Food, Fuel, and the Whining of Emo Countries
May 5, 2008
I am scared to say this but for the first time in my life I am agreeing with the sentiments of W’s spoken word. He has all but blamed the rising middle class of India for the current rise in food prices and availability. This extends to China and other Southeast Asian nations who get much of their food from the US, even if that was too much for him say at once. His basic premise is the rising middle class is demanding better quality food and more of it when there is only so much tooto go around. He didn’t even blame biofuel for problem which is a step up from many other Republicans.
To be fair we sort of brought this problem on to ourselves in some respects over the last sixty years. In the early days of the cold war we gave food to starving nations so the Soviets couldn’t make inroads with them. We made allies and trade partners. These same allies have grown and prospered in many cases under on what we have fed them. However like most children they do not want to be weaned from the teet.
The time has come though that they either learn to feed themselves or pay the price of a diminished supply. If America is to remain strong, it is time for us to start nourishing its own body populous. Our economy is in the crapper, because for too long we have welcomed outside invested and done likewise. It is time for other countries, many of who are getting the glut of outsourced US jobs to sink or swim on their own.
Unlike W I know some of you believe that this problem is our new found love of biofuels. Well face it isn’t, at least not yet. A very tiny amount of what we grow goes into biofuel. There is a point to be made about the inefficiency of corn based ethanol, but in truth we don’t make enough of it to have caused your problems. Moving towards biofuels is simply something we must do now, because we have simply waited far too long. There is a limited supply of oil on the planet and we have to compete with every other country especially populous ones for it. Our bowing out of that market is to their benefit.
In the end the, “Give Me! Give Me! Give Me!” of other countries has to be ignored. It is time for tough love rather than adolescent indulgence. All I can say to our economic brats is “If you don’t like it, then go cry to someone who gives a fuck emo country!”
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10 Responses to “Food, Fuel, and the Whining of Emo Countries”
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The problem isn’t that we’re giving food to India/China/etc., it’s that they’re buying it. These are countries with massive trade surpluses, raging economies, and they’re reaping the fruits. The US has enjoyed cheap resources for a long time, because there was less competition. Well, now there’s more, which bids up the price. That’s capitalism for you, only now it’s working against us for a change. Boo frikkin’ hoo.
I’m not saying you’re wrong that developing nations increased appetite for better food is increasing the price. But the US still consumes vastly more food per capita than China or India. It seems ridiculous to me to get angry at developing countries for wanting, and getting, the same standard of living we’ve been enjoying for decades.
Enginerds last blog post..Soul Transplant List
I never said I was worrying about them buying it. I am however sick and tired of them thinking they should come before our needs and think they shouldn’t pay the going rate, which when you figure in shipping costs would be significantly more than they pay now.
For the record we still give away more than 15% of what is grown in this country and sell another 25% at a loss. That is a resource we should at the very least selling at a fair market rate. Dumping this back into the US supply chain will both reduce soaring food costs here at home, which are up locally 25% for me over the last 2 years and that is just on generics. It will also be incentive to switch some of the surplus to crops better than corn and soy for biofuel production.
Exactly right. We shouldn’t be selling food to other countries until we’re sure we’ve got enough for ourselves.
However, contrary to many beliefs, not all farmers are growing grain to feed us. My father knows several who are being paid by the government to NOT grow grain in order to raise the need for it. It’s an economical ploy that’s gone out of control.
Farm subsidies are a good idea gone terribly wrong. The fact is we have in past years given money for farmer to grow tobacco. Of course if we really wanted farmers to make money we would legalize the growing of pot…
Lol, for medical purposes, of course.
if they let anyone grow and smoke it, but only let it be sold in a taxable venue like the grocery or drug store we would have far less of a problem with it. We waste billions if not hundred of billions every year trying to enforce the pot prohibition, a prohibition that only serves to entice people into breaking it.
It is also a prohibition that only came about because it was a way to further harass blacks and counterculturists. It was a drug of choice for them and members of the government decided if we can’t arrest them for exercising all those annoying legal rights they have we can arrest them for pot.
While I can’t advocate its use simply because of the legal ramifications for both use and advocacy I know for a fact that it does have a great medicinal value. I have seen it give cancer and aids patients the will eat. I have seen it ease the pain of glaucoma, though I don’t think that was the first time she ever smoked it.
I also know individuals who also suffer from regular migraines that it helps and I frankly am a bit jealous that it is legal for that in other countries. I am irritated by puritanical pride that the government can do no wrong when it says something is bad for you. The only evidence they ever cite is one where they pipe a small box containing a rat with the equivalent of 30 joints worth of smoke and it died. That is a nice bit of showmanship, but the fact is the rat actually suffocated with burns to its airway which is the effect of smoke inhalation not of pot. The same thing happens when you do it with tobacco smoke. Oh yeah the strongest opponent of pot legalization are tobacco producers. has anyone ever questioned why that might be?
Government shouldn’t have anything to do with the farming industry in the first place. Not in the instance of biofuel, and not in the instance of just growing food.
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We have more than enough food as it is, not to mention that we have more than enough money to buy as much food as we need.
Rising food prices isn’t even an issue for Americans; it’s an issue of the truly poor of the world, those that aren’t making any large amount of money and aren’t involved in any sort of booming economy; those that cannot farm their own lands due to its infertility.
Those are the people that are being hurt by the increase in food prices. The cause of it is indeed those rising out of poverty in rapidly growing countries such as India and China. That is a huge drain on the amount of quality food that the world produces.
This isn’t a bad thing, we simply have to make sure that the truly poor of the world aren’t suffering too badly. But the fact that more and more Indian and Chinese people can afford to purchase quality food is a good thing.
Charles Lumias last blog post..Rethinking the war in Iraq: Why we have to stay in Iraq
Charles I am not sure what world you are living in, but the rising price of food is hitting the average American hard. The cost is up over twenty five percent over the last two years as is unemployment, the cost of housing. That is just the US.
You have missed the point here India and China aren’t actually the market value of the food we send them. We are selling it at a loss to them much to the detriment of our own economy.
As far as the infertility of the land in these other countries, that again is not our problem. It will always be infertile and we are simply encouraging them to stay there with no hope of it getting any better. This is not only irresponsible policy towards our own citizens, it is enslaving these people’s future to us.
If we were really interested in helping people across the world we would simply put out our welcome mat and give anyone who wanted to come a lift.