I was shopping in Costco last week when a man I didn’t know sidled over to my cart and told his wife he was going to the “liquor section” to pick up a bottle or two.

By that he mockingly tried to grab the Dewer’s Scotch in my cart. I laughingly told him we could make a trade for something in his cart. I had my eye on his rotisserie chicken, but I also saw he had an 18-pack container of eggs.

Then I noticed virtually everyone had at least one 18-pack container of eggs in their carts, and in many cases more. I didn’t have any because we had bought our 18 “pasture eggs” a week earlier for $8.69, or around 48 cents each.

For a fleeting moment, I had a vision of the man and I scrambling over his carton of eggs. A voice in my head shouted, “Attention Costco shoppers, avoid aisle three, two hard-boiled roosters are laying into each other … Oh, never mind the ‘yolks’ on them, egg prices just went up again.”

My bottle of Dewer’s cost more than the eggs I bought earlier, but not by much. Dewer’s was going for $16.99. But given the free-market economy, we might have made a trade. It would have been an interesting test of our financial system. Sam’s Club, for example, offers five dozen eggs for $25, which is more than I paid for my whisky.

Obviously, the scare of Avian flu has led to a chicken shortage as those birds contracting the disease are slaughtered across the nation. That has created an egg shortage, which has resulted in higher prices. In some instances, according to news reports, egg prices have gone up 36% for a dozen.

I’ve never worried about egg prices because we don’t eat all that many in our home. Our 18-pack of brown “organic” eggs will probably last for three weeks. But then we’re a family of two.

Somewhat coincidentally a person posted on Facebook the other day that “during the California Gold Rush of 1849, the scarcity of supplies led to exorbitant prices for basic goods. In some mining camps, a single egg cost $3, which is more than $80 in today’s money.”

I guess we can judge the economy based on the price of eggs, but I think it’s an unfair comparison. Consumer prices were increasing at a 2.4% annual rate in September, compared with 2.9% in December. Economists say inflation could worsen if Trump imposes tariffs and uses deficit-funded income tax cuts.

I don’t think we’re importing eggs from Mexico, China or Canada. Yet that would be an interesting way of measuring inflation, or the effect of tariffs.

What I am interested in when it comes to inflation is the price of coffee.

Over the past year, coffee costs have risen just 1% for U.S. consumers, but the International Monetary Fund has the price of the actual beans climbing 55% in an ominous sign that lattes, espressos and plain old cups of joe could soon cost more. And coffee prices would be affected by tariffs because the beans come from nations like Vietnam and Columbia.

Coffee prices are climbing because of climate change. One-pound bags of whole-bean coffee I once purchased at Food4Less in Woodland have gone from $8.99 to $11.99.

Ever-rising coffee costs would have consumers steaming because while we may need eggs to live, we need coffee to keep us awake so we can squawk about how food prices always go up but never down.

Jim Smith is the former editor of The Daily Democrat, retiring in 2021 after a 27-year career at the paper.