As another Thanksgiving is behind us, we can be grateful that dinner costs are down this year, with welcome help from the centerpiece price gobbler on many tables: according to the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF), an average $21.50 for a 16-pound turkey; a 16%decline from 2024.
Overall, the farm group's survey estimated that feeding a typical party of 10 was slated to cost an average of $55.18, or about $5.52 per person, down 5% from last year.
AFBF reported declines over last year in other traditional Thanksgiving cost items as well: stuffing down 9%, dinner rolls 14.6%, and pumpkin pie crusts, cranberries and miscellaneous ingredients also reduced.
Although some fresh produce prices were higher — sweet potatoes up 37%, and celery and carrots 61%, such veggies which are relatively inexpensive to begin with tend to be minor items in overall grocery bills.
The US Department of Agriculture reports even lower average nationwide costs for whole frozen turkeys, down 20-22% year-to-year.
And even those USDA estimates might have been on the high side for bargain hunters, with Walmart reportedly offering a full Thanksgiving meal basket including a Butterball turkey priced about 25% lower than last year, and Target selling a full meal for four people for under $20, with Lidl and Aldi announcing promotional markdowns that bring per-person costs to between $3.60 and $4.
Nevertheless, with the term "affordability" legitimately now dominating headlines and many household kitchen table conversations ahead of 2026 mid-term elections, let's turn attention to a much larger flock of influences than paltry poultry prices.
True affordability requires individual and collective economic purchasing power based upon free choice value assessments necessary to sustain life quality standards to be thankful for.
That purchasing power diminishes when too much value-deflated money chases to few essential and better-quality goods that most people want and need.
Such resulting price "inflation" occurs when governments are allowed to cover excessive expenditures for products and services by printing more money that, in turn, makes our wages and investments worth less, and by regulating production of substances we depend on – like fossil energy – to make it cost even more with that devalued currency.
Consider that inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) hovered around 2% during most of Donald Trump's first presidency term dropping in 2020 to just 1.2% due to the economic slowdown brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Whereas tariffs on Chinese goods and other imports raised prices in some sectors, overall effects on inflation were modest with help from Trump policies such as the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and broad energy deregulation which stimulated consumer spending and business investment.
Pandemic-related disruptions began to create upward price pressures toward the end of Trump’s first term with inflationary surges tied to supply chain breakdowns and costly stimulus spending which occurred when Joe Biden took office in 2021.
Buoyed upward by the American Rescue Plan which injected $1.9 trillion of borrowed money into the economy through direct payments, unemployment benefits and aid to state and local governments, the CPI climbed from 7.0% to 9.1% within the first two years of the Biden presidency, the highest levels in four decades.
During Joe Biden’s presidency the CPI ballooned to a staggering 17.1 %, raising the cost a family of four paid for goods and services by more than $15,000 per year.
Rather than modestly reduce that Biden burden, Trump administration policies are pursuing strategies of full reversal back to CPI numbers of his first term coupled with economic expansion and wage growth.
Beyond merely an empty bumper sticker slogan, President Trump is advancing affordability of quality American goods and services through comprehensive policy initiatives that support job growth and earning power through business incentives that hire American workers and generate tax revenues.
Key among these strategic agendas include executive orders and Republican legislative actions that dramatically cut regulations to unleash American energy to lower fuel and other costs, enact multiple deals to lower drug prices, reward onshoring of companies that moved overseas, and leverage America's economic market strength to negotiate fair trade tariffs that reduce our currently unstainable national debt.
Those efforts are paying off to benefit all of us.
Last week Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced that Saudi Arabia was increasing its planned investment into the U.S. economy to nearly $1 trillion, up from $600 billion in May.
Also, earlier this month in a series of significant actions to lower prescription drug costs, Pfizer, AstraZeneca and others offered to set prices of new medicines at "Most Favored Nation" levels available in peer countries.
Eli Lilly and Company and Novo Nordisk not only agreed to dramatically reduce the prices Americans pay for some of the world's most popular drugs, but also to invest $27 billion and $10 billion, respectively, in expanding their U.S. manufacturing footprints.
Meanwhile, as former Trump White House official and candidate for the U.S. Senate in Alabama, Morgan Murphy, told Fox News Digital, "Listening to Democrats on the economy" he warns, "makes as much sense as asking your drunk uncle for stock tips at Thanksgiving."
Murphy reminds us that those who now talk about affordability are the same turkeys who gave us "Bidenomics," jacked inflation up to record levels, tried to tank the U.S. economy by shutting down the government for 43 days, and just elected a full-blown communist to lead New York.
We know turkeys can't fly, and neither does the left's bird-brained Bolshevik baloney.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 12 books is "Architectures Beyond Boxes and Boundaries: My Life By Design" (2022). Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.
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