. If diesel fuel prices would ever drop, maybe the prices for everything else could drop since farm to factory to shelves involve diesel fuel to transport. But I’m not holding out hope that will happen.
Here’s an old song by Pink Floyd that seems appropriate for the times we’re currently living in…..
https://youtu.be/K6PwUG283DU?si=1YMLH5biHpRQ0j5m
If it wasn’t for the Nips-
Being so good at building ships
The yards would still be open on the Clyde
But it can’t be much fun for them
Beneath their rising sun
With all the kids committing suicide
Love me some Floyd.
I pretty much stay out of the grocery store when it comes to buying meat (and sometimes poultry). I buy from local farm stores and local butcher shops. The prices are similar to grocery stores but the quality is so much better. I figure if I’m going to pay those prices I might as well get better meats. I also buy eggs from locals who sell them. In addition, I grow some veggies, like lettuce and tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers, so for at least a few months out of the year I can have home grown salads.
But yes, it is sad when the price of beef is comparable (or in excess) of certain seafood that has always been regarded as a luxury. Like lobster, Chilean Sea Bass, Halibut, king crab legs and other pricey seafood. Those can usually be had cheaper per pound than the best cuts of steak. That dawned on me one day when my husband came home with frozen lobster tails and some king crab legs. I thought for sure he broke the bank, but no, they were on sale and far less expensive than if he had brought home filet mignon!
As for saving money on seafood, if you have an Asian supermarket near you they generally have reasonably priced and good quality seafood. The ones around here (Baltimore/DC area) have fish markets that will clean, cut and filet fresh fish to order, all for lower prices than those found in your average grocery store.
The sociopaths who run so-called “Western governments” don’t want us eating REAL FOOD such as meat and butter; they want us eating frankenfood such as lab-made butter and lab-grown meat, the excuse invariably given being CLIIIIIIIIIMATE CHANGE.
I’ve even heard stories of “Bioethicists” & “Scientists” trying to genetically engineer ticks so that if a human is bitten by a tick, that tick transmits something called Alpha Gal Syndrome to the victim to make them permanently allergic to meat consumption, the excuse once again being CLIIIIIIIIIMATE CHANGE.
Hi John.
I believe an appropriate punishment for those Eco terrorists is to infect them with Alpha Gal and force feed them with Mickey Dee’s burgers for the rest of their miserable lives.
Hi Landru,
Here’s a better idea…..feed those b******* with the Bill Gates approved franken meat that THEY want US to eat.
Hi John,
Those ticks are already here! There was a news item just recently that Martha’s Vineyard is loaded with them and many people have been infected with that Alpha Gal syndrome; I hope that they’re all over Obummer’s property there and they bite that rat bastard.
Hi Mike,
Martha’s Vineyard is where uber wealthy elitist liberal snobs like to live and/ or hang out. If many of them were infected with AGS, it would be indicative that there is karma or something. Just look at the way they reacted to state governors who bussed illegal immigrants there a few years ago. They reacted in ways that would have gotten literally anyone else smeared as RACISTS or WHITE SUPREMACISTS.
‘Meat is a rich man’s food.’ — eric
Soylent Green, my friend, is FREE.
Always has been been; always will be.
But there’s a catch … 🙁
The grandson & I went to Buffalo Wild Wings last week. He had a burger, I had a salad, we both had sweet tea. $42 with a tip. Yesterday I grilled four burgers for us so hamburger, buns, and an increasingly smaller tub of ice cream was $23.
Sadly in today’s world everything is getting more expensive and here’s how I deal with rising costs. I generally buy everything I eat on clearance at best or on sale at worst. I have a couple small front opening freezers and a LDS level pantry.
Meat not to be eaten right away is vacuum sealed and I note the purchase price, date purchased and best before date. Most stores will mark down meat heavily at its sell by date and if you combine that with the sale price you will really save big.
A couple times a year canned foods will go on sale at a really good price and I restock the pantry. I hand inspect every can that goes on the shelf and return damaged cans. Don’t forget to mark the best by date on the case front.
Rice is a good filler and if you go to where the Chinese shop you can buy the extra large bags and repackage it (I use 2 liter soda bottles and mark expiry date and type). White rice keeps a lot longer than brown rice without going rancid.
Your grocery stores deli counter probably has last night’s cooked foods available at half price and all you have to is reheat it. It might not be much cheaper than the food was on sale but you don’t have to cook and clean afterwards either.
Start a garden. I grow potatoes, carrots, lettuce and corn currently. If you pull it out of the ground you know it’s fresh. I only eat lettuce on burgers so I recommend Buttercrunch leaf lettuce as you can harvest it by the leaf.
If possible raise your own chickens. Whatever you weed out of your garden will be enjoyed by them and chickens love freshly grown clover.
Shopping at tag sales, Craigslist and others will save you money that can be spent on other things you want. My brother in law had to pay around $500 for Roto Rooter to unblock the drain in his rental; I told him that Harbor Freight sells a cheap hand electric held drain snake for a $100. Even if you use it once it will pay for itself many times over. Watch a couple videos first to be sure you know how to use it though.
Learning how to repair your own stuff will save you lots of money also. Govco can’t take skills away from you so learn as many as you can.
As Jason pointed out; buy some gold and silver if you can.
Hi Landru,
Best purchase I ever made was a big chest freezer, bought it used many years ago and it’s still running great, unlike the Chinese made crap sold today that will last maybe ten years if you’re lucky. Like you said, I pack it with meat that’s been marked down/on sale for a great price. Probably has saved me thousands of dollars over the years.
Hi Mike and Landru,
Like you, I’ve been doing the things that should be obvious to every person on a limited budget. This has kept my total monthly costs below 1,000 (for one person.)
However, the ‘sale’ prices of all meat, fowl, and fish, went up over 100% in 2021 and have not abated since.
If you recall, there were dozens of food processing plants/farms that mysteriously burned to the ground. Then Buy-dem and company declared that millions of healthy chickens had to be destroyed to ‘stop the spread’ of a virus. Sounds familiar, eh?
That also led to the prices of eggs going vertical from under a dollar a dozen to six times that price. All the fault of the feds under Buydem.
Buy-dem’s gang of traitors then attacked the beef industry insisting that tens of thousands of cattle be destroyed, just in case a virus might spread.
Eric, these are things that no one could remedy quickly. Blaming Trump’s administration is foolishness.
It will take many years for the herds (and pig styes and chicken coops) to build back up to the production level of 2019.
This is a supply vs demand problem that the market will resolve just as it has many times in the past IF GOVERNMENT STAYS OUT OF THE WAY.
Has there ever been anything good that government hasn’t ruined?
Nailed it John. We’re suffering now for the things the commie bastards did from 20-24. There’s a huge amount of ruin in a nation and the things they did to us aren’t going to work out for a very long time.
Hell, the gooberment took over the Mustang Ranch a few years back for the usual “back taxes” excuse. They proceeded to manage to lose money selling that wonderful commodity rendered by the world’s oldest profession.
They’ve also managed to destroy the birth rate of the actually productive white people with their communist “family” courts.
If I couldn’t spin a wrench I’d never stay in my solid middle class retirement life. This week the 23 year old lawn tractor quit, black smoke rolling out as the motor spun to a stop. Took a couple minutes pull the cowling the choke rod dangling below the carb, the choke shaft arm laying on the sheet metal lucky it didn’t land in the lawn. That arm had been swaged to the choke shaft so I epoxied it back on & finished mowing the next day, running fine. Zero cost fix already had the glue.
Not handy? Your lawn tractor gets hauled into the shop, new $150 carb plus labor plus transport when they can get to it, being summer mow season they’re swamped. I figure I saved about $400 as a DIY project.
Ditto that, Sparkey –
I’ve had to repair a number of things on my riding mower and thank the Motor Gods I can because I know how – because a new rider costs as much as decent used car did two or three years ago; about $3,000. It’s insane.
$3,000? Psft! A used J.D. 758 diesel with a 54″ deck costs ~ $8,000. Which is $2,000 more than I paid for my 1998 Lincoln Navigator with less than 50,000 miles back in 2019 before ‘The Big Run Up’ in used car prices.
Holy Jeebus! Is that 54” deck gold plated? Hope to keep the 23 year old Poulon Pro rolling till they roll me out either to Shady Acres or the dirt nap.
HA! Yup. It ain’t gold plated (which is a low value term, actually. BTW. I think maybe you meant, solid gold?) it’s just run-of-the-mill.
While it’s high Dollar, I do appreciate the X758 – every week – in the grass growing season. Wish I could afford a new one.
How will they pay out all that Social Security owed? Just print it!
Budget shortfalls? No such thing when you can just print it!
Workers demanding COLA style raises? Just print it!
The printing press will fix everything!
Speaking of czars…Czar Nicholas II, King Louis XVI, and Shah Reza Pahlavi were not available for comment.
Got a rifle? Time to start eating venison, bro… very tasty indeed.
Hi X,
Yeah, it may come to that. I can’t stand the taste of venison, though. But when you’re hungry…
Growing any spicy peppers in your garden, Eric?
Making hot sauce, drying and grinding peppers for spices to flavor your meals could have you enjoying venison instead.
Grow them in 5-gallon pails and bring them inside for the winter. Back outside in the Spring and they will keep producing for years.
Eric, venison to many is a different, acquired taste. Most of the time it is how you prepare it and season it that makes it palatable. The rocker Ted Nugent authored a cook book titled “Kill it and grill it”. That recipe book will make the venison more edible.
Hi Allen,
Yep. Edible. Just not desirable (to me)! It’s a very lean meat and it has a gamy taste. I’ll take a marbled ribeye any day… when I can afford to!
Venison does not have a “gamy” taste. In almost every case where people complain about this, it is because they have eaten venison prepared by someone who does not know what he is doing.
Venison is a very neutral meat, unlike beef it does not have fat marbled through it to give it flavor. However you can flavor it with almost anything. The key is to butcher the animal so that ALL sinew, silverskin and connective tissue is excised from the meat. Use only the best cuts, the hindquarters and backstraps. Scraps and lesser cuts get cooked for the dog.
Typically I marinade the meat in olive oil before grilling it. You can grill venison on skewers for souvlaki, grill backstrap steaks, mince or grind it for chili, make fajitas with it, put it in a crock pot with au jus, or vegetables for stew.
I guarantee venison can be the tastiest meat ever if done right. I actually prefer it to beef in many recipes. Of course I do 100% my own butchering and preparation, which is a LOT of work. But is is honest, hardy work.
Good to know, thanks. “The key is to butcher the animal so that ALL sinew, silverskin and connective tissue is excised from the meat. Use only the best cuts, “
Like others said, it’s all in the prep. One of my favorites for venison is to perforate it heavily with a fork, then marinate overnight in a plastic bag drenched in cheap Italian dressing, then grill on high enough heat to sear that candy coating outside and keep it juicy inside.
Gaminess is usually a product of poor processing, I’ve learned to butcher my own and I know exactly how quickly it was thoroughly cleaned, flushed out, and cooled, and how long it hung to age before the admittedly odious task of butchering.
This -> “Gaminess is usually a product of poor processing,”
How to be certain you are driving a device and not a car…
“VW is asking owners of the ID.3 hatch to pay extra if they wish their car to deliver the full performance it’s capable of.
Volkswagen ID.3 Pro and Pro S are listed on the configurator as producing 201bhp, buyers must pay a subscription fee to reach the car’s full potential of 228bhp.
This subscription currently stands at £16.50 per month.
German carmakers deserve to all go bankrupt at their point. Teslas and Chinese electric cars are cheaper, better and not that stupid.”
https://x.com/MyLordBebo/status/1956796397866668530
But lets face it here, Morgentau plan V2.0 is not just for Germans, it is for all the white goyim.
Whaddaya expect VW to do after being fucked over for optimizing software for customers. Good nazis been assimilated into the ev cult.
They’ve been waging a war on meat for decades, trying to get us peasants to stop consuming it. Now they’ve finally been able to make traction on that front, thanks to the artificially created scamdemic-era inflation. With cattle prices at record highs — driven by diminished supplies of cattle due from Mexico (allegedly from a screwworm disease outbreak) — the new phase of the attack on our food supply has shifted from eggs and poultry to beef.
The cretins in charge know that without access to high-quality red meat, our overall health, energy and ability to resist their directives will drastically diminish. They’re also trying to bankrupt what’s left of the middle class, which is one of the few remaining obstacles to the classless dystopia known as Communism.
Take this for what it’s worth, but I think we should all be converting as much of our savings into physical precious metals as we can to protect against the parabolic increase in inflation that’s almost certainly coming our way, not to mention the coming digital currency panopticon. (P.S. The Orange One tried tariffing gold the other day, only to immediately reverse course after apparently getting some major pushback. But that stunt was likely a “heads-up” that the PTBs are planning to cut off the monetary exits for us in the not-too-distant future.)
The US rancher exports beef to Asia. The South/Central American rancher exports beef to the United States. The South American consumer eats beans and chicken, and sometimes skirt steak. Why? Because shipping it gets a premium price over local.
They used to say that if you were a Texan and wanted a decent steak you should go to Chicago or New York, because the best beef was sold there, not locally.
I picked up some stew meat at Costco the other day for about $8.50/lb, about 30% more than I’m used to paying. It was the last package on a weekday which is pretty odd. Lots of higher end cuts in the case, nothing under $75 for the tray. Some were over $100. Sure, it’s bulk, but I’m guessing people are “balking” at the sticker price.
At those prices, going in on a 1/4 cow starts to make sense. Problem is you have to have a fairly big freezer and be able to buy beef on a semi-subscription basis to keep your rancher happy. Cashflow is king in ranching and one time sales aren’t going to keep the mortgage paid.
Hmm, possibly, RE: “At those prices, going in on a 1/4 cow starts to make sense. Problem is you have to have a fairly big freezer” network?
A.k.a. group buys?
I gots no network & imagine you in the desert don’t much either.
F.U.B.A.R.? …Got, sheep?
Turkeys?