http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/06/08/154568945/what-america-spends-on-groceries
u irate about the fruits of capitalism, sociotards?
Food is cheaper than ever. Capitalism works. Sociotards upset.
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Your comment, while funny, isn't the best to portray those who are against current status-quo since economists, political economists and historians have taken different perspectives on the analysis of capitalism. Economists usually emphasize the degree to which government does not have control over markets (laissez faire), as well as the importance of property rights. Most political economists emphasize private property as well, in addition to power relations, wage labor, class, and the uniqueness of capitalism as a historical formation. The extent to which different markets are free, as well as the rules defining private property, is a matter of politics and policy. Many states have what are termed mixed economies, referring to the varying degree of planned and market-driven elements in a state's economic system. A number of political ideologies have emerged in support of various types of capitalism, the most prominent being economic liberalism.
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@6f4e
Thanks for the undergraduate analysis of property and market institutions, but economic historians and anthropologists have shown that trade and markets have been ubiquitous throughout history -- what distinguishes markets since the 18th century is *technology* not markets. And people create property and decide what might be owned and left to commons, not states. The top-down view you have is wrong.
And the shocking decline in food prices, as a result of the explosion of agricultural yields thanks to technology in the last 150 years, is the best thing that's happened to the poor since wage labor (which is itself at least 6,000 years old). Read Robert Fogel's Escape from Hunger and Premature Death.
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@0722 I will read "Escape from Hunger and Premature Death" but Fogel's most famous and controversial work is Time on the Cross, (1974) a two-volume quantitative study of American slavery co-written with Stanley Engerman. In the book, Fogel and Engerman argue that the system of slavery was profitable for slave owners because they organized plantation production "rationally" to maximize their profits. Due to economies of scale (the so called "gang system" of labor on cotton plantations), they argued, Southern slave farms were more productive, per unit of labor, than northern farms. The implications of this, Engerman and Fogel contended, is that slavery in the American South was not going away on its own (as it had in some historical instances such as ancient Rome) because, despite its exploitative nature, slavery was immensely profitable and productive for slave owners. This contradicted the argument of earlier Southern historians.
A portion of Time on the Cross focused on how slave owners treated their slaves. Engerman and Fogel argued that because slave owners approached slave production as a business enterprise, there were some limits on the amount of exploitation and oppression they inflicted on the slaves. According to Engerman and Fogel, slaves in the American South lived better than did many industrial workers in the North. Fogel based this analysis largely on plantation records and claimed that slaves worked less, were better fed and whipped only occasionally—although the authors were careful to state explicitly that slaves were still exploited in ways which were not captured by measures available from records. This portion of Time on the Cross created a firestorm of controversy, although it was not directly related to the central argument of the book—that Southern slave plantations were profitable for the slave owners and would not have disappeared in the absence of the Civil War. Some criticisms mistakenly considered Fogel an apologist for slavery. In fact, Fogel objected to slavery on moral grounds; he thought that on purely economic grounds, slavery was not unprofitable or inefficient as previous historians such as Ulrich B. Phillips had argued.
Have you read it?
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I love how our resident sociotard just plagiarizes entire sections directly from Wikipedia with no shame.
@0722 I will read "Escape from Hunger and Premature Death" but Fogel's most famous and controversial work is Time on the Cross, (1974) a two-volume quantitative study of American slavery co-written with Stanley Engerman. In the book, Fogel and Engerman argue that the system of slavery was profitable for slave owners because they organized plantation production "rationally" to maximize their profits. Due to economies of scale (the so called "gang system" of labor on cotton plantations), they argued, Southern slave farms were more productive, per unit of labor, than northern farms. The implications of this, Engerman and Fogel contended, is that slavery in the American South was not going away on its own (as it had in some historical instances such as ancient Rome) because, despite its exploitative nature, slavery was immensely profitable and productive for slave owners. This contradicted the argument of earlier Southern historians.
A portion of Time on the Cross focused on how slave owners treated their slaves. Engerman and Fogel argued that because slave owners approached slave production as a business enterprise, there were some limits on the amount of exploitation and oppression they inflicted on the slaves. According to Engerman and Fogel, slaves in the American South lived better than did many industrial workers in the North. Fogel based this analysis largely on plantation records and claimed that slaves worked less, were better fed and whipped only occasionally�although the authors were careful to state explicitly that slaves were still exploited in ways which were not captured by measures available from records. This portion of Time on the Cross created a firestorm of controversy, although it was not directly related to the central argument of the book�that Southern slave plantations were profitable for the slave owners and would not have disappeared in the absence of the Civil War. Some criticisms mistakenly considered Fogel an apologist for slavery. In fact, Fogel objected to slavery on moral grounds; he thought that on purely economic grounds, slavery was not unprofitable or inefficient as previous historians such as Ulrich B. Phillips had argued.
Have you read it? -
Your comment, while funny, isn't the best to portray those who are against current status-quo since economists, political economists and historians have taken different perspectives on the analysis of capitalism. Economists usually emphasize the degree to which government does not have control over markets (laissez faire), as well as the importance of property rights. Most political economists emphasize private property as well, in addition to power relations, wage labor, class, and the uniqueness of capitalism as a historical formation. The extent to which different markets are free, as well as the rules defining private property, is a matter of politics and policy. Many states have what are termed mixed economies, referring to the varying degree of planned and market-driven elements in a state's economic system. A number of political ideologies have emerged in support of various types of capitalism, the most prominent being economic liberalism.
Your essay is unoriginal, vapid, and full of meaningless generalizations about groups of people. I award you no points, and may the Flying Spaghetti Monster have mercy on your soul.
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From my impression, these are the two common sociotard complaints about cheap food:
1. Globalization of the food market leads to homogenization (McDonaldization) of food, decreasing cultural diversity, blah blah
2. The current food production is unsustainable (because there is loss of soil, or it uses petroleum-based pesticide) and we are going to face a massive starvation if it continuesOf course, both complaints are bullshit. The second one isn't remotely plausible (and can be easily fixed if it is indeed a problem), and the first one is just typical sociotard ranting against the reality that some people might actually LIKE Western junk food.