Food prices

[living sounds]

Beware of class warfare and wallet envy. No one is guaranteed the same outcome. It's interesting that so many disparage wealthy businessmen, but not wealthy entertainers or athletes.

One problem is all the tweaking done to guarantee a great outcome for the fortunate few.

Another problem is making money not from (your own) work but from money. This has once again become more lucrative than actual work (Thomas Pickety has formulas to explain it in detail). If only our economies were made up of productive businessmen only... and not of so many investment, insurance, regulatory capture firms that don't do anything useful and mooch on the hard work of others.

 

[living sounds]

Back on topic, a recent report has blamed President Biden's increased SNAP program spending in part for increasing food price inflation.
Feeding Inflation: How President Biden’s Unlawful Food Stamp Expansion is Costing Taxpayers and Consumers Billions

Food prices have been soaring around the world, and it's all due Joe Biden spending a little more money on poor people - there you go, case closed.

 

[JohnRoberts]

Food prices have been soaring around the world, and it's all due Joe Biden spending a little more money on poor people - there you go, case closed.

Right now the world food supply is most challenged by Putin bombing shipping ports in the south of Ukraine preventing the wheat harvest from getting out on ships.
==
If you want to blame Biden for something his weak posture towards Russia encouraged Putin to invade Ukraine, while ex-President Obama gets more than a little credit for letting Putin annex Crimea without significant penalties.

The dominant argument for supporting Ukraine is the thesis that Putin would not stop there. I can't read minds or predict the future but that argument sounds plausible. I do not like the little and late faint military support we give Ukraine. More support earlier might(?) have prevented the invasion.

A potential lesson from this is that maybe we should be beefing up Taiwan so they can defend themselves against China.

JR

 

[AnalogPackrat]

Earlier the conservatives were warning that democracy leads to totalitarianism. Now it also leads to anarchy. Democracy leads to the strongest form of central government and the weakest at the same time! Good thing we're all so precise in our definitions. To sum up what we've learned here:

• Totalitarianism is anarchy
• Republican democracy is not democracy
• Majority rule is tyranny, but minority rule isn't

"Majority rules" Democracies are inherently unstable as explained earlier. That can lead to chaos, civil war/revolution and often to totalitarian rule either from within or by being "forcibly annexed" by a more powerful neighboring state during or after the chaos/civil war. Again I urge you to crack open a history book.

I did, Leia. I found a few small-fry bigots and liars crying "reeeeeee!" because their employers didn't want to keep bigots and liars in their employ.

Oh, right. So you found examples written up in Vox, The Guardian, WaPo, HuffPo, and the like. How representative.

I also found many more hate-mongers and liars making a tidy profit with no consequences at all, and a whole ton of conservatives trying their hardest to cancel anyone and anything they don't like.

Examples?

Relevant to food prices, because what a pile of baloney.

When your government is too large and has too much power it can make life hell. Inflation is one way. Congrats on getting what you voted for.

 

[cyrano]

The powers that be will promise everyone they can get whatever they want, so as to win their vote. The populace demand only what is best for their own self-interests, rather than for the good of the whole. Everyone decides that their demands are the only ones that matter. This eventually leads to jealousy, greed and envy, which results in unrest. Unrest leads to upheaval, riots, etc.. Everyone demanding their way = anarchy. The past few years here in the US have been the perfect example of this. Sadly.

The fact that people are elected for a certain period is one of the weak points of democracy. Too often, one side turns back what their predecessors from the other side have done.

But what's the alternative?

That's why anarchism is built on a base democracy. Small scale and not for one period.

But even the word "anarchism" makes some people go beserk. That's a shame.

Still I see something else as the most important problem: as things get big, they become harder to manage. You can see that everywhere. The biggest companies are the worse. Same for organisations and states. That doesn't mean small is always better.

 

[cyrano]

Right now the world food supply is most challenged by Putin bombing shipping ports in the south of Ukraine preventing the wheat harvest from getting out on ships.
==
If you want to blame Biden for something his weak posture towards Russia encouraged Putin to invade Ukraine, while ex-President Obama gets more than a little credit for letting Putin annex Crimea without significant penalties.

The dominant argument for supporting Ukraine is the thesis that Putin would not stop there. I can't read minds or predict the future but that argument sounds plausible. I do not like the little and late faint military support we give Ukraine. More support earlier might(?) have prevented the invasion.

A potential lesson from this is that maybe we should be beefing up Taiwan so they can defend themselves against China.

JR

Is this comedy?

I remember seeing Donald Trump telling us that with him at the rudder, there wouldn't have been war in Ukraine because Putin is his friend. That sounds as plausible as Putin not being behind the death of the leaders of the Wagner militia.

Communism is evil, you've been telling us. Clearly, the current Russian fascism is far better...

 

[cyrano]

The only systems that deliver equal outcomes make everybody poor.
===
Back on topic, a recent report has blamed President Biden's increased SNAP program spending in part for increasing food price inflation.
Feeding Inflation: How President Biden’s Unlawful Food Stamp Expansion is Costing Taxpayers and Consumers Billions

It appears that the recent huge increase was not approved by congress. There is a ongoing debate about causes of inflation, this shows at least partial correlation.

Harvard university is encouraging graduate students to register for SNAP (food stamps). That is an interesting lesson to teach.

JR

PS: I am not opposed to assistance for the most needy among us, but maybe not Harvard graduate students. At one point back in the late 70s one of my married brothers (now RIP) with two kids was struggling to make ends meet. He briefly used food stamps. To help I hired him to work part time for my kit business (he already had a full time job), and shared my rented house with him and his family. This helped him save enough for a down payment on his own house after only a couple years. I enjoyed spending time with my niece and nephew but young children demand constant attention. I would sometimes take the kids with me on my business errands. One time I made the mistake of trying to get them to sit quietly while I had short meeting at a business I was consulting for... that meeting did not work.

That's not a report. It's propaganda from a right-wing think-tank promoting free trade. Of course, they are financed by the big corporations who want to see as little rules as possible. Besides, if you start criticising a system because there are some who exploit it, there will be NO system left. Any system can be exploited.

As long as people believe this kind of propaganda, I'm very pessimistic about solving the polarisation problem. Nothing Biden does is good for the other side and vice-versa. Though I find it hard to find something Donald Trump did positive, I'm convinced there must be something.

 

[Matador]

Though I find it hard to find something Donald Trump did positive, I'm convinced there must be something.

He turns out a lot of Democrat voters.

 

[Matador]

Beware of class warfare and wallet envy. No one is guaranteed the same outcome.

I would argue that it's not about outcome but opportunity.

I would posit that in a healthy society, we would see a a roughly gaussian distribution of wealth centered around the 'medium' household, meaning that roughly 68% of the wealth would be clustered around the middle quintile of households. You would have a small tail of the bottom 10% as well as the top 10% (a small number of poor and rich, at least relative to the median).

If equal outcome were the desire, then you would (want to) see a horizontal line across that distribution. That's not what is being asked for, despite people trying to straw-man about socialism, etc.

What we have instead looks like an exponential distribution, where the wealth is clustered around the very top of the distribution:

As living sounds and cyrano are hinting, the favorability of equity income greatly exacerbates this. If you also factor in the marginal utility of the dollar, this chart gets ever more egregious.

 

[john12ax7]

Interesting article on how the port backlog affected prices.

https://www.propublica.org/article/ocean-freight-shipping-costs-inflation

 

[cyrano]

A potential lesson from this is that maybe we should be beefing up Taiwan so they can defend themselves against China.

How do you see that happen?

China is a moloch in close proximity of Taiwan. Of course, you could give the Taiwanese nukes. Think that would deter the Chinese?

The only thing that would stop the Chinese is a ruined economy. That would give them enough internal problems to keep them from even thinking about Taiwan.

But what does capitalism do?

It's cheaper to produce in China, so money rules. I'm not sure the USA would be capable of going to war without Chinese products. Apple succeeded in scamming Donald Trump out of millions for producing computers in the USA. The result was the Mac Pro that was so prohibitively expensive almost nobody bought one.

You can't even blame US presidents for being scammed by big corporations as they depend on them for election funds.

I still wonder if General Electric will be providing nuclear reactors to Saudi Arabia. I wouldn't trust these bastards for anything, let alone nuclear...

 

[john12ax7]

As long as people believe this kind of propaganda, I'm very pessimistic about solving the polarisation problem.

The propaganda often has a grain of truth, but highlights small scale issues instead of large scale ones. In the US there was the payment protection program (PPP). Business owners could and did take millions they didn't need and used the money to buy 2nd and 3rd houses and other assets. In aggregate it was probably trillions of dollars of wealth transferred upwards.

In the US exploiting the system is deemed ok as long as it is on a large scale. A rich business man who takes millions is considered shrewd. A poor person who takes hundreds is considered a leach on society.

 

[living sounds]

The only thing that would stop the Chinese is a ruined economy. That would give them enough internal problems to keep them from even thinking about Taiwan.

I do think the opposite may be true. The rulers will try to deflect from internal problems and use wartime (emergency) measures to keep themselves in power. This may also have been the actual motivation behind the invasion of Ukraine...

 

[living sounds]

BTW, I do think the shrinking workforce caused by demographic changes and isolationism will accelerate the a push towards an AI / advanced robotics driven next stage of automation across many sectors. This and other technological advances could lower food prices considerably.

 

[Tubetec]

I found this earlier , just fits

“How smooth must be the language of the whites, when they can make right look like wrong, and wrong like right.”​

Black Hawk, Sauk

 

[sodderboy]

If you committed crimes while representing him, then yes.

Do you realize that you are confusing (or equating, not sure) the rule of law/due process and modern alinskyite scorched earth canceling as punishments for a crime? You surely cannot be. You have written that if a lawyer commits a crime they should be ruined by cancellation, and not tried in a court of law with due process. You cannot mean this, because to do so you put a cancel target on yourself as easily and that is upsetting to me, scary, very base, I guess is the word. Please clarify.
Mike
I am not really a salty snack person, but when did a med bag of Doritos go from 99 cents to $2.49?

 

[AnalogPackrat]

Do you realize that you are confusing (or equating, not sure) the rule of law/due process and modern alinskyite scorched earth canceling as punishments for a crime?

"By any means necessary" is the mantra.

I am not really a salty snack person, but when did a med bag of Doritos go from 99 cents to $2.49?

$2.49 is a steal these days. My wife likes the jalapeno cheetos. I'm lucky to find the shrinkflated 6.5oz bags for $3.49. Regular price is like $4.99 now.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000718311

 

[AnalogPackrat]

The propaganda often has a grain of truth, but highlights small scale issues instead of large scale ones. In the US there was the payment protection program (PPP).

Another poorly conceived and implemented big government giveaway gone wrong. Who could have seen that coming? And it was a bandaid on the mummy of stupid Covid policies.

Business owners could and did take millions they didn't need and used the money to buy 2nd and 3rd houses and other assets. In aggregate it was probably trillions of dollars of wealth transferred upwards.

Shame on them, but who made it possible in the first place?

In the US exploiting the system is deemed ok as long as it is on a large scale. A rich business man who takes millions is considered shrewd. A poor person who takes hundreds is considered a leach on society.

Both are leaches on bad government policy and I don't know any regular Joe/Jane who believes otherwise.

 

[Matador]

Please clarify.

I would be happy to, if I had even the slightest clue what you are talking about.

 

[john12ax7]

I don't know any regular Joe/Jane who believes otherwise.

And yet the continued fervent support of the politicians and political parties behind the policies.