A laudable goal in terms of sustainability and health, but in most developed countries not a cost saving measure. Meat is way too cheap, and often forms part of the bargains supermarkets use to attract customers.
In the long term and the most pessimistic scenarios doing without meat may be cheaper though.
Where I live, this is no longer true; on the one side there was a big outrage at the super cheap meat (€3 / kilo at the lowest), pushing shops to sell meat at a higher price (and presumably better animal conditions, but I'm not convinced this is independently verified), on the other there's these certifications farmers can get for their animals' living conditions, and people are willing to pay extra for this.
Anyway, in our household, freezer vegetables are a staple. We tried fresh vegetables for a while, but there's a lot of stems (in e.g. broccoli) and it's not as fresh or affordable as the frozen stuff.
That said, I think that instead of raising the price of meat, they should lower the price, availability and diversity of vegetables.
I would also encourage people to avoid these "vegetarian meat alternatives"; they're kinda scammy in that the ingredients are cheap but they sell it at meat prices. It's a lazy vegetarian's option. If you want to avoid meat for whichever reason, learn to make meals without something that kinda looks like meat.
1kg carrots - 39p https://groceries.morrisons.com/products/morrisons-carrots-2...
2.5kg potatoes - £1 https://groceries.morrisons.com/products/morrisons-white-pot...
And so on. Vegetables are cheap. It's frustrating seeing people complain about food but not learn to cook. Making casserole is cheap.
You can make delicious, quick and easy food both with meat and with vegetables. If you try and cook a steak like vegetables, you will have poor results. If you try and cook vegetables like a steak, you will have poor results. If you treat each ingredient - meat, vegetable, or otherwise - in its own right and cook/season appropriately, then you can and will make excellent food.
Human beings have thrived eating meat for hundreds of thousands of years. And it's a lot harder to completely address all the nutritional requirements on a purely vegetarian diet, but not impossible.
Here are videos exploring studies about meat, which convinced me.
How is meat produced, if not agriculture?
In any case, agriculture barely employs anyone nowadays, with mechanization and animal factory-farms.
I pay several times more for my phone+internet per year than for my healthcare (and I have 2 separate chronic conditions)
What you don't pay for out of pocket, you do pay either in quality of care or through your taxes, one way or the other.