:lol: I'll try to more clearly and completely state what I mean next time. Big government and big business collude and throw table scraps to the poor. Or something like that.
I just did a quick Yahoo search... Food Price Crisis 101 It seems to me one of your fundamental arguments that you regularly return to. Maybe I'm mistaken. I'm not talking about pure monopolies, I'm talking about the phone companies conglomerating into fewer and fewer huge companies. I'm talking about huge ass banks. Huge food companies. Less competition, not more. Microsoft seems like a special case to me, but they may be practicing monopolistic practices.
yes your article is right, there are poor people in moldova. but otherwise it is wrong. there is no food crisis in america. when was the the last time you saw a person so poor they were thin in america? i never have. the problem in america is OBESITY. even (especially) among the poor. you are mistaken. right now i am thinking about a new phone. i will use either tmobile or verizon or sprint ot att&t. i dont have a home phone, but if i did i could go with any number of providers, or even VOIP. where is the monopoly that is punishing me, the consumer? i have an enormous amount of choice. explain to me a case where a modern american has no choice. i can think of one. the post office. their monopoly is enforced by the government. that is the only kind that exists. the government also enforces some monopolies in the form of copyright, but that is a different, and very involved and very interesting topic.
I thought your argument was that we pay a smaller portion of our income on food, which this article doesn't seem to support. I don't think so. These companies keep getting bigger and the choices keep getting smaller, which worries me. True enough about the internet helping choice out. I guess a better example would be the huge financial institutions that will not be allowed to fail. They probably should be allowed to fail, but we would all suffer. This is a case where the government tried to regulate, but it seems their regulations were ill conceived. A terrible mix of an attempt at a regulated and unregulated free market. It's hard to lay the majority of the blame at the government's doorstep on this one. The government should have stepped in, just not in the way they did. I'm not saying we have exact monopolies, just that we have monoply-esque entities going around. There are a number of corporations that would rock the US (and world) if they tumbled. But maybe that is uncontrollable and part of the risk of progress.
i am gonna be honest, i dont care about your article. food policy is something i am really interested in and know alot about. the fact is, americans spend less of their income on food than ever before. can i have a specific example? i know people like to whine about media companies. dont worry about it. every time a big media company merges with another, a zillion more bloggers start publishing news. if something happens at LSU, i can read here about it. if something happens in new york, you can ask me about it. there are virtually infinite sources for news on the internet. you dont have to depend on big media anymore. correct. capitalism would have worked perfectly. let them fail. let them be replaced by better companies. thats how things evolve. correct. we should be careful and invest our money in companies that are run properly.
not that this is a good thing. it goes hand in hand with poor quality/processed food. one reason all those poor people are chubby.
its just more convenient. you can spend less on eggs, ham and plenty other natural foods than many processed ones. its also cheaper than eating at mcdonalds. its just doritos are better.
of course. the government pours money into farms to produce unhealthy foods. primarily corn. the corn is then processed into either corn syrup, which is in almost everything, or food for cows for cheap beef. so basically everything on the menu at mcdonalds is paid for, artificially cheapened by taxpayers, from the corn syrup soft drinks to the double cheeseburgers. so poor folks are encouraged by the government to eat unhealthy foods. also our food policy crushes poor nations, because their farmers cannot compete with our subsidized farmers. so we dump cheap grains on them and put their farmers out of business, making them dependent on us instead of supporting their own farms. also by filtering our food through their politcal system, their corrupt leaders get richer and powerful and more corrupt and destroy their country. the beauty of the free market is that it distributes power to the people, the farmers are the ones that control the food, not the government agency that gets the food shipments from the US. ameican food policy is so terrible that it manages to keep americans unhealthy and fat, it destabilizes the developing countries and keeps them mired in poverty. it is a hugely destructive that crushes humans all over the world. but you dont hear much about it, people care more about global warming for some reason.
farmers produce eggs, milk, cheese and many other "healthy" foods. all relatively cheap as well albeit artificially.
well, all food is cheap. but unhealthy food is especially cheap because of subsidy. obviously farmers produce everything. but the subsidies are not for local spinach and pears. the guy with a truck full of incredible peaches at the farmers market, he is not able to compete with the government. the government is motivating him to quit growing those awesome peaches and grow corn. and not even the kind of corn that humans eat. the kind that is ground up and made into cow feed or made into sugar to put in mountain dew and red bull. for the most part, the government pays massive farmers to produce corn and grains that end up in processed foods. corn of course is good for you, but not when a zillion tons of processed corn sugar is in everything.
