Food price controls likely, says UN

Financial Times ^ | October 29 2007 02:00 | By Javier Blas in London

[domenad]

Oh right, price controls. Those always work, right?

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

The Russian black marketeers had lost ground after the USSR imploded, now expect a comeback.

[Slapshot68]

Yeah, price controls really worked out well for the Soviet Union, huh?

[metesky]

Goody, goody, let's return to those wonderful Soviet style food lines.

Ol' Pooty-poot, still a commie at heart with not a clue about economics.

[LonePalm]

Sounds like a future famine in the making. This one we can see in advance and lay at the door of the emviroweenies and their ethanol mandates.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that if you make people burn food for fuel instead of oil for fuel, there is going to be less food and hence higher priced food.

Who do higher prices hurt first? Why, of course it is the poor that these same people always claim to care so much about.

The Law of Unintended Consequences wins again.

Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)

[Nomorjer Kinov]

Well, if there is supposed to be a right to “affordable” housing and health care, I didn’t expect there to be much lag before those same socialists started clamoring for “affordable” food.

[advance_copy]

Food price controls likely, says UN cause food shortages

And the UN is dumber than a bag of hammers.

[headsonpikes]

Mass starvation is not an Unintended Consequence of socialism - it is one of the many benefits!

[Moonman62]

They do always work, if you like shortages.

[gridlock]

I didn’t expect there to be much lag before those same socialists started clamoring for “affordable” food.

Soylent Green is plentiful and nutritious...

[No Truce With Kings]

Food price controls, followed by . . . ten . . . nine . . . eight . . . (wait for it) . . . three . . . two . . . one

FAMINE!!

[LegendHasIt]

Well, those that commented earlier pretty much said the same thing that I was going to say.

So, let me just add this:

Part of the problem of rising food prices everywhere, and ESPECIALLY in Mexico is due to ethanol production.

I’m all for alternative energy sources, but when you turn one of the more efficient food sources (for people and for feeding our meat, dairy and egg producing animals) into a fairly inefficient fuel source and government mandates its use in vehicle fuels, the cost of everything goes up all that much more than it would due to normal economic forces.

[gridlock]

If something is as predictable as the sunrise, can you really call it an “unintended” consequence?

[LegendHasIt]

Darn, Now you beat me to what I thought might be sort of an original comment (for this thread).

I wasn’t copying, honest. One of those GMTA situations*.

*Great Minds Think Alike; But some great minds type slower than others ;-)

[ari-freedom]

don’t we have a problem with too much corn in the form of HFCS and the wrong omega 6 to omega 3 ratio?

[elli1]

Food prices are rising, in some cases to record highs, on strong demand from developing countries; a rising global population; more frequent floods and droughts caused by climate change; and the biofuel industry's appetite for grains.

Not even one word about increased cost of production.

[WLR]

RE: “The Law of Unintended Consequences wins again.”

Your assessment with regards to the idiocy of making fuel from food stocks is correct.

There is perhaps one flaw in your conclusion however with regard to “The Law of Unintended Consequences”

You are too generous.

If it it is in the elitist’s intention to eliminate all but around a half a billion people on the planet (which I think is likely).

Starvation, disease, war... are all ways of arrive at that number.. with starvation being one of the easier to achieve.

So the consequences of such policies which incite or perpetuate those things are likely well known and fully intended..

W

[SampleMan]

Rising food prices are likely to force some developing countries to follow Russia's example and impose retail price controls to avoid social unrest...

Because people love food shortages.

[LegendHasIt]

Maybe so, but that’s a whole different subject, only peripherally related to the topic at hand IMHO.

Nutritional ‘perfection’ becomes a rather distant goal for most people when they can’t afford to buy their staple foods.