“The plant constituents of that product, a vegan blue cheese, are hardly exotic. The top four ingredients are pumpkin seeds, coconut oil, lima beans, and hemp protein powder. And yet Dominique Crenn, a Michelin-starred chef, described it as “soft, buttery, and surprisingly rich—beyond imagination for a vegan cheese.””
Except it hasn’t. Inflation-adjusted prices for commonly-referenced foodstuffs (eggs, milk, bacon, and coffee, for example) are actually steady since 1995.
Things feel expensive in part because human perception over time is a frail thing and we can remember (for example) that when we were younger, gas was $1.20 a gallon. Of course, that was when I was in high school and making minimum wage, which was $3.05. Adjusting both those to inflation (in 2023 dollars), that’s $3.76 for the gas (spot on) and $9.95 for minimum wage (which is a bit short of the current federal of $7.29 $7.25 (typo) , although 29 states have set higher minima, the lowest of which is $9.95)
This isn’t intended to make anyone feel any better. The big problem is the absolute insane record profits and consolidation of wealth into an equally insane number of billionaires. Those are the forces we should be lining up with knives and forks against.
And contrary to the “both sides” argument, there’s one side that wants to take absolutely everything for themselves and create a Christo-fascist theocracy, continuing to hoard their gold like Smaug; and another that, while still upper class and definitely not perfect, does try reduce world suck. Choose wisely.
This article is confusing as fuck. How can you use 2022 dollars “adjusted” and then claim there’s no inflation. That’s literally what that adjustment is for, to normalize prices for inflation over time.
Also it jokes eggs aren’t crazy expensive but they’ve been up to comedy levels of pricey at least twice in 3 years due to avien flu.
There’s no change in the inflation rate, not denying the fact that inflation exists. All he’s saying is that it is not a parabolic increase, but a straight line.
This concept needs to spread. Those record profits and the consolidation of wealth is a real-life exploit (a hack) of capitalism. These types of situations were never intended by the visionaries that designed capitalism. This entire clusterfuck of 1% having 99% of the money was never intended by design, nor seemed like a plausible situation to need to design protections for when the economy started getting destroyed by this situation. As the sickness of greed among policymakers grew, they punched holes in the system in order to exploit the mechanics of the capitalism to collect virtually limitless money while simultaneously denying other less privileged people not “in the know” the chance to do the same.
Does anyone remember the original Super Mario Brothers, where you could get crowns, basically giving you more lives than you could possibly use? These capitalist hackers found a way to get crowns at the expense of the 99%, and nobody has any clue or organized any way to stop this hack/exploit from ruining it for everyone else.
Capitalism has been hacked. If the system administrators don’t manually intervene and redistribute wealth, we are just going to keep circling the drain until it’s all over like a game of Monopoly where everyone except one entity is completely bankrupt.
Ever since they got us to come out of the fields and into the factories, the point has always been about a class war against the poor. To act otherwise is to ignore history.
First of all the comparisons are to 2019, not pre 1983 when those changes are made, so most of this is totally irrelevant to the point I was making. That’s also why all the real wage statistics are anchored to 1982-1984 dollars. Second a forever unchanging fixed basket of goods is not a good way to measure inflation. What people spend their money on changes over time. Cell phones are necessary now, didn’t used to be, shouldn’t they be in the consumer price index? Internet is necessary now, those costs should be in the index. The same things that were necessary in 1975 are not the exact same things people are buying now. Using the exact same basket of goods from 1975 would be ridiculous and not useful. Another frequent criticism is that housing prices aren’t included after 1983. The reasoning being that is an investment, not an expense that you will never get back. However rent is, and the increased housing cost ends up reflected in the rent. So that change doesn’t change the index nearly as much as you might think.
All this is to say, I’m highly suspicious of this sudden narrative across the entire media that the economy is in shambles and everyone is struggling, when almost all measures are to the contrary. I’m expecting migrant caravans and all sorts of other sensationalized non stories with only some kernel of truth on the way. And a headline “prices didn’t increase from September to October” gets nowhere near as many clicks as “inflation was 3.2% in October,” even if technically true, taking advantage of misconceptions about what an annualized rate is.
That’s why we have “real wages” statistic so you can do that comparison. Where you adjust wages for inflation in comparison to a set point in time so they are comparable.
This chart only goes to 2019. Real wages did dip some during the corona virus pandemic as for a time inflation was out pacing wage increases. This has since reversed though, with wage growth outpacing inflation, and real wages are now higher than they were in 2019. Anchored to 1982-1984 dollars, in December 2019 real wages were $10.96 /hr, in October 2023 they were $11.05.
So yes, as of right now inflation that occured during the pandemic has been fully accounted for and then some by the total wage growth that occured during and since. Wage growth continues to out pace inflation, so hopefully things will continue to get better. That’s not to say there hasn’t been a persistent problem over decades of wages getting diluted. Real wages dropped significantly in the 1970s and 1980s, remained flat in the 90s and 00s, and only really began to recover after the financial crisis in 2008. Real wages are just catching up finally to where they used to be way back in the 1970s.
Agree with you, real wages have stagnated, and so have real prices.
However, one thing that bothers me, and that I’d like to know, is what does it mean to “eat the rich”? “Eat” in what sense? Destroy? Take all their money? Because why are people so angry, that someone else is doing better than them? Is it some form of jealousy? Idk. What people should be looking at, IMO, is how they themself are doing. Are they doing ok? If not, then we have a problem. But why do they care whether somebody else has a lot of money? I seriously don’t get it.
Why would anyone support with this guy or buy his cars… Shit i feel bad about myself just for existing in america and being part of the economy nevermind outright supporting this guy.
Genuine question: how would cheese be considered “murder” in this sense (unless you’re just going along with the original comment), I guess another way to weird it would be how is cheese bad, according to veganism and vegetarianism?
Because you can’t get consent from the animal you’re milking.
Cheese isn’t bad in vegetarianism only veganism. One says “I won’t eat animals” the other is “I won’t eat anything made by animals or the animals themelves.”
As far as the murder part goes, dairy cows are mostly all killed very quickly after they stop producing milk. They are almost never allowed to live out their full lives. Especially, none of the cows in the larger dairy industry. The calves produced in the process are also just raised to be slaughtered. Besides the murder, The act of farming dairy products is also just cruel and inhumane in practice.
To produce milk, cows have to be kept in a pretty much constant state of pregnancy. Once the calves are born, they are immediately taken from the mother, and it is known that cows have maternal instincts that makes this painful for them. They have to be taken away, because otherwise they will drink the milk we are trying to steal from the process. Then the calf’s are raised in isolation for the first few months of their life on a milk substitute.
That is the bare minimum amount of cruelty needed to produce milk. Obviously, our modern capitalist driven dairy industry ramps up the cruelty in many other ways to increase productivity and efficiency.
thats like saying that the point of buying non nestle water is so that it doesnt taste like nestle water. (yes they all taste a little different, i mostly attribute that to secondary factors though)
Also you can make cheese without murdering cows im pretty sure?
also weird off topic question, im curious about this. But would consuming breast milk as a child be considered non vegan? I realize at this point it doesn’t really matter since you have no autonomy as a person, but i’m curious about the ethics in application to humans.
You technically could make cheese without murdering a cow but you won’t find any made that way. Cows only produce milk for their young. To make milk they need to be repeatedly impregnated over and over again. Lifespan of a cow can be 20 years, though they are usually killed after about 5 as their milk output drops. Half of the cows they give birth to will be male and almost all killed as they don’t produce milk. Some of the females may be killed too as you’ll end up with more cows than you have room for it you keep them all.
As for a human child, drinking human breast milk is considered vegan as long as it was given consensually. If you kidnap someone and tie them up in your basement then it wouldn’t be.
A baby human consuming their mother’s breast milk is vegan, because the mother is consenting to it. A cow cannot consent to being forcibly, artificially impregnated for the sake of producing milk. They don’t consent to having their horns chopped off. Nor do they consent to their children being stolen from them almost immediately after birth to be butchered for veal.
Yes plant-based cheeses are intended to mimic animal cheeses. But that doesn’t mean they have to be identical. Guilt puts a tint on the things we experience, and the way we feel can be considered a dimension of flavor. I would imagine a lot of people would argue they don’t feel guilty about consuming animals or their secretions, but that’s only because they’ve never experienced any time without that guilt. If you’re used to feeling a certain way every day, you start to forget about the feeling all together, even though it’s still effecting you in the background.
The idea with plant-based alternatives is to have all of the good properties of their animal-counterparts, and none of the bad. Cheese that’s free of the shame and guilt of causing unnecessary harm and suffering to thinking, feeling, sentient beings inherently tastes better.
A baby human consuming their mother’s breast milk is vegan, because the mother is consenting to it. A cow cannot consent to being forcibly, artificially impregnated for the sake of producing milk. They don’t consent to having their horns chopped off. Nor do they consent to their children being stolen from them almost immediately after birth to be butchered for veal.
i suppose that makes sense, so hypothetically if we solved all of those problems, it would be vegan? That sounds about right to me. And if it’s consent based, then what if the mother is forced to bear a child for example, surely that would no longer be vegan?
Yes plant-based cheeses are intended to mimic animal cheeses. But that doesn’t mean they have to be identical.
Yeah, but then you should probably not name it, or base it directly off of an existing cheese, in which case, fine by me. Don’t pull up with some shit that is explicitly not “blue cheese” and then call it “blue cheese” though. That’s just lying.
The idea with plant-based alternatives is to have all of the good properties of their animal-counterparts, and none of the bad. Cheese that’s free of the shame and guilt of causing unnecessary harm and suffering to thinking, feeling, sentient beings inherently tastes better.
i mean, i guess so, but then at that point we start getting into philosophy and nihilistic shit starts to crop up. But any improvement is a potential improvement i suppose. It’s incredibly hard, if not impossible, to live a truly “net zero” lifestyle. Even monks don’t do it, and they don’t do shit.
Only replying to your last point, and on that I only have to say that perfection is the enemy of greatness. The vegan philosophy is about doing the best we can, within practical limits. I can’t stop myself from breathing or my mere existence causing harm to beings I can’t even see, but doing more feasible actions like abstaining from animal consumption and electing not to purchase or use other animal products has substantial benefits that are felt.
yeah that’s fair enough. But then again it is called veganism for a reason. I suppose i would probably rather it be called something more broad, if it’s actually less about the actual consumption, and more about the morals and technicalities of how things work.
I do think the name itself is problematic. To anyone unfamiliar to the ideas, the word hints at something to do with vegetables, and yes that currently plays a role, but it’s not the point. It’s more of an animal rights milieu, and plants are only relevant at this point in time because it’s the least harmful way humans can sustain themselves for now. But that ignores that animal rights go far beyond diet, and that fact tends to get lost during any outreach since all most people are thinking about is the foods they dread to give up.
I’ve had a few good vegan cheeses. Not all of it is 1 to 1 with the real deal, but a lot ends up being good in its own way. Just wish it wasn’t so damn expensive. Hopefully that changes over time. Lactose doesn’t agree with me so the more (affordable) non-dairy options there are, the happier I am.
Many have gotten super good in the last few years. I’ve had some people who are very hard to get to admit to liking anything vegan ask what brand and where to buy it after they tasted it. Everything from blue cheese and brie to feta, smoked cheddar, parmesan and mozzarella. There are also many really good, both simple and more complicated recipes online to make your own of basically any kind.
tedious is the point! i love that by trying to make it quick and “catchy” he made it really long, cumbersome, and made it a meme that the rebranding will never work because we’re still referring to it as twitter but worse
DANGER, WILL ROBINSON! Removing this sticker will reveal a consumer-friendly communications port that will deprive HP of even more money than it's already milking you for with overpriced ink!
So when I first read this I assumed that she posted a nazi meme that showed Nazi’s in a good light.
An understandable mistake given the current political climate. But she shared a meme that equated nazi flags with pride flags.
In a really perverse way, I’m at least happy that she still equates being a nazi with something ‘bad’. In her mind pride flags are bad so equating them with a nazi flag means she thinks that nazis are bad. What a relief!
Hmm… Christian theologians have spent centuries debating whether the components of the Trinity have the same essence, substance, nature, personality, etc.—but have they considered whether they share the same ideology? What if Jesus is a socialist but the Holy Ghost is a fascist?
To be fair, it's mainly the Catholic church that has the "funny hats and gold" thing going on. Protestants are all about the expensive suits and private jets.
And oddly, the funny hats and gold guys have been relatively progressive lately. Definitely a shit history, but certainly better than their modern suits and jets competition
Tony Morrison’s first three of ten steps to fascism
1.Construct an internal enemy, as both focus and diversion.
2.Isolate and demonize that enemy by unleashing and protecting the utterance of overt and coded name-calling and verbal abuse. Employ ad hominem attacks as legitimate charges against that enemy.
3.Enlist and create sources and distributors of information who are willing to reinforce the demonizing process because it is profitable, because it grants power and because it works.
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