Tall tales - Food Prices, Financial Crisis

The media - CBC, CTV - is telling us that we are eating bad food in order to cope with the financial crisis. Tonight [Sunday Nov 16th 2008] the CBC mentioned a statistic to back it up: "Food prices have gone up 6% in the past year".

Whats up with THAT?? I think it is just another part of the continuing agenda to convince us that we are having a hard time during this financial crisis. I think something smells fishy.

For starters, the statistic about food prices would HAVE to go back ONE FULL YEAR in order to quote a price increase for food, because the reality is that lately, in the past few months since this so-called financial crisis has hit, FOOD PRICES HAVE GONE DOWN, at least here in rural BC they have. Lower fuel costs are one factor that is bringing food prices down. One year ago we were seeing sharp spikes in food prices due to the high price of oil and gasoline, and therefore food transportation. Now things are the opposite, but the media isn't telling us about that, the good side of this turn of events.

Convincing us that we are having a hard time of it now might soften us up for corporate bailouts and government deficits [which might have something to do with those bailouts!]. The media has been hitting us with these reports of financial hardship for about a month now, and it is difficult not to start believing it, but it is not true unless you have lost your job. For everone else, things are getting better. House prices are going down, food prices too, gasoline is for sure, and I am seeing sales prices on many consumer goods.

Getting back to the food issue, the CBC showed a single mother who was willing to play along with the storyline. She was feeding her kids crappy processed food that apparently costs less than fresh-you-cook food because, as she said: "when food prices goes up, they don't raise my pay to cover it".

Ya, but her pay stayed the same and food prices did NOT go up. So don't assault your kid's bodies with that crap. It costs less to cook real food, they were just trying to support the storyline of "the hardship we are all having". Its just not true.

Taking this one step further, I have been thinking that this crisis, which is mostly only a banker's and large corporation's crisis, is a good opportunity to re-think some basic economics. Doing the best thing for the most people just might be that we should encourage prices to go DOWN - paying less for energy, less for food, less for cars, less for houses. All those items are on their way down now, and for most people, unless you are wealthy, that is a good thing.

Comments

Submitted by George Victor on November 17, 2008 - 6:28am.

Looks like you've discovered an old copy of Major C.H.Douglas's Social Credit (1924), NS. We must produce to consume and so production must serve the consumer (or something idyllic).

I'm beginning to understand how his ideas came first to those enjoying bucolic lifestyles in the valleys of Alberta and B.C. Somehow, supply/demand questions can be set aside there without concern for their fluctuation (what comes down can be expected to go up...and vice versa), outside of an economy on a wartime footing.

Food prices for the world's impoverished have gone up.

Or does your suggestion that we "should encourage prices to go DOWN" come from other methods of distributive reform to be found in Major Douglas's tome?

Submitted by Lard Tunderin Jeezus on November 17, 2008 - 7:27am.

Quote:

FOOD PRICES HAVE GONE DOWN, at least here in rural BC they have.

Here in Toronto, in my personal experience, food prices continue to rise independently of fuel costs.

Submitted by thorin_bane on November 18, 2008 - 12:06pm.

LTJ same here. I went to the 'new' zehrs and canadian super stores....Hate them. More expensive than A&P or Sobby's selection has been reduced, layout is dumber yet. Worst of all lots of self checkouts. So you got rid of your staff and the price has gone up. These machines must be really high energy consumers. I think I will stick with a (wo)manned till. Need to keep people employed you know. Much like everything else. No one wants the job because you don't get any respect. Or good pay by and large. See gas station attendant. So bring in the machines they will make life simple. Except more poeple out of work.And people with no time because they hae to do everything forthemselves. We can't all work in the financial sector.

I know a lot of university educated poeple that can't find jobs because A: they expect to start at 60,000 a year and B: that job is beneath me mentality. Until they begin to change the system form the top down, so that people in less then great jobs are recognized for their contributions to society we will be stuck with class warfare. As Linda McQuaigs points out. Studies prove that social status is more important than money earned.

So I don't know how BC is getting their food so cheap, perhaps a lot of chinese food makes it so eing on that coast. But here in "good things grooow in ontarioooo" prices are through the roof. Zehrs 5.19 for 12 case of coke/pepsi products. Are you out of your mind! it was a dollar cheaper not 2 months ago. 25% hike is criminal. Oh I forgot we have a worldwide food shortage, and gotta pay for those new shiny tills.

Submitted by M. Spector on December 17, 2010 - 4:22pm.

Quote:

In a January 2008 meeting, US and Spain trade officials strategized how to increase acceptance of genetically modified foods in Europe, including inflating food prices on the commodities market, according to a leaked US diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks.

During the meeting, Secretary of State for International Trade, Pedro Mejia, and Secretary General, Alfredo Bonet "noted that commodity price hikes might spur greater liberalization on biotech imports."

It seems Wall Street traders got the word. By June 2008, food prices had spiked so severely that "The Economist announced that the real price of food had reached its highest level since 1845, the year the magazine first calculated the number," reports Fred Kaufman in The Food Bubble: How Wall Street starved millions and got away with it [5].

The unprecedented high in food prices in 2008 caused an additional 250 million people to go hungry, pushing the global number to over a billion. 2008 is also the first year "since such statistics have been kept, that the proportion of the world's population without enough to eat ratcheted upward," said Kaufman.

All to boost acceptance of GM foods, and done via a trading scheme on which Wall Street speculators profited enormously.

Source [6]

Submitted by Noah_Scape on December 18, 2010 - 11:21pm.

This is the kind of thing that absolutely justifies WikiLeaks, high praise all around.

People in poorer nations, and poor people in our nation, went hungry, and/or spent their last dollars, on food in 2008 due to this scullduggery [to make money and get GMO foods accepted]. It is truly "conspiratorial" and inhumane to the max.

As for the GMO aspect, it went something like this:

From the links in the previous post:

The "Food Commodity Index" was created as an investment vehicle, and as prices of basic foods went up and up, the investors made bagloads of money, but also they got "more acceptance of GMO foods" but only because the price of regular food was out of reach for many people.

US Senator Grassley suggested this, in order to get more acceptance of GMOs [as is witnessed in the copy of the cables].

I have not heard a word on mainstream media about this of course.