The United States federal government allocates a staggering $38 billion annually to prop up the meat and dairy industries. These subsidies significantly reduce the price of meat products, including hamburgers. Research from 2015 reveals that these subsidies slash the price of a pound of hamburger meat from $30 to the $5 we see today
I’d eat my hat if they weren’t taking subsidies and charging full price anyway.
Commodities markets can’t really do that unless the distributor controls everything. The chicken industry gets close to that, but since they’re out to screw both the consumers that buy their chickens and the farmers who raise them (chicken processors usually have hatcheries in the same complex as where they slaughter the grown ones, while Tyson and Perdue also being the some of the biggest feed suppliers), they tend to want to just grow the market as much as they can so they can continue to shave their margin off of every poor fucker they come in contact with