The Glade 4.0

16% of Americans fall into the category of people with not enough food to eat. 45% of them don't qualify for assistance from the safety net, according to a spot on Marketplace's Morning Report. Quite interesting if you ask me.

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I doubt it, unless you are using an exagerated definition of "not enough food to eat". Nobody is starving to death in America.

Just repeating what NPR said this morning. Take it up with them, Lex.

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To me, "not enough food to eat" means the brink of starvation. I bet that NPR is using a modern culturally-biased definition that still includes 100% of Americans ingesting a more than sufficient amount of calories and other nutrients.

This is too open-ended for me to really comment. Can you point me in the direction of what you're getting at? Is it the idea that comparatively few people are proficient in things like food production, mechanical repair, etc. that are required to satisfy basic needs?

The obvious answer is that we need a shared risk pool that will reduce waste and fraud in the food industry. Costs will go down, and the surplus calories consumed by some will be spread among more people making the 5'0" 435lb female less obese and fixing the obesity epedimic!.

In related news the President just signed a law saying that the NFL must play. Citing the commerce clause, Obama stated that the NFL not playing will have a significant economic impact and must be regulated by the Feds.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

Seriously man.... I hope you are being sarcastic... but with this douchenozzle... it would not surprise me.

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

There were no people on government support back then, there are now - those people won't have money to buy food and will riot. Because food production is centralized and depends on petroleum based fertilizer it won't be able to adapt at all and those smaller ones who could adapt won't be able to re-seed their fields with crops they know because the GM ones are designed to not re-seed.

So in short even the people who can by food at inflated prices won't be able to get much. This will bring in calls for price controls and politicians will follow through because they have to "do something" this will cause food production to narrow further as production costs outpace earnings. Will land be seized or will work be forced to be done? It goes downhill from there.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

I'm usually in favor of laws forcing striking workers back to work. Not because I like the laws, but I believe the employers should be legally able to fire people for striking. With unions having the ridiculous protections they have, ending strikes by legal force is the "next best option."

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

So, what, federal officers on the sidelines making sure they run plays?

Pull out the rotten angry chilean sea bass and smack me over the head with it but price controls will come in the form of subsidies not price-fixing so supply will increase.

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The United States produces enough food to exceed current U.S. Demand, but non-processed food costs continue to outstrip stated inflation. Subsidies already increase the cost of food for consumers; and tax-funded subsidies means you're already double dipping on food costs for consumers.

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I am confused, how do subsidies raise prices? Unless you are using a backdoor argument that the taxation used to fund subsidies is creating a cost not on the price-tag but real nonetheless? My argument is that as subsidies increase you'll see more people get into the food business. There are a lot of people sitting on a lot of land collecting government money to *not* grow crops.

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Subsidies drive up the cost of non-processed food for precisely the reason mentioned in your last sentence. They also drive up the cost of non-processed food for American consumers because of export requirements or non-food use requirements to get various subsidies. Our system is horribly, horribly flawed in that regard.

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http://www.wolframalpha.com/entities/de ... /xy/ks/c0/

Nutritional Deficiencies: Mortality results for United States: 7379 deaths per year, just over 20 a day.

2.54 deaths per 100,000 people per year. You have a 0.3% chance of dying from a nutritional deficiency. I imagine that there are several diseases (both physical and mental) that contribute to this number. I'm not sure how many are due to starvation, but I'm thinking there aren't many.

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In time, this too shall pass.

That's actually a 0.003% chance.

Right, but if the subsidies switched to paying for growing crops instead of leaving them fallow then supply would rise and straight price would drop.

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Under his reasoning they have that power.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

I know that Hannibal, I am just hoping they didn't (yet)

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

What would be better is if they didn't touch it at all and let the prices adjust naturally. They don't have the knowledge to try to manually manipulate the market and have everything work out. There are too many moving pieces.

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Clearly so, but I was responding to Elmo's comment that price-controls are coming and people are going to be eaten by rats in the street. Or eat rats in the street, I am not to clear which.

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Both I guess... Did Elmo say they were ROUS type rats?

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Rodents of Unusual Size? Personally I doubt they exist.

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/bite

Ha!