Thanksgiving celebrations next month may prove to be the most expensive in the history of the 400-year-old holiday, Breitbart reports.
The claim comes from the New York Times, which interviewed economists and other experts on the matter to discuss the ongoing inflation rates and supply chain crisis that have caused prices of goods, including food, to skyrocket across the country.
“This will be the most expensive Thanksgiving ever,” said economist Trey Malone of Michigan State University. Malone noted that even the rich will be forced to spend more on Thanksgiving than in past years, “but not everyone is going to be able to do that.”
Calvin Moore of the Congressional Leadership Fund super PAC said that “working families can’t even afford to celebrate the holidays this year,” and predicted that “voters will quit House Democrats cold turkey because of it.”
Just about every food item imaginable has increased in price over the course of the last nine months since Joe Biden took office. As the Times noted, “nearly every component of the traditional American Thanksgiving dinner, from the turkey to the after-dinner coffee, is expected to cost more than ever.”
Some of the ingredients that have fallen victim to price increases are vanilla extract, which has risen by more than $2 since last year, and the main dish of most Thanksgiving dinners, turkey, which saw its prices increase by about 20 percent in the month of October alone. “By the end of the year,” said executive chef Matthew McClure, “market analysts say prices per pound will likely surpass the record Department of Agriculture benchmark price for turkeys — $1.36, set in 2015.”
Ongoing price increases across the board are being attributed to a number of factors that have produced a growing scarcity of goods. The international supply chain has become unusually backed-up, with nearly a hundred cargo ships simply waiting off the coast of California, unable to enter the Port of Los Angeles to offload their hundreds of thousands of crates; this is primarily due to a shortage of workers who are unable to operate the cranes and drive the trucks needed to offload the supplies in a timely manner, and subsequently deliver them to their destinations.
The worker shortage has subsequently been blamed on several factors, including the extension of federal unemployment benefits due to the Chinese coronavirus pandemic, as well as recent vaccine mandates imposed by employers that have forced many workers out of their jobs. With goods becoming harder to transport, the demand for those very same goods has risen, thus causing prices to rise.