I only lived in the UK and Hungary and both places sell stuff I mentioned. I'm very suprised to learn about the USA practices regarding this.
> If it really, truly cost less to go without plastic, poor people would do it, they do any and everything to save a dollar on food.
Then it seems like the problem is with the system indeed, if people are easy to motivate with savings. People try to save on food here too, that's why almost nobody buys the prepackaged meat from supermarkets (happens more in London where people are not that price sensitive).
Based on the quantity of meat I see in supermarkets in Hungary (not that much at all), I estimate 98% of the meat sales happen at butchers where you ask for a certain weight (let's say 2kgs of chicken breasts) and they put it into a thin plastic bag.
Very weird differences.
> And in the aggregate if I substituted cheap plastic bagged cereal, prepackaged frozen meals, and juice jugs for a farmers market / bulk store meal plan, my food budget would skyrocket.
Very sorry to hear about your frozen meal habit, I did that for a year and it took me about 5 years to recover from the weight gain and a general bad health state.
You have not asked for advice but perhaps you can try to make one dish meals in bulk using mostly cheaper ingredients like bulk rice & beans, cheaper veggies, eggs etc. It's generally much cheaper and healthier (again, we are in different contries, so YMMV).