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Termyn8or -> RE: run out of food? (3/12/2008 8:09:00 AM)
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We actually are in a recession right now. It's just not officially called that - at the moment.
I read such things about four years ago. And look at what happened to prices. Food price increases are actually beyond inflation. The fact is partially obscured because they use food prices as one of the indicators of the cost of living.
The use of flawed data is something I am used to. They give you one number to indicate inflation, it is simply not all that accurate. You need to crunch the different numbers, those for cars, real estate and a few other things. When you see the isolated figures you can discern what portion of inflation is driven by supply and demand and what portion is caused by the decline of the dollar. Then you see a bigger picture.
Also realize something that not all that many people know; for the past few years now the US has been importing more than 50% of our food. Therefore the foreign exchange rates come into play.
There seems to be a base rate of devalueation of all currencies, and the disparity in those rates are caused mainly by trade imbalances. This is not just Economics 101, this should be on the entrance exam for Economics 101.
For example we do import some food from Europe. Most of it does come from South America, but let's delve into the foods we buy from countries that use the Euro.
Let me ask the Euro country dwellers here, now that the Euro is in such a good position in relation to the dollar, have food prices gone down in your country ?
Also on the entrance exam for Economics 101 should be the real reason for the almost universal devalueation of currency. I will use the word taxation, but in this context I will have to explain that I use it in the broader sense. I am not talking about taxation by governments alone, there are many other forms.
One factor is speculation. People buy pork belly futures to make money, and they make money or they would not do it. Then there is the stock market. There are dividends to pay. Then there are too many middlemen and overpaid executives, that is a form of taxation.
In other words there are just too many people who are taking alot of money, but produce very little if anything. The government is among them but they are not alone.
So you have the speculators making money, which increases prices and also offers less incentive to those who actually produce the product. Then you have these cockamamie scemes where the government pays farmers not to grow things. Ostensibly to not cause a glut on the market. In this way the government is supporting the speculators.
But now we have retirement funds dependent on this fouled up system.
And the increasing overpopulation at least here has it's obvious contribution to the problem. What's more the overcrowding causes more waste overall by many means. Intercene strife and conflict. People moving, couples split up and sometimes no money for the electric bill. The food spoils. That is but one example, there are too many to enumerate them all here. Especially on fast reply.
I don't know if anyone read the article I posted about overcrowding, but I highly recommend it. Sorry it is in JPG format. I tried to use OCR on it but it screwed it up so bad it wasn't worth the editing I would have to do. It is already contrast enhanced and the only problem is you have to size the image to the screen to read it. It does print nicely if you can force it to print on the whole page. (if you don't have a program that does this, contact me and I'll send you one, it's nice and can actually be put on a floppy)
It boils down to this, the Earth simply cannot comfortably support this many people. It can do it, but just barely. Remember the Zero Population Growth advocates of decades past. ? Whatever happened to them ? They were appealing to people's humanity to have only two kids, something like that. The idea was that overcrowding is bad for all of us.
Now they appeal to young Women's own futures, how a teen pregnancy affects THEIR life, nobody else's, and they still can't get people to be reasonable in their reproductive choices.
If this continues it will not be a matter of IF we run out of food, it will be a matter of WHEN.
T
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