Posted on 04/20/2014 12:17:03 PM PDT by Nachum
It's not just beef, pork, shrimp, eggs, and orange juice...
Submitted by Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog,
Do you think that the price of food is high now? Just wait. If current trends continue, many of the most common food items that Americans buy will cost more than twice as much by the end of this decade. Global demand for food continues to rise steadily as crippling droughts ravage key agricultural regions all over the planet. You see, it isn't just the multi-year California drought that is affecting food prices. Down in Brazil (one of the leading exporters of food in the world), the drought has gotten so bad that 142 cities were rationing water at one point earlier this year. And outbreaks of disease are also having a significant impact on our food supply. A devastating pig virus that has never been seen in the U.S. before has already killed up to 6 million pigs. Even if nothing else bad happens (and that is a very questionable assumption to make), our food prices are going to be moving aggressively upward for the foreseeable future. But what if something does happen? In recent years, global food reserves have dipped to extremely low levels, and a single major global event (war, pandemic, terror attack, planetary natural disaster, etc.) could create an unprecedented global food crisis very rapidly.
A professor at the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University named Timothy Richards has calculated what the drought in California is going to do to produce prices at our supermarkets in the near future. His projections are quite sobering...
(Excerpt) Read more at zerohedge.com ...
No, not everyone does. Some of us do without running hot water.
I've lived the mid 1800s lifestyle without electricity, running water, and access to grocery stores. I did that for almost 2 years.
You might want to get out more, and meet some of the people on the ground. It's not like the neat little picture you paint.
/johnny
Just for fun, I figured out apples to apples comparison for food prices between 1960 and today.
Took median family income, divided by 2000 hours per year to get median hourly income, then figured number of minutes needed to pay for several different items in 1960 and 2014.
Median income 1960: $6600 = $3.30 /hour
Median income 2014: $30,000 = $15.00 / hour
Gallon of milk: 1960 – 19 minutes; 2014 – 16 minutes
Dozen eggs: 1960 – 10 minutes; 2014 – 8 minutes
Pound sirloin steak: 1960 – 17 minutes; 2014 – 28 minutes
Pound pork chops: 1960 - 20 minutes; 2014 - 15 minutes
Pound chicken: 1960 - 6 minutes; 2014 - 6 minutes
Gallon gasoline: 1960 – 6 minutes: 2013 – 15 minutes
BTW, I’m perfectly well aware it’s difficult to compare prices from one era to another. I think this one is as defensible as any, certainly more so than the bizarre inflation calculators on the web.
Time for the Delta Smelt to take one for Team USA
And you are posting to Free Republic how?
Don't get defensive, but reality on the ground isn't like your pretty little picture. There are American families living in tents.
/johnny
Historically speaking.
We do however live in the present and not the past, so people will think relative to now, not yesterday. We cannot pay the bills from yesterday, and cell phones are some people’s only phone.
Online now seems necessary for most people due to checking or savings accounts, and keeping up with long distance family. WE could live without it, but business keeps it difficult.
Video games aren’t necessary but most computers come with some downloaded...TV is expensive, if you don’t want all reruns. I could live without tv, cell, or online...but then I did when I was young....this generation hasn’t.
No, it's time to learn how to garden and do it. I started learning last year and now there is food growing in my container garden - grew most of it from seed. I'll have most of the foods listed in that article as being expensive.
You can have your own food and not depend on California to get water from the feds - how likely is California to get water??
Cocoa: Buy cocoa powder, not a mix, and store it (it's either with chocolate drinks or in the baking section of grocery). Doesn't take much powder to make hot chocolate. Here's a simple way to make hot chocolate:
Hot chocolate made using unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tbsp. cocoa powder
2/3 cup of water
1/3 cup of milk (skim or other)
Sugar, other sweetener to your liking (or no sweetener)
Heat cocoa with water almost to boiling point, add milk and sweetener.
Remember the EPA/Government/Greenie chant: It is better to grow corn for ethanol than it is to grow it to feed people and animals.
So I guess my "compassion level" is at an all time low. Especially as I have to get up a 5am tomorrow to start another workweek while the welfare class relax at home and decide what TV show they are going to binge-watch next on Netflix.
The problem is wages have been stagnate for 15+ years and the dollar becomes worth less all the time. This is kicking economic butt on the middle and lower income classes...All this while other products creep up and up.....Like gas...
/johnny
Exactly. That has been the motivation behind the last 60 years of so called farm programs.
They were designed, very cleverly, to keep US food prices down. The programs have been very successful.
Corn prices are 60% of what they were a year ago. You'll have to find another boogieman.
See post 53.
You are correct, and here is some data to back up your assertions:
“the key is that as a percentage of disposable income food prices remain ridiculously cheap. Yes, they’ve gone up, and sure wages have gone down, but it’s all about perspective. Food prices aren’t a big crisis, at least in America.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2616318/posts
But we did not fall.. we paid off the WWII debt lickety-split.
Now we pay off the Bush-Obama debt the same way.
Bread $40.00 a loaf. I do expect salaries to keep up. $200/hour?
In 1965, in San Jose, California, at McDonalds, I got a hamburger, fries and a Coke for $0.18.
Anyway....
Government caused privation has almost always resulted in the fall of the extant government.
I expect the Venezuelan government to swing from lamp-posts before too much longer.
/johnny
The only thing left is to become like the entitlement crowd and that’s 0bama’s end goal.
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