| Why Has the Price of Food Shot Up and What Does It Portend?
Posted: 4/16/2008 4:32:45 PM | One simple way to bring the costs of foods down is STOP with the subsidies and tariffs on ethanol. Farmers are making out by selling corn even though it takes so much energy to make the ethanol that we really are not saving money on gasoline. People **** about oil industry profits, but the government has a bonanza of tax revenues from gasoline. The NIMBY people help create shortages of refined products because there have been no new refineries built in this country since 1976. Brazil could supply the USA with oodles of ethanol if we didn't put restrictive tariffs on their product. You see that Congress creates many of the problems with nonsensical solutions as blocking free trade of some products. Why should Fla. sugar growers get subsidies and why place a floor on how low the price can be for things like sugar and milk?
Then again, people are free to choose what they drive and many buy into the Madison Ave, concept that the buyers need to keep up with Joneses. Those Hummers and Lincoln Navigators really are not very fuel efficient and how many buyers who most always are alone in an SUV ever use the supposed offroad capabilities of some?
I think everything will get much worse since so many of the sheep buy into propaganda of the Goracle and AGW. Americans and American industry will pay a steep price to kiss the butts of the Euroweenies and the UN. Of course the 2 billion energy consumers of China and India are exempt from any limitations on growth. Funny how tmeps have actually been falling since reaching an acme in 1998. Now we are told it will be warmer in five years.
People in the Philippines are complaining that even though they have money to buy rice, it is not available because speculators are hoarding hoping to drive up prices even higher.
One interesting thing I read claims that due to the demographics of the Baby Boomer Generation, we are surely headed for a depression and nothing can be done about it regardless of politics. He looks at the historical implications and past booms and busts. www.thegreatbustahead.com | |
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| Why Has the Price of Food Shot Up and What Does It Portend?
Posted: 4/16/2008 5:26:20 PM | Two full business days that this post originated and only one page, 28 replies.
This speaks in volumes, we just don't care enough already.
Even though, we struggle to get to work, work, rush home through traffic, count the change before grocery shopping and hop back into our gas guzzlers. We are in denial of what the real priorities are...
Quality of life not monetary delight.
Bling Bling,
Ur. | |
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| Why Has the Price of Food Shot Up and What Does It Portend?
Posted: 4/16/2008 7:23:45 PM | | If you start to stock up on food then you need to stock up on TOILET PAPER -God have a whole house stocked up on TOILET paper, then you'll have enough to Barter with your neighborers and friends ,if you don't stock up on TOILET paper then what are you going to do when you have to take a S-HIT ??--its going to get ***WORSE *** and you well see more long hall truck drivers going on strikes just because the gas prices are going up and they can't fill their trucks ,thats the reason why food prices keep on going up..... | |
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| Why Has the Price of Food Shot Up and What Does It Portend?
Posted: 4/16/2008 7:42:16 PM | Anit-Idiotarian makes some good points. One thing I'd like to point out though is that high corn prices are not good for all farmers. Until about 2 years ago I was making a modest living raising hogs. While hog prices have remained about the same the price of corn has more then doubled in that time. I'm down to just a small handful of hogs to sell strictly to my natural customers. Anyone left in the commodity hog business is losing money on every hog they sell. It's currently costing about $25 more to feed a hog then the hog is worth. Cattle feeders aren't doing much better. Even just to buy a little corn to supplement horses, sheep, or chickens with is painful.
99% of all hogs in the US are raised in confinements by mega producers. Some of them are struggling. Even the big boys can only lose money so long. Once enough of them quit then even pork prices will go up. Considerably so.
I've also read numerous articles predicting a long term depression due to the baby boomers retirement. It's based on the fact that there are two baby boomers for every generation x-er. The premise is that real estate markets and the stock market have been run up in value by a constant supply of new money coming in. When the boomers start to retire and pull money out there aren't enough new people coming into the system behind them to support real estate or stock market values. It will be interesting to see.
-Chris | |
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| Why Has the Price of Food Shot Up and What Does It Portend?
Posted: 4/16/2008 8:13:57 PM |
I would look at the World Bank and Monsanto....
Yup....and the IMF...the WTO....which are all pretty much run by multinationals...who also pretty much set government policies.
"Plant only the food tree, cut the other for fuel."
Pine nuts are food... 
It takes COLLECTIVE ACTION.
Indeed it does, Steven, but what Chris it talking about is through common individual moves we become a collective. And through that collective...as we share information...we will eventually have the answer...maybe even the solution...to "who are they?"
darjeeling...your post is right on the mark.
Does anyone know if there is a way to check on the present capacity of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and whether Bush might be filling it at breakneck speed?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Petroleum_Reserve
Check out the link at the bottom on gold reserves...the IMF has a shit load of it....no wonder its price keeps rising.
Brazil could supply the USA with oodles of ethanol if we didn't put restrictive tariffs on their product.
The Brazilian Rainforest is the largest consumer of CO2...yet it keeps getting cut down to grow plants for fuel which of course...emit CO2.
Bad as it is, lifting tariffs would only make it worse.
Why should Fla. sugar growers get subsidies and why place a floor on how low the price can be for things like sugar and milk?
Because their bad for you...which dovetails nicely with the pharmaceutical industry
But it makes the greenie weenies happy...
Actually it doesn't...
99% of all hogs in the US are raised in confinements by mega producers.
Canada too....which is why I don't understand that my pork tenderloins come from Manitoba, yet my ribs come from Peru? | |
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| Why Has the Price of Food Shot Up and What Does It Portend?
Posted: 4/16/2008 8:20:55 PM | I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the idea of Eating lower on the Food Chain Estimates vary, but it takes much more land, grain, water, and energy to produce meat-based food than it does to produce plant-based food.
G | |
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| Why Has the Price of Food Shot Up and What Does It Portend?
Posted: 4/16/2008 8:30:28 PM | mfrotyl
Joined: 8/27/2007
Msg: 3
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History
Why Has the Price of Food Shot Up and What Does It Portend?
Posted: 4/15/2008 9 30 PM
Thanks to the democrats taking control of Congress since 2006, energy prices have skyrocketed due to their FAILED energy policies:
1. Ban lightbulbs???? but support CFC's that contain Mercury......who would of thunk it?
2. No new drilling in USA for the last 30 years, maybe if we drilled here, we would not be DEPENDENT on Foreign Oil.
3. No new Refineries in last 30 years. Not only do we not drill for our own oil, but we have to Export 13% of it to get enough gasoline.....who would have thunk it?
4. Subsidize Ethanol using Corn??? Who thunk this up. Use Corn for Fuel and what do you eat?? Tree bark?
5 . The list is endless, vote the incumbants out, they are worthless and are destroying the world as we know it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~So, regardless of democrat or republican
if OUR GOVT is in fault of our state of the world WHY ARE WE HERE COMPLAINING ABOUT IT AND NOT TRYING TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!
it's past time to take our country back! | |
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| Why Has the Price of Food Shot Up and What Does It Portend?
Posted: 4/16/2008 8:58:26 PM | Quote from an MSN article that "demystifies" why gas is high:
""""The price of crude oil accounts for up to 70 percent of what drivers ultimately pay for gas at the pump, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. So with crude prices recently cresting at over $110 per barrel, you don't have to be an economist to calculate why gas prices have also hit record levels. Like any commodity, crude oil prices are governed by the laws of supply and demand, but they are also affected by market speculation. While oil industry analysts disagree on which of these two forces exerts a greater influence on oil prices, the "fundamentals" of supply and demand present an unambiguous picture of why gas prices keep on rising even though we haven't been buying as much.""
This article said nothing. Other articles I have read say that the Wall Street speculators bid on "oil futures" as place to put devalued American dollars ...other articles have said that various jitters about this and that cause increases due to speculation ... to my mind, this is all artifical. Supply and demand over "oil futures" and speculators who bid the prices up.........and never down when they dont have the jitters....seems to me one big jive hummer. Note that our consumption of gas and oil in America has been flat for the past five years, but the price has gone up in multiples, all very recently.
I have read similar about "commodity futures".....our food....the bidding on futures raises the value on them like stocks ....again, not really additional costs in production, or short supply ... just the investment herd bidding up commodity futures. SOME of it is due to the increase in the price of gas and transporting it, but this is worldwide...and it is not in proportion to the increase in gas.
Rice, soy, corn prices have almost doubled in the past year or two.......that is unheard of..........and as far as I have read, the popular media really isn't talking about it and just giving us a big, old snow job.
Who is making the money? The farms arent.......grocers arent.........but Wall Street investors are, lots of it. | |
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| Why Has the Price of Food Shot Up and What Does It Portend?
Posted: 4/16/2008 9:08:12 PM |
This speaks in volumes, we just don't care enough already.
Even though, we struggle to get to work, work, rush home through traffic, count the change before grocery shopping and hop back into our gas guzzlers. We are in denial of what the real priorities are...
EXACTLY!!
how can people sit and b!tch about it, and yet just wait for the prices to go down.
*note im in canada*
i was watching the news and interviews with people on the streets saying that it will be a bummer to walk a half hour to work, but they have no choice. HELLO? is it really THAT bad to walk twice a day?
or if you choose to drive, CARPOOL! you would be saving a helluva lot more by doing that....
as for food - i think a lot of us have our definition of a proper portion mixed up with what it actually is...thus in turn, we are buying more then we should.
start cutting out the luxuries....buy only the necessities if you're struggling...stock up now. these are things we can do as individuals. once we start taking care of ourselves as well as our families, then we can start coming together and taking it a step further.
so far as coming together and globally making a difference...not gonna happen. global governance is (right now) just a laughing matter.
i quote from an article from macleans:
"solar power costs 10 times more than fossil fuel. until alternative energy is much cheaper in china, things won't change."
what we need by 2013 to meet minimum targets for emissions reductions:
~30 new nuclear plants
~17,000 wind turbines
~400 biomass powerplants
~2 hydrelectric projects the size of china's 3 gorges dam
~42 natural gas plants with carbon capture
**AND - we'll have to build that much every year after.**
another quote which i totally agree with:
"in the developing world theres very little understanding of why people should cut their living standards and deny their kids...things we take for granted to avoid a problem in 50 or 100 years"
i think its a change that needs to be made, and slowly the transition is trying to get started as we speak - yet nobody wants to do it cuz it seems impossible.
we as a society have become lazy....and selfish (in terms of countries fighting over what should be SHARED)
i think its sad and more sickening that our world is becoming more of an "every man for him/herself" the worst part is that nobody's taking it as serious as it should be taken.
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| Why Has the Price of Food Shot Up and What Does It Portend?
Posted: 4/16/2008 10:07:07 PM |
so far as coming together and globally making a difference...not gonna happen.
Yet you cite several ways in which it can...
"solar power costs 10 times more than fossil fuel...
Mostly because of subsides...who are getting them?
Food for thought....pun intended... | |
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| Why Has the Price of Food Shot Up and What Does It Portend?
Posted: 4/16/2008 10:09:25 PM |
mfrotyl, so you are saying that it is the policy of Congress, especially Democrats that caused the present crisis? That is, ceasing exploration and drilling at new fields in America and thus dependant on imports of oil and the switch of some corn crop to ethanol?
Failed governmental policies that make you life horrible:
1. Ban buring wood and using trees for lumber just to save old-growth forests for the spotted oil, which has been found to nest in Kmart signs. Plus since no logging done, no fire breaks created, forests just burn like crazy, waste of wood, waste of lumber, lots of pollution and people die. Oops!
2. Ban coal being used for power plants, America has lots of coal, but not allowed to use it. Oops!
3. Ban nuclear power plants. Three mile island was an accident, but thanks to the superior design of US power plants, no Chernobel. No US/Canada deaths caused by nuclear power plants. Plus Nuclear power is the GREENIEST power so far. France gets 92% of its electricity from Nuclear, why can't we? Oops!
4. Ban oil drilling in America. Ban building refineries in America....this causes us to use Foreign OIL....Oops.
5. Subsidize ethanol production, corn used for fuel, unfortunately it takes one gallon oil to make one gallon ethanol and you do not get to eat the corn. So fuel prices climb and so does food prices....Major Oops there!!
6. Raise minimum wage. The more you raise minimum wage, the more people who make minimum wage, which means less buying power for everyone. Oops
7. The government Mandates Oil companies to make 6 cents profit per dollar of gasoline sold. However the government makes 52 to 78 cents profit on each gallon of gasoline sold. The oil companies may be making hugh profits, but government is making Trillions of dollars more.... Oops!
So what has government been able to do.....BAN and BAN again, raise taxes and subsidize a boon-doogle, then blame the rich.....LOL
So prices go up, there is less food, and people panic.....kind of like how the great depression started, all you have to do is keep your wits about you and everything will be okay. | |
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| Why Has the Price of Food Shot Up and What Does It Portend?
Posted: 4/16/2008 10:19:09 PM | | The richest Two Percent own half the world's wealth. The time is coming when that Two Percent will own 90% of the world's wealth. The riots we are seeing now are just the beginning. The poor of the world are pissed and it is just a matter of time before they say: enough. | |
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| Why Has the Price of Food Shot Up and What Does It Portend?
Posted: 4/17/2008 5:58:09 AM | I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the idea of Eating lower on the Food Chain Estimates vary, but it takes much more land, grain, water, and energy to produce meat-based food than it does to produce plant-based food.
G
Nothing wrong with "eating lower on the food chain". Eat more fruits, vegetables, nuts. Eat fewer processed foods. However the one thing that is usually lost in this argument is that much of the Earths' surface isn't suitable for tillage - growing crops. Desserts, swamps, etc. I live on the edge of the Nebraska Sandhills. The Sandhills cover over 1/3 of Nebraska. They are giant sand dunes covered in grass. They are suitable for livestock grazing only. First buffalo and now cattle, a few sheep and a few buffalo. The cattle turn grass which is indigestible to humans into beef which is.
Most of the beef you buy in the grocery store has spent half it's life in a feedlot being fed corn. If those animals were finished on grass - land not suitable for other uses - it would free up a tremendous amount of corn for human consumption.
-Chris | |
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| Why Has the Price of Food Shot Up and What Does It Portend?
Posted: 4/17/2008 6:10:22 AM | anokagrassland, yes, there is nothing wrong with that ........until and unless Wall Street decides to include the tiniest seeds in its "commodities futures" and the herd of investors decides to dump dollars or Euros or whatever currency is hot to trot and the supply of those futures grows short and the price goes up .......and we all pay, across the board, for those few to add more millions or billions to their coffers.
Where I am going with this post is that the sudden and extreme rise in prices is not necessarily due to any conditions that have added expense, outside of the rising price of gas ....... but in large part due to financial speculators as they have bid up the cost of oil. Unchecked by any government.
And then governments use OUR taxes to mediate the price, which is just another way of handing them even more money ..............both in what we pay in taxes and what we pay in the market. | |
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| Why Has the Price of Food Shot Up and What Does It Portend?
Posted: 4/17/2008 8:51:05 AM |
Weren't you the one bragging about how big your car was, and how much of a gas guzzler it was?
Oh yah that was you.
The thread asks why gas and food prices have gone up. I have just explained it. I have not complained about the gas prices, just told the reason why gas prices have gone up. Remember I hold Oil Futures, the more the price of a barrel of oil of oil goes up, the more money I have. I have to thank failed democrat policies for this as well as panic mongering Enviromentalists, since they are making me a ton of money, however the average person on the street suffers because of them.
Have you ever wondered why Mr Gore, Mr Global Warming himself, still holds stock in Oil Companies??? Because he is making a ton of money from them. | |
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| Why Has the Price of Food Shot Up and What Does It Portend?
Posted: 4/17/2008 9:29:01 AM | Amusing how even socialist France with its cradle to grave nanny state, somehow manages to derive most of its electricity needs from nuclear energy. The liberals here are against any new nuke plants. Jane Fonda's movie The China Syndrome helped contribute to that mindset. Teddy Kennedy is a NIMBY who prevents the use of wind farms off the Mass. coast because he sails there and it also disturbs his view.
A few acres of ANWR cannot be violated because the greens want to keep it pristine wilderness for moose, even though there are all sorts of plans to prevent any ecological damage. Can't drill for oil and gas off the Florida coast because there might be leaks.
The media and many of you surely don't want to assign any blame for current woes on the big change in Congress in '06. If you want to assure much higher prices for everything just allow the government to regulate it. Put windfall profits taxes on the oil companies and see how much exploration is done. People complain about cost of things like drugs but don't take into account the high rate of failures when they are in development stages pre-approval by the FDA.
Yes, plenty of groups are suffering. Seems to me that if any product is non-competitive, it should be allowed to fail. Some farmers are making bundles of money growing corn for ethanol. Tobacco is vilified and said to cost megabucks in health care needs. So why does government subsidize tobacco farmers? Some people with rather limited incomes bought homes costing way more than they can afford and now we hear our taxes should bail them, the mortgage banks and the real speculators out of trouble. It seems some people are allowed to profit it good times and when bad times arrive the taxpayer takes the risk and foots the bills. Look at hurricanes in Florida between the big losses from Andrew back in early nineties and the terrible damages in '03 and '04. Just what were the insurers doing with all those profits in the years when they paid nothing out? Once again they want their profits but don't want to foot the bills when Mother Nature beckons with a disaster.
So what we need is change as personified by Obamalamadingdong? People won't learn from all the disasters inherent in socialism and marxism? Obambi agreed in last night's debate that lowering capital gains taxes means an increase in tax revenue but that it would be fairer to take more money from the rich for income redistribution even though the higher taxes result in lower revenues. Such logic! So bottom 40% of us pay zero income taxes and the top 10% of earners pay 70% of the taxes. Naturally the so-called victim class is going to vote for more "free" benefits. Socialized medicine is a wonderful thing and that's why so many in other countries with it like Canada and Ireland who must wait for rationed care just opt to come to the good old USA for timely health care. Anyway if you trust that government really is out to help you then vote for more government bureaucracy and higher taxes. That 5 trillion dollar war on poverty turned out so well, didn't it? Plenty of victims who remain "poor" from generation to generation dependent on the gummint dole. | |
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| Why Has the Price of Food Shot Up and What Does It Portend?
Posted: 4/17/2008 10:40:49 AM | Ah but anti-idiotarian, if the top 10% own most of the sh!t then they should be paying for it.
And Health Care is NOT rationed in Canada, another of those anti socalist myths.
It is the Money Speculators that are the problem. They add to the cost with out adding any value to the product. What do we need them for any way?
Edit for Hardball(below).. and we have Mericans coming up here in droves for medical services because they can't afford the cost in the States. Maybe that is way your friend had to wait???
So which system is worst? The one where you may have to wait for FREE elective services, or the one you can't afford? | |
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| Why Has the Price of Food Shot Up and What Does It Portend?
Posted: 4/17/2008 8:12:52 PM | Health care is not rationed in Canada... if you have a doctor. A friend of mine recently had to quit her job because she could not find a doctor to accept her as a patient and treat her painful condition.
Food is up because the dollar is down. The dollar is down because governments are trying to "stimulate" the economy during an energy shortage by devaluing the currency. You can't stimulate something if there isn't fuel to make it go. The economy has to be slowed down until low-energy technology is put into place. There are tons of jobs open in that field right now, and the sooner they are filled, the sooner the slowdown will be over. | |
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| Why Has the Price of Food Shot Up and What Does It Portend?
Posted: 4/17/2008 8:29:26 PM | http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/opinion/article/269269#
http://www.crikey.com.au/Business/20080417-Welcome-to-the-crazy-world-of-international-food-pricing.html
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4338
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| Why Has the Price of Food Shot Up and What Does It Portend?
Posted: 4/17/2008 10:17:01 PM | noone seems to understand the real problem, I've read this and that and the other thing but use you heads ? think illegal institution ? what is it ? federal reserve ! hey you got it right ! Irs ? hey you got it again ? central banks sucking the life out of everyone ? hey you got it again !
The federal reserve is and has been the cause of every economic collapse since it's inception in 1913 and people don't see the problem for it's cause. It's time to wake up people before you live in a box.
oh and the american occupation of a hundred or so countries costing a trillion a year isn't helping is it ? | |
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| Why Has the Price of Food Shot Up and What Does It Portend?
Posted: 4/17/2008 10:41:23 PM | | Surprise a lot of folks are really understanding what is going on that is great. Yep you want to say the Rain Forest is being cut down you know why? Part of the reason is due to the Environmentalist closed down logging here as already stated. Gang Green has done everything they can to stop any good progress for America. That is stated goal to tear down the roads and towns of America. It is good to see people are waking up to the scam. Just like the Globull warming scam it is all about a new Global tax on Carbon it will not help the eco system it is another boondoggle to suck more money off people for driving their cars and heating their homes. Food prices are going to keep going up until people stop listening to the talking heads on TV . | |
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