Posted on 06/14/2007 5:13:48 AM PDT by rellimpank
Feel like you're getting squeezed by prices at the gas pump? Get ready to experience that same feeling at the grocery store. As ABC News reported recently, average food retail prices of across the United States have risen by 4 percent during the past year alone. Beleaguered American consumers must now pay record gas prices to get to the grocery store, where they again meet sticker shock. And who is to blame? Not grocery stores or food producers, but Congress.
Food prices today are rising steeply because Congress decided to link the price of food with the price of oil. As a result, now whenever the price of oil increases, food prices follow. Worse still, Congress is currently contemplating further tightening this link. Let us explain
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
Food is fuel for the body. It’s not an accident that food can be burned to release energy. Too bad the human body can’t drink petroleum or eat coal to obtain energy.
It also takes fuel to transport the “food” from the fields to the stores
I sure have noticed the increase in food prices.
I think the American people really need to examine the nature of the people in Congress and our President.
They are inept, corrupt, and clueless. They are incapable of being leaders.
God help us all if we are forced into any more wars. These people would be in charge. Their petty politics would trump the safety and security of this country.
I believe the people need to be telling our leaders that we have a vote of no confidence in them.
The Left and their fellow travelers have sunk oil production and refining capacity in America. Blame the proper people
I am blaming the proper people. Who runs Congress now? Who ran Congress before 2006? Who had Congress and the White House?
It is a general malaise.
Then, when the public gets upset at the high price of gasoline and the trickle down effect that has on the price of everything else, what do the politicians do? They blame "big oil"!!!
And what do the stupid, dumbed down average Americans do? They believe the politicians! God help us.
Just watch your bills, and where you pay money out. You'll start seeing a slow bleed, just under the radar of most people...
And they did it in the most damaging way possible: they subsidize each gallon of ethanol by some 50 cents, which the taxpayers must provide. Some states, such as Missouri, mandate ethanol in motor fuels, driving up the demand. All this conspires to artificially drive up the demand for the plant material that is used to make ethanol. To the extent these materials are also used as food, or food for cattle, it will drive up the cost of food.
So, this 50 cents per gallon subsidy bites the citizen twice: he must pay it in taxes and he must pay for the economic distortions it causes in higher food prices. What does he get for his money? Lower gas mileage, and only the assurance that he is helping the environment because the it seems that at best, ethanol just about breaks even in how much energy it produces compared to how much energy it takes to make.
I also saw on FOX News last night that the rise in food prices is also due to the price of feed corn going up because of the requirement for more corn to be used to make ethanol. Now we will be paying higher prices for meats and milk products because it costs more to feed farm animals.
Thanks a lot Congress....quite a job you’ve done there......now families will have to go back to buying more mac and cheese and less expensive foods....just to survive. Then you will complain because we are Obese and lacking energy.
(Insert sarcastic applause here)
Corn has been in that $2 price range for the past 50 years. It is about time grain prices started to catch up with the rest of the economy. This article makes it sound like the producers are the ones that price the commodity. They don't understand that it is more likened to the stock market than the "Pizza Hut".
God forbid that the evil, greedy farmer get a chance to get his in the actual market rather than subsidies which do decrease as the market increases.
Of course, the article never mentions the fact that since 2001, off-road diesel fuel has gone from about $.70/gal to over $2.50/gal.
The authors, both clearly not farmers and not possessing a clue about the historical price of corn, probably expect us farmers to simply absorb that tripling in the price of fuel.
Idiots.
BTW — one more time, as I keep pointing out on these threads: if you kept the price of corn in 1973 constantly updated with inflation, what was $2.73/bushel in 1973 would be just under $14.00/bushel today. These two academic twinks are having an attack of mental flatulence because corn is at $4/bu today.
Salaries have gone up with inflation. Prices of real estate have gone up with inflation. Prices of tractors and ag equipment have gone up with inflation.
But these idiot intellectuals think that the price of farm commodities should NOT go up with inflation. In their minds, farmers are the serfs of the new age.
People who think that farmers should not be allowed to pursue a profit (and anyone who is complaining about corn at $4/bu is in this camp) can vigorously osculate my posterior.
And I don’t even grow corn.
thanks, bfl
-—reminds me of being in SW Wisconsin a few years ago—the hot item in the local paper was the efforts of the local trout fishermen to “end letting farmers use our trout streams as bathrooms for their cattle”—
Yippeeee!
Pretty soon, hotdogs will be Sunday fare at my house.
Time to seriously review that link to Hillbilly Housewife.
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