America celebrates Thanksgiving with tight pockets and empty chairs

After three mass shootings in a matter of days. United States of America celebrate this Thursday, perhaps, its most important holiday: Thanksgiving Day with at least 14 empty chairs, plus an inflation-adjusted pocket.

Black and white, gay and straight, old and young. The roundup of the freshly killed from just three of this month’s mass shootings is the very picture of the ideals (inclusiveness, differences aside) that America prides itself on right now each November. Fourteen people who didn’t know their last Thanksgiving was already behind them, wrote New York Times reporter Michael Wilson.

The Virginia Walmart shooting on Tuesday night was the third in November alone, and the 606th so far this year.

This holiday, Thanksgiving, you will find several empty chairs.

tight pockets

Americans will also be celebrating their biggest holiday by tightening their belts, in part because the price of the cart is It went up 20% due to inflation.

A meal for ten diners will average about $64 this year, compared to $53 last year, which implies a 20% increase, indicates a survey by the American Federation of Farm Bureaux, an advocacy group representing the industry.

This was assured by the head of the Economy of the Federation, Roger Cryan the highest annual increase of the average cost of food this holiday, with a difference of just over $10.

The turkey, the star dish on the Thanksgiving table, has been a big part of the bill since 2022 It’s the food that has risen the most in price21% ($4.97), compared to 2021.

This was mainly due to inflation in the country of about 8%, said Cryan, who also mentioned the problems in the supply chain, the war in Ukraine and the challenges faced by farmers and ranchers, such as the rising cost of fuel and feed, as well as cases of avian flu in poultry.

In supermarkets across the United States, customers have hesitated whether to stick with tradition and buy the turkey or not, like Roger, a customer of a high-end Washington DC establishment who did not give his real name, who this year raised do not cook it due to its high price.

Another user from another supermarket in the District of Columbia, where the capital is located, and who also preferred to remain anonymous, noted that he knows “people who seriously hit you (the famine) and to which he had to resort food banks and the associations that bring food home”.

Although Thanksgiving foods like turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie mix have seen their prices rise, fresh cranberries are down 14% this year, as the harvest was also 5% higher than in 2021, he stated Cryan.

The American Federation of Farm Bureaux survey also found differences between U.S. regions, ranging from about $58 in the South to about $71 on the West Coast for the classic Thanksgiving basket.

According to the economic head of the federation, since the publication of the survey a week ago, good news has arrived for Americans with a 14% drop in the cost of frozen turkey.

Another report by Wells Fargo bank economists argues that the difference between eating at home and going to a restaurant on Thanksgiving is not as pronounced, since “a dish served at a restaurant could cost as much as to prepare it at home “.

Famine

However, it’s not just food that bears the brunt of inflation, they’ve taken a hit this year too the cost of gas, cars, rent and electricity, said economist Richard Roberts, a professor at Monmouth University in New Jersey and a former Federal Reserve executive.

Roberts believed that “high inflation was partly the result of good intentions” while acknowledging the role of “excessive measures taken by politicians in Congress and the Federal Reserve to stimulate consumer spending in response to Covid-19”.

The famine also resulted in Americans not being able to go home to celebrate Thanksgiving with their families, due to high flight prices and other types of transportation.

However, the American Automobile Association has predicted that this will be one of the years that more people drive to their destinations, despite fuel price inflation.

A recent graduate student of the American University in Washington DC, Jack Ryan, said he spent two weeks looking at flights periodically to “find something reasonable” to get him back to California from the capital, where he currently resides, and was going to stay because of how expensive they were, though he will eventually travel to see his family.

“I don’t know if it’s due to inflation or because this is the first year that many more people feel comfortable traveling to see family on vacation” since the pandemic began, he reflected.

Compared to the 400 or 450 dollars he paid in other years to be able to fly, for this occasion he had to pay $560plus about $40 in airport transportation. All this for being able to eat turkey with his family.

With information from EFE and The New York Times

ap