>Without all the government subsidies, a pound of ground beef would be closer to $30-$40 today instead of the $8-$10/lb it is now
Source? That seems implausibly high.
Using your $38B/year subsidy figure gets us $112/year in subsidies per American. There's no way you can get $30 unsubsidized price from that unless you think the average American only eats beef once a week.
Given the $112 subsidies per year above, that would add $2 per pound of beef, that would slightly raise the price not balloon it to 30-40 as poster claimed. So he was bullshitting.
Average includes vegans, and I'm pretty sure they eat it less than once per week. It’s just how much meat divided by population. The previous comment shows that the consumption is not anywhere close to equally distributed.
The subsidies are also paid by vegans. Both the average meat consumption and average subsidy can be multiplied by the total population to get the total.
Source? That seems implausibly high.
Using your $38B/year subsidy figure gets us $112/year in subsidies per American. There's no way you can get $30 unsubsidized price from that unless you think the average American only eats beef once a week.