News sources claim $1.3 billion was bet on the super bowl game.  The same news sources are fixated on the price of eggs. 

                  How about we connect the dots?  At $6 a dozen, that's enough for 216,666,666 dozen eggs, or enough for every American household to have about 3 dozen eggs.  At $8 a dozen, it's enough for every household to have 2 dozen eggs.

                  And that's just on the betting.  It doesn't count the pizza, soft drinks, Doritos and beer, which surely is far, far more. 

                  The point is anyone who spends anything on these frivolous, meaningless and even poisonous things has no right to complain about eggs.  So whenever the news person interviews someone complaining about the price of eggs, I want them to preface the egg question with these:

                  1.  Do you buy lottery tickets?

                  2.  Do you drink alcohol?

                  3.  Do you buy take-out?

                  4.  Do you buy soft drinks?

                  5.  Do you bet on ball games?

                  6.  Do you consume tobacco?

                  7.  Do you subscribe to a streaming service?

                  8.  Do you have any video games at your house?

                  9.  Do you buy any Doritos or potato chips?

                  10.  Have you ever bought a Taylor Swift concert ticket? 

                  If the answer is "no" to all these questions, then I'm ready to entertain a discussion about the price of eggs.  I've refined these questions through experience.  Several years ago I framed this by asking an audience "what do people spend money on that's not necessary?"

                  I quit asking such an open-ended question when, on a college campus, a student yelled "Underwear!"  Leave it to college students.  ha!  That's when I edited my question with a bit more specificity. 

                  I was just in the car running an errand and listened to the "News at Noon" hour where our local station broadcasts commodity prices each day.  Listening to the prices for wheat, corn, soybeans, and cattle, I was struck by how little they've moved compared to historic averages.  Since 1920, they've generally doubled while land, cars, houses, labor literally everything else has gone up by a factor of 30 and 50.  

                  If food prices had kept pace with everything else in the economy, today a hamburger would cost $40 and a dozen eggs would cost $20.  Our food prices are not high; they are obscenely low.  Disrespectfully to farmers low.  Dishonorably to the soil low.

                  If food prices honored farm/food integrity, we'd have a lot fewer of many things.  Football players would earn 10 percent of what they earn.  Ditto all entertainment sports.  And we'd think twice about spending for things on my list of question above.  And maybe we'd have smarter farmers, better soil, and more nutrient dense food.

                  What is the silliest thing people spend money on?