Posted on 10/29/2007 4:28:25 AM PDT by DeaconBenjamin
The high-tech lifestyle that they so prize is built on many lower tech industries that they do NOT like: steel making, oil production, mining, farming, industrial transportation, etc.
Their precious entertainment industry will disappear when there are not enough proles to pay the freight for the finished product and cover the costs of production.
Not only that, but everything else will cost more in relative terms when you do not have the population base to achieve the necessary economies of scale. Each of these failures ripples through the economy reinforcing each other. In this case, what works in one direction, works in the other direction.
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)
Please explain to me how increasing the price of corn by 100% can bring about a 1000% increase in the cost of tortillas. If the Mexicans were offering 50 cents more per bushel than everyone else ($4.25), they would have as much as they wanted, and the price of tortillas would only be going up by 100% from when corn was at $2.38.
Where do you come up with the notion that there is a shortage of food staples in third world countries? Even Somalia had no shortage of staples during its "famine". Some people just had a shortage of access, which was deliberate. Very, very few countries have a real shortage of staples, and when they do, the reason is almost always political.
There is no shortage of corn. Further more, corn has only risen 100% in the last 40 years. Far less than inflation. And we are no where close to peak corn.
None of this is to support ethanol, but you are buying into the MSM hysteria on this.
Once again: the problem isn’t supply, the problem is political interference with distribution.
As I wander thru my local gratuitously-overstocked grocery store in Georgia (not an area noted for extreme variety of local foods), I note that foods are available relatively cheap from ... Chile, South Africa, China, Australia, New Zeland, Argentina, Peru, Canada, Finland, etc. - all over the world, delivered to within walking distance, for sale _cheap_. Did I say “cheap”? I mean as low as $1 per meal per person, and that allows for a nice variety; something as extravagant as a meal featuring DelMonico steaks is $8 per person.
A few miles further is a gourmet grocery store which stocks premium & exotic foods than even the elite of many countries have trouble obtaining ... yet the prices are within reach of most of the local rabble here.
There is no need for price controls on food anywhere.
There IS a need to identify and eradicate whatever political nonsense prevents a free-market distribution system.
The cause of hunger is politics, not poverty.
Seen on a case of Jones Soda: “Corn is for cars; sugar is for soda.”
They did before, and it looks like they’re heading that way again.
Maybe they’re talking about fixing “Oil for Food” prices.
I hadn’t heard anything about the Russians attacking farmers. Do you have more info?
Yes - it’s called “History”.
Let’s not be so superior about this. After all, Richard Nixon did the same thing.
Hunger is but one population management policy option, amongst several, for the modern state.
Hunger's advantage is cost-effectiveness; its disadvantages are excessive execution time and visibility.
Luckily, there remains a time-tested policy option for the people, as well - revolution!
Heads On Pikes!
“Not even one word about increased cost of production.”
You mean “greedy agri-business lobby” don’t you?
to post 34.
what subsidies would those be?
please be specific.
The currency of the future: Gold, lead, and chickens.
Who ever doubted that the UN’s purpose was to impose global communism on the people of the earth?
Yes, price controls always work, exactly the same way.
They always result in shortages of the product being “price controlled”.
Econignoramous leftists have a mentality like lying on your back holding a bowling ball above your face and saying “this time, I don’t think it will fall”.
OK, so Nixon was an econignoramous too.
He was somewhat of an elitist, so he fits in with the majority of leftists in that way.
Somehow, they believe that their “superiority” can overcome laws of economics.
Normally that refers to the 50 cent a gallon subsidy for eathonal.
IMO, the best subsidy.
money well spent.
the yearly subsidy is ,
what, three days in Iraq spending.
You have to price your current product, not on the cost of the ingredients used in it today, but to yield sufficient profit to buy higher priced ingredients in the near future. If you price your retail product on the current cost, you will rapidly run out of capital to purchase new ingredients.
This is how retail prices can go up faster and further than the wholesale prices of the ingredients.
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)
That was the Soviets. What are the Russians of today doing to their farmers?
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