NYT: Thanksgiving 2021 to Be 'Most Expensive Meal' in Holiday's History

Thanksgiving of 2021 may “be the most expensive meal in the history of the holiday,” the New York Times wrote Monday about inflationary prices American families will absorb to celebrate the holiday first commemorated by the Pilgrims in 1621.

“I can buy that this will be the most expensive Thanksgiving ever, but there’s an income-inequality story here that matters a lot,” agricultural economist at Michigan State University Trey Malone told the Times. “The rich are going to be spending more on Thanksgiving than they have ever spent before, but not everyone is going to be able to do that.”

Indeed, Calvin Moore, the Congressional Leadership Fund communications director, a super PAC with close connections to the House Republican leadership, told Breitbart News that Biden’s policies have created a situation in which “working families can’t even afford to celebrate the holidays this year.”

“Family budgets are being pushed to the brink, and voters will quit House Democrats cold turkey because of it,” Moore said.

The Times noted many grocery items have increased in cost since Donald Trump held the Oval Office. American worker Caroline Hoffman said vanilla extract is nearly $2 more than last year. “I dread buying vanilla,” she said.

Sweet potatoes, too, have increased in price with consumers finding shelves lacking the starch in stores. Director of sweet-potato sales for Wada Farms, Norman Brown, told the Times he has “never seen anything like it, and I’ve been running sweet potatoes for 38 or 39 years.”

Turkey will additionally be more expensive in 2021. Executive chef Matthew McClure told the Times the price has increased in just the last month by 20 percent. “By the end of the year, market analysts say, prices per pound will likely surpass the record Department of Agriculture benchmark price for turkeys — $1.36, set in 2015,” the Times explained.

The price of turkey has reportedly increased because of the cost of corn, which the Times says is fed to most turkeys to fatten them up in time for slaughter. The price increase has more than doubled since 2020 with whole birds “between eight and 16 pounds” already costing “25 cents a pound more than they did a year ago.”

The price of celebrating Thanksgiving will be compounded by shipping delays, which have primarily been created by union infighting and a labor shortage. The labor shortage is correlated by Biden’s coronavirus unemployment policies that kept workers at home and not looking for jobs.

The Times reported the shipping delays from Asia to the United States amounted to 73 days in September. According to supply chain technology company Freightos, when Trump was president in 2020, the price to ship a container from Asia to California was $3,800. That price has increased to $17,000 in October of 2021.

Biden’s supply chain crisis has increased the price of food by 4.6 percent since 2020. More specifically, prices for meat, poultry, fish, and eggs rose 10.5 percent.