Thanksgiving Dinner Has Gotten More Expensive—Unless It’s Priced in Silver and Gold
The comments below are an edited and abridged synopsis of an article by Jeff Clark
The American Farm Bureau Federation says the cost of the traditional American Thanksgiving dinner rose 5% this year, and is now $49.24.
In 2001, it said the cost of the average Thanksgiving dinner was $35.08. Naturally those costs, as well as gold and silver prices, have fluctuated over the past two decades.
The question is, do gold and silver offset this rise? That’s a fair query since gold is down 2% on the year and silver -6.1%. But what’s the trend? Have gold and silver have preserved our buying power?
Clark includes a chart showing how many ounces of gold it has taken to buy the ingredients for the average turkey dinner since 2001 (using the gold price on November 1 each year, or the first day of trading that month).
Over the past 20 years, the cost of the average Thanksgiving meal has risen 40.3%. However, priced in gold, the cost of turkey day has fallen a whopping 78.4%, from 0.125 ounces to 0.027.
As usual, silver’s ratio to Thanksgiving dinner is even more dramatic. It took 8.3 ounces of silver to fund Thanksgiving in 2001, but now it only takes 2.1 ounces.
In other words, 74.6% less silver is needed to fund the same meal today than 20 years ago, even though the price of that meal has risen.
Not only have gold and silver preserved our buying power, when it comes to Thanksgiving dinner, they’ve increased it. This is the real value of monetary metals. Since they’re money, it’s what they can buy that matters.
What’s interesting to consider is the cost of Thanksgiving 10 or 20 years from now. If history is any guide, it’ll be more expensive—unless it’s priced in gold and silver.
