Subsistence Farming is Not the Answer

This Week’s Roundup: March 14, 2025

I pass these chickens just about every day while I’m walking my dogs through my neighborhood. (Photo by Michelle Teheux)

We were promised cheap eggs on Day One of the Trump regime, but now we’re being told if we don’t like high egg prices we should buy some hens and produce our own eggs.

This is a pattern in the U.S.

When something goes wrong we decline to fix the system, instead leaving it up to every individual to cope however they can. Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps!

Confession: I have always wanted to keep chickens.

I was invited to gather the eggs for a relative once when I was a child, and I never forgot it. One of my (not yet published) novels, Scarlet Lily, has a ridiculous subplot about chickens. My first reader said I should take all the chicken bits out, and then changed his mind and said the chickens ended up being his favorite part of the book and maybe I should expand it.

This is just to say that there’s still plenty of country girl in me.

But no, we can’t just raise backyard chickens

You think the eggs in the grocery store are expensive?

Try building a coop, making it varmint-proof, buying all the equipment and feed and so forth. Most people say their “free” eggs end up being the most expensive eggs they’ve ever had.

My town (pop. 31,000) does allow backyard chickens, but if you met my younger dog, you’d immediately understand why I don’t have a flock. (He would love it if I brought in chickens, but the chickens would be terrified.)

Plus, I doubt your average city landlord is going to appreciate you starting a small livestock operation in your apartment – and it’s going to get worse if dairy prices spike!

Do you have room for an apartment cow? No?

Maybe we should leave ag to the farmers and experienced homesteaders who already know what they’re doing.

Subsistence farming is not the answer for the U.S. Putting some grown-ups in charge is. Be sure to click on the first story in this week’s round-up, in which Basel Musharbash explains how egg prices got so high.

If you have some hot income inequality-related news you don’t see shared here, please add it in the comments or shoot me a message! I intend this round-up to be a one-stop shop for everyone who cares about this topic and a great place to discover new sources.to follow. If you see a newsletter you like, don’t forget to subscribe to it today!

And now, here’s this week’s roundup:

(Shared from Dolores Mazzara)

(Shared from Frater Chaos)

(Shared from Veteran Supporting Democracy)

Fowl Play: How Chicken Genetics Barons Created the Egg Crisis

Basel Musharbash, Big

In part one, I offered a basic explanation of why a dozen eggs — which cost around 70-90 cents to produce — are now so pricey. The short story is that a small number of actors have secured chokepoints at key links in the egg supply chain, and are using them to keep egg production throttled even in the face of shortages and high prices — which in turn keeps the shortages and high prices going.

Class Conflict

Mark Mansour, America’s Fractured Politics

Since 1979, the top 1% of earners enjoyed an increase in income of some by 180%. The bottom 90% saw wages grow by 44%. The upshot is that the concentration of wealth at the top of the income ladder is at Gilded Age levels.

Even worse is the difference in overall wealth between rich and poorer households. The bottom half of households have an average net worth of around $50,000. They own around 3% of family wealth. The top 10% of households have an average net worth of nearly $7 million and command more than two-thirds of household wealth.

Welcome to America’s Sickest Reality Show

Louise, The Hartmann Report

The cameras roll, the lights are bright,

Another GoFundMe in the dead of night.

Tell me, how did we sink so low?

Welcome to America’s sickest reality show.

Vulnerable Americans Will Suffer So My Taxes Can Stay Low

David Roberts, Sparks from Culture

“While 80 million Americans are insured through Medicaid, many people don't think of themselves as "on Medicaid" — even when they are.

Why? Because Medicaid is not branded as Medicaid in most states If you tell a patient in South Carolina they might lose Medicaid, their eyes may glaze over. Tell them Healthy Connections is at risk? You have their attention. In Tennessee, Medicaid is TennCare and in Ohio it is the Buckeye Health Plan. In Florida, Medicaid sounds like an orange juice brand: Simply Healthcare.

Trump Announced He’s Coming For Social Security Last Night

The Opinionated Ogre

The former head of the Social Security Administration warns that proposed cuts to the agency could lead the entire system to “collapse,” disrupting benefits payments to millions of Americans.

“Ultimately, you’re going to see the system collapse, and there will be an interruption of benefits,” Martin O’Malley, former Social Security commissioner under the Biden administration, told CNBC. “I think that will happen within the next 30 to 90 days.”

“People should start saving now,” he urged.

Won’t Someone Please Think of the Top 1%?

Kathryn Anne Edwards, Kedits

The top .1% went from earning 8.1% of all taxable income to 14.3%. By comparison, the bottom 50% went from earning 14.4% of all taxable income to just 10.4%. The richest 154,000 households earn more than the bottom 77 million.

The rest of the top 1% also saw big growth, from 9.4% to 12%.

Combined, the top 1% earns a quarter of all income.

March 9, 2025

Heather Cox Richardson, Letters From an American

Those at the top were there because of their “special ability,” Carnegie wrote, and anyone seeking a fairer distribution of wealth was a “Socialist or Anarchist…attacking the foundation upon which civilization rests.” Instead, he said, society worked best when a few wealthy men ran the world, for “wealth, passing through the hands of the few, can be made a much more potent force for the elevation of our race than if it had been distributed in small sums to the people themselves.”

Overweight and Underpaid

Michelle Teheux, Untrickled

Therefore, wealthy people carrying an extra 10 or 15 pounds can pay full price for these injections and return to the svelte weight of their younger years. Poor people carrying an extra 100 pounds will be told they are out of luck because their weight is just a cosmetic issue. Oh, and have they thought about swapping out the pound of candy they undoubtedly eat every day for some lettuce?

The Man With No Plan

Andrew Egger, The Bulwark

President Joe Biden, walking fossil or not, handed Trump an economy that was roaring by pretty much every macro metric. The one massive fly in the ointment—the persistent inflation that doomed Democrats last year—posed little risk to the incoming president. After all, voters had already hung it around Biden’s neck. It was clear skies and smooth sailing ahead. The big gripe among Bidenites, in fact, was that all Trump had to do was sit back, relax, and take the credit as America’s economic messiah.

Instead, less than two months after his inauguration, Trump has been Reverse Jesus, speaking new economic storms into existence.

2022 IRS Income Update and Affordability

Kevin Erdmann, Erdmann Housing Tracker

But in the case of housing, under our current context of a nationwide shortage, rent inflation is higher for poor families than it is for rich families. A typical poor family living in an unchanged home since 2015 is spending 45% more than they were then, even after adjusting for inflation. The typical rich family is only paying 20% more.

The Clean Little Secret of Social Security

Paul Krugman

So roughly speaking we could raise enough money to sustain Social Security as it is simply by not letting Republicans cut taxes for the rich. OK, I know that we would have a deficit problem even without those tax cuts. But you can’t simultaneously support the G.O.P.’s tax agenda and claim that Social Security is in desperate financial straits, which can only be solved with radical cuts or privatization.

About Michelle Teheux

I’m a writer in central Illinois. If you like my work, subscribe to me here and on Medium. I also have a new Substack aimed at authors who want to self-publish books, called The Indie Author. My new book is Strapped: Fighting for the soul of the American working class. And yes, those are my husband’s actual boots on the cover! My most recent novel is The Trailer Park Rules. If you prefer to give a one-time tip, I accept Ko-fi.

Did you know that originally the term “bootstrapping” was used sarcastically to describe an impossible task? Yet now, the meaning has morphed into the opposite.

I invite you to give it a try. Reach back, grab your bootstraps and pull with all your might. How did that work out for you?

There’s a reason we tell people to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps even though we know it can’t be done. It’s one of the ways people in power keep the rest of us from complaining that we’re being screwed. We keep trying and trying and blaming ourselves when we have trouble. Of course we blame ourselves. Who else can we blame?

This is not a self-help book because you cannot single-handedly fix what’s wrong with the system by working harder or working smarter. There’s a good possibility that some of your problems are out of your hands.

This book was not written for the top 10 percent or for anyone who had life handed to them on a silver platter.

Instead, this book is for every working-class, lower-class and even middle-class person who has done everything right but still feels strapped.