Being an inhabitant of a developed country doesn't mean you must eat beef. We can all eat less, no matter our location.
Meat consumption increased in the West along with economic development and the same is happening worldwide.
The US was developed in the 70s. You would need to look at trends from poor and undeveloped to developed. In the US you would need to rewind to early 20th or 19th century to post-WWII golden age to see the increase.
https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/cf68bf79-en/index.html?i....
Its an amusing juxtaposition because you cant tell if they are obnoxiously out of touch or intentionally trolling at their amazing properties and parties
(while actually not eating meat)
I would say it is economically advantaged people with the privilege to do these things, choosing to. The industry that caters to the diet and health preferences overprices everything. This exacerbates the odds that less well off people will opt out of trying non-meat diets.
Ultimately all you can do is choose how you wish to live your own life, and make your own consumption decisions (roughly speaking: I don't like to overconsume, and I don't like to overpay, although those are easy to say from what I think is a reasonably comfortable position -- and I'm aware they're easier to optimize for when more time is available to make the individual purchase decisions involved. that's why watching out for and reducing distractions during important purchase moments should be encouraged for everyone).
Vendors overpricing desirable products is tricky too: if they're doing that to build a business that genuinely improves people's health and outcomes, and they intend to reduce prices at scale, that seems reasonable. If it's purely predatory pricing and/or doesn't produce value for customers.. well, that's less great. Perhaps consumer protection groups, journalism, and healthy peer discussion are the best options to help respond there.
The crux of the issue is that we are too many. So either population drops and we can all enjoy life or we survive with a lower quality of life because we have to watch everything we consume.
Meat consumption thus increases with economic development (even without going into what might be deemed excessive consumption, which is a fuzzy concept outside of health considerations). That is a fact worldwide (see for instance link I included in another comment).
Regarding quality of life, my point is that if we are forced to abstain from eating what we want (then not ravelling as we please, then live in smaller houses, etc) because we have to preserve resources then very clearly we are reducing our quality of life. And the root cause is actually population because what ultimately drives consumption of resources is population.