Oh I don't know...where to start this morning?
I guess it all depends on how many of you have been paying attention to the so-called "news" over the past decade.
A couple of things are on my mind today, optimally tied together by this AP story.
Follow along with me as I read a little:
AP
Food Costs Rising Fastest in 17 Years
Monday April 14, 4:10 pm ET
By Ellen Simon, AP Business Writer
Food Costs Rising at Fast Clip, Squeezing Poor, Forcing Food Vendors to Explain Higher Prices
NEW YORK (AP) -- Steve Tarpin can bake a graham cracker crust in his sleep, but explaining why the price for his Key lime pies went from $20 to $25 required mastering a thornier topic: global economics.
He recently wrote a letter to his customers and posted it near the cash register listing the factors -- dairy prices driven higher by conglomerates buying up milk supplies, heat waves in Europe and California, demand from emerging markets and the weak dollar.(emphasis mine-VRRIII)
The owner of Steve's Authentic Key Lime Pies in Brooklyn said he didn't want customers thinking he was "jacking up prices because I have a unique product."
"I have to justify it," he said
Yeah, Mr. Tarpin, I think that you would be absolutely correct when you attribute rising food costs to "emerging markets" and the "weak [American] Dollar."
As the Chinese, India, and the third World continue to grow in population at a faster rate than the US and gain economic strength, at the same time they are using things like FOOD at a faster rate just like they use more OIL--thus higher Gas Prices (no, it's not Oil Company profits to blame...)
As to the veracity of your worries about giant corporations of wild eyed rich dudes trying to corner the market on milk and Owl Gore's Global Warming induced crop failures costing your customers money...I have to claim ignorance and ask you to provide me with some more reference materials before I can agree with your assertion.
As far as I know they don't grow many Key Limes in Europe and California...
Regardless, I don't doubt that it costs more to make a Key Lime pie these days than it did ten or twenty years ago, but I also believe that New Yorkers won't start having to decide between affording brain surgery or making their rent controlled apartment payment versus downing a wedge of the Conch Republic's (the Florida Keys') most famous export food after a $10 cheese burger any time soon.
Regarding the weak Dollar, you have a chance to look to Washington and make some substantial changes in November--Republican & Democrat alike--if you don't like the lower confidence the world has in our currency.
The borrow and spend, spend, spend policies that support the liberals beloved social programs are at least partially responsible for the increased cost of financing government debt and the lower purchasing power of your Lincolns and Franklin's in your wallet.
Also, you have to realize that the consolidation of the European currencies, in the form of the Euro, has at least partially accomplished their original goal--to COMPETE economically with the United-By-God-States of America.
Still, if you're paying attention you will know that the European Union and the Euro are wobbly alliances at best, and the British people's refusal to abandon the Queen's Pound and the French rejection of the EU's deep socialist underpinnings (pot calling the kettle black?) provides plenty of evidence of the potential long term problems they face.
Now, having at first apparently excluded Owl Gore and the Global Warming Eco-weenies from this argument, I have to bring them back in and reference the collateral damage caused by government response to their policies.
Can you say E-T-H-A-N-O-L?
That's right, do a Google search and look at the effect that making fuel from corn and other grain products is having on animal feed prices and by default--meat and dairy prices.
I read somewhere (I can't find the reference) that it takes something like 400 pounds of grain to make 40 gallons of ethanol.
Four HUNDRED pounds of corn--enough to feed a human in Ethiopia for an entire YEAR.
All for a couple of tanks full of gasoline equivalent (actually one tank in my Suburban.)
How can that possibly be efficient?
Another fact I've read is that Iowa--the so-called "Breadbasket of America," is now a net IMPORTER of CORN.
That's right, they're HAULING CORN to Iowa because Iowa is now full of Ethanol plants churning out Owl Gore's "Elixir of Energy Independence."
I'm smart, but I'm happy that I'm not THAT SMART...
How about YOU?
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