By Louise Mathews
“Look at the price of beef! It’s so high!”
“And it won’t come down ‘til we get rid of the guy in the White House” – overheard at Aldi’s in Beaufort.
Once upon a time, I was a student in a master’s in education program, and I took a course named “Communications in Education.” The professor started one of his lectures with the bald statement, “Perception is reality.”
Having attended a fine university that forced undergraduates to take several philosophy and theology courses, I was puzzled. Reality could be based on one’s perception, but the senses and intuition might mislead a person. The professor explained that most people do not care whether their perception is the truth, which is perhaps why in our relativist age people refer to “my truth” or “your truth” or “his/her truth.”
We have the current climate of conservative news analysts and the White House stating that the affordability crisis is on the way to resolution. We have others, me included, perceiving economics through the prices at the supermarket. I don’t think anyone in the Washington, DC area relies on the Food Lion meat department managers as I do. Blue labels indicating meat specials determine our dinner menus.
Of course, I learned how to squeeze the food budget from my mother, who faced with a husband, six boys and me, scrutinized the Wednesday newspaper grocery ads and planned her shopping like a military campaign. Still, the incremental rise of food prices – and sometimes meteoric jumps such as happened in coffee prices earlier this year – leaves me wondering how people who do not have a secure, sufficient income are meeting these constantly rising costs.
In a recent mailing, HELP of Beaufort stated, “We’re facing a surge in needs … changes to food assistance programs have left many of our neighbors — especially area military, seniors and families with children – struggling to put food on the table.”
I wonder if it isn’t all a plot to get Americans off their addiction to beef and onto lentils and beans.
Some folks blame it all on President Trump forgetting that during President Biden’s tenure, prices surged much more than they have in the past year. Under Trump, the prices have continued to go up or stayed high, which news outlets report is a major factor in his declining popularity.
I have concluded that if Donald Trump could be responsible for everything people think he is, the man would be some superhuman being just below the Almighty. Like a hero in a Greek tragedy, the President’s hubris sometimes undermines his actions.
In a Dec. 10 Washington Times article, James Mohs, an economics professor at the University of New Haven, wrote, “… prices have come down somewhat under Mr. Trump, but it is difficult for prices to fall at the rapid rate Americans expect … Trump promised too much too soon, but there is progress being made. Under the prior administration, inflation was around 8% or 9%. Trump has stabilized inflation at about 3%, and you need to stabilize inflation before you can bring it down.”
Gas prices have declined. Chicken and egg prices have normalized from highs last year. Even I, the suburban kid who didn’t realize the herd must be “freshened” in order to give milk, understand that it takes seven weeks from hatching to grow out a marketable chicken, but it takes 18 months to two years to grow out a marketable calf. Whatever policies the Trump administration has taken to increase beef production will not reduce prices until at least mid-2026.
According to the Department of Agriculture, the overall American beef herd is the smallest it has been since 1970, which is the result of several years of drought, Biden era policies that caused farmers to plant less forage, and a disease in Mexican cattle that stopped imports.
Perhaps we should all resolve to eat less beef in 2026, or at least until next August.
Louise Mathews retired from a career in community colleges, and before that, theater. A 13-year come-by in Beaufort, she has been a dingbatter in North Carolina and an upstater from New York.
