Dammit! The Price of Eggs Fucking Matters!
Enough shaming and blaming people so frightened about food & economic insecurity that they choose short term survival over everything else.
When my parents got divorced, we went from a solidly, middle-class family (with a very stingy father) to a single mom with two kids living in poverty. We weren’t poor in the popular mind, living in a dilapidated housing project amongst rats and crime, my brother and I dodging gangs, trying to keep on the straight and narrow, so that one day a pretty, rich White lady with a design gallery notices our talents and ambitions, and sends us off to college where we become sibling neurosurgeon pianists who now star in the reality TV series Brain Brothers & Bach. No, sadly, that wasn’t the Soriano’s, post-divorce.
Our poverty was hidden behind suburban doors in grey rentals situated on dead end streets. Our poverty was not totally desperate, but was full of a lot of want and plenty of need. Even though I contributed to rent since I was thirteen, there was never enough money. Mom was a high-functioning, under-educated, very intelligent drunk with no financial sense, less self-esteem, deep depression, and a ton of fear. She borrowed more than she earned, so much so that what should have been spent on groceries was used to pay off bar tabs.
If you wanted to measure the Soriano trio’s financial situation back then, it was best to open our refrigerator. In it you would find one or two quarts of milk, a half container of margarine, part of a lemon, some old condiments, a quarter loaf of bread, and what’s left of a dozen eggs. In the freezer there was ice and a bottle of vodka. The pantry contained a couple boxes of mac ‘n cheese, some peanut butter, a few packs of Top Ramen, and half a bottle of wine.
Though my mom held debt in a failing deli, we rarely saw deli food in the fridge. The only restaurants we frequented were the ones we worked at when we worked at them. On the job is where I ate and stole enough food for me and my brother to get by. When we needed more, I’d walk to the local supermarket and stuff my jacket and pants full of food. Among my friends, I was famous for being able to shoplift ingredients for a whole meal. As a joke, I’d shove a salami down my pants, so it created a fantastical bulge, especially when sported by a 14-year-old, and strut out the door like the player that I wasn’t. When we were really desperate, we took the Zero Boys’ advice and dug through mom’s wallet, which was usually good for enough change to buy some packets of Top Ramen.
If, as a teenager, you came to me with a guarantee of a full stomach every day without resorting to theft, I’d probably have said, “Feed me!” Had they told me that the trade-off was four years of Ronald Reagan, I would have consulted my brain, my heart, and my stomach, asked if both my brother and mom could pig out with me, and, if told “Yes,” probably would have said “Feed us!”
My “Yes” would not have come because we were starving. Even when things were thin, we had enough food to get by day to day. Often it was shit food, little more than filler, but even bread and water stopped the hunger pangs. My “Yes” would have come from being sick of food insecurity, of not knowing when and how much me and my brother would get to eat, of timing visits to friends’ houses so that I was there right before diner time (and sure to get an invite), of working crummy restaurant jobs just so I could stuff myself and have enough food in me til my next shift. Guarantee me a dozen cheap eggs whenever I needed them, I’d have considered throwing Reagan a vote. Throw in some bacon, fried potatoes and toast and I might have registered GOP. Open the pantry doors for all and I might have made it my life’s mission to work for the Heritage Society.
Or, maybe not, mom was a boozer and she was a socialist. We were taught to share. We were also taught that life was not fair to working people and that taking back what was ours, especially from corporations and the rich, was something that we might have to do (righteously, of course). I was taught to respect and stand up for the little guy. Thus, when shoplifting, I never stole from a small business. I never stole from individuals. I only hit big companies, entities that could afford to lose a loaf of bread, a block of cheese, and a dozen eggs.
So, when I hear or read people raging, “I HOPE CHEAP EGGS ARE WORTH IT!” My first two thoughts are, “Yeah and I sincerely hope that you and your family don’t have to worry about food” and “Fuck off, you privileged, liberal, piece of crap!” And when they start to shame subgroups of people for voting Trump - Latinos, young people, Black men, etc. (often based on what they’ve read on social media and not hard data) – my instinct is to add a “Go die!” to my reaction.
According to the USDA, 13.5% of the country’s residents are food insecure, a rate that has been growing since 2019, after it hit a low following the Great Recession. This is not research distorted by the current Trump administration. Here are the numbers:
The 2023 prevalence of food insecurity (13.5 percent) was statistically significantly higher than the 2022 prevalence of 12.8 percent and significantly higher than the food insecurity prevalence observed from 2015 through 2022 and statistically lower than the levels observed from 2010 through 2014. Regarding earlier annual trends, a statistically significant decline in the prevalence of food insecurity from 11.1 percent in 2018 to 10.5 percent occurred in 2019 and food insecurity was unchanged at 10.5 percent in 2020. For the first time, in 2019, food insecurity was statistically significantly below the 11.1 percent pre-recession level of 2007. Year-to-year declines in food insecurity from 2014–15, 2016‒17, and 2017–18 were also statistically significant. Some year-to-year changes were not statistically significant; that is, there was no real change, or the changes were within the range that could occur from sampling variation. The cumulative decline from 2011 (14.9 percent) to 2014 (14.0 percent) was statistically significant. In the previous decade, food insecurity increased from 10.7 percent in 2001 to 11.9 percent in 2004, declined to about 11 percent in 2005‒07, then increased significantly in 2008 (to 14.6 percent), and remained essentially unchanged (that is, the difference was not statistically significant) at that level in 2009 and 2010.
As these things go, the numbers above are general and pretty conservative. The Annie E. Casey Foundation (AECF) has the 2022 level of food insecurity at 17% for families with children. When counting children by themselves, the 2022 number is 19%. And while USDA and AECF might not focus on the same numbers, they both have data that shows that the problem of food insecurity is getting worse, and that a lot of the problem has to do with higher inflation for food stuff and low growth in wages for people at the bottom of the economy.
I have no idea if my brother Tim and I would have been counted as part of that 19% had AECF’s survey been made in the 1980s. Maybe we would, or perhaps some technicality would have made us an outlier. Either way, we were hungry, and, at times, we were very hungry.
Those who oppose Trump must get it into their fucking heads that the price of a dozen eggs matters. It matters more than abstract things like democracy. It matters more for a lot of people than reproductive and gay rights. It matters more for some than police reform. It matters more not because people are against freedom or equality or justice, but because we need food to survive and, where there is mass food insecurity and rising prices, its not just the hungry who might “sellout” for food. Anyone who has ever been poor, struggled with hunger, see their kids eating less than they did as a child, and/or are fearful of a future which seems full of darkness, well, they will “sellout” for food, too, and if they get that food, they will think it was worth it.
Rather than rage at those who “voted for lower prices” and dismissing “kitchen table economics” as important (as Rahm Emanuel did recently), it would be far more useful and productive to acknowledge something that we already accept as a general truth – we have a food insecurity problem and applies not just to the faceless poor, but to people like us, people who are so worried about the present and the future that their interests narrow to whatever it takes to get by.
Understand these folks and we can talk to them. I’m not referring to the diehard MAGAs, but the very people that are being blamed for Trump: Mostly apolitical, low information voters who are so desperate, scared, atomized that they pick short term survival over the abstract and other people. Understand and talk to these folks, and offer concrete things to change their situation and calm their fears in the immediate. Help give them enough security so that the abstract matters. Help give them enough hope – true hope – that they feel safe extending empathy towards others. Do this and many of them will come around, but we have to connect and give them something more than lofty ideals and slogans.
Blaming doesn’t work, not for us, not when the right-wing is in full victim mode and has a monopoly on blaming. Shaming doesn’t work, not when the shamers are seen as micromanaging twits, elite know-it-alls who just want to tell people what to do. Blame and shame, and we drive people away. Listen to them, take them seriously, especially regarding food insecurity or any other root economic issues. That’s where it starts. That’s where we build from. That’s how we ultimately lower the price of eggs (or get people paid so that they can afford them).