“Poverty exists not because we cannot feed the poor, but because we cannot satisfy the rich.”
Regarding the need to feed the poor, I’ve been told the rich are a good source of protein
Yeah they’re just like insects, we can grind them up into a fine powder and mix them into anything. They can’t argue with that because that’s what they want us to do anyway.
Make protein powder out of the rich for maximum gains
on second thought, imagine incorporating powdered bits of Zuckerberg and Elon Musk in your food. I’d rather not actually.
Norway fucked up on eggs this year. They feared overproduction, so they made a subsidy for egg producers not producing… resulting in an egg shortage this Easter.
https://euroweeklynews.com/2024/03/30/scramble-for-eggs-norway-face-easter-egg-shortage/
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They…feared overproduction?
Were they worried about depleting resources or something?
I wrote a lengthy reply to a similar question:
Got it, dumb capitalist nonsense.
Flattening the territory to fit the map.
Spot on.
How is a government subsidy “dumb capitalist nonsense”? The capitalist model would be for a single entity to buy all the small farms that can’t stay in business during volatile market periods and monopolize the market entirely, with zero care to animal welfare, food safety, and customer prices (other than to maximize profits). Your comment is just just lazy “muh capitalism bad”.
Previous poster might be spamming his opinion, but in this case he’s right.
In this particular case the government is financing capitalists by giving them money to keep capitalising on something they couldn’t otherwise capitalize on. This happens on an otherwise free market, just to add.
What they should have done is to lower the purchase tax on domestic eggs. That would benefit both Norwegian consumers and also Norwegian egg producers.
Norway already has several sales tax brackets to do just this. F.i. they did it to hotels, going from 25% to 6% after the COVID pandemics for the benefit of both hotels and guests.
they were worried about producing too much, the price of eggs collapsing, the market demand being so low they couldn’t move product, and thus, losing money. It’s a big problem with industrialized farming. Localized farming helps to solve this issue.
Sure but why not just give the farmers what they needed and pickle the extra or something?
i mean, that’s an option. Although after having done some reading, it seems like this was more in cohorts with like a million chickens being killed due to swine flue or whatever the fuck happens in industrial bird farming.
Either way, industrial farming is just not a very good system at handling anything even remotely shenanigan worthy.
Yeah chickens dying or quarantine concerns would be real shit, but ‘concerns of overproduction’ when a natural resource isn’t being wasted (the chickens were still being kept alive, right?) Is just so dumb to me.
it sounds dumb, but it happens. Apple farmers in rural america were about to lose their shit after producing way too many apples. The state of west virginia, iirc decided to buyback all of the excess. And donated it to foodbanks or something.
It’s literally lost revenue for large scale farming. That’s just how shitty it is.
Subsidy for… . . .
Did United Russia take over Norway?
Why is overproduction a bad thing? Doesn’t everyone just get cheaper food as a result?
It seems that the Norwegian egg-business is always in trouble somehow. Just like farmers elsewhere complaining about the weather, it’s an endless moaning.
EU is pushing for a shorter shelf-life on eggs to be able to make a more rapid response against salmonella, and while Norway isn’t in EU and generally don’t have the salmonella issue, they still have to trade with EU. Fear of chicken flu is also lowering the demand for eggs.
Overproduction is bad because it can make the price go so low that it doesn’t make sense for anyone to do. Especially in a country like Norway where the cost of living is extremely high. They simply can’t compete, so the state offers money to keep the businesses closed while the free market can’t pay them, and to keep domestic production from competing too much internally.
It’s not uncommon to see this situation in EU, where it is sometimes possible to buy a plot of agricultural land and do nothing with it only to get paid by EU for leaving the land alone. The EU is a trade union, so the main purpose internally is to direct the trades to those who can do it best and cheapest within the borders. It’s a good thing though. In the 1990s there was a massive overproduction of all kinds of foods that would eventually rot up in stocks all over Europe. Overproduction is a cost if the goods cannot be sold.
Norwegian eggs are not exactly a big business, but I do believe it’s a net export for them, so I think the subsidy is made to keep the egg producers in business even if the export is lowering for different reasons. If they didn’t pay chicken producers not to produce, the producers would have to stop production due to low revenue from temporarily missed sales and eventually leaving Norway without a realistic capability of producing for their own market.
Anyway, it backfired at the Easter peak demand. It may still make sense later.
I heard they jacked up prices due to the Avian Flu. They culled over 80,000,000 egg laying hens
That was 17% of the total population. The price went up by 400-900%, and there was never a shortage. As usual, we got shafted.
There absolutely was a shortage.
the current outbreak of the virus that began in early 2022 has prompted officials to slaughter nearly 82 million birds, mostly egg-laying chickens, in 47 U.S. states
Getting downvoted, but no one has a factual counter argument.
Queue to buy eggs kind of shortage? Food stamps to be able to buy kind of shortage? Or corporations using any reason to jack up prices kind of shortage?
The best part is they’ll raise prices due to “inflation” or whatever, then when supply increases…the prices don’t go down!
I’m honestly wondering what the end game is for these MBA asshats ruining everything. Is it really that many people so selfish and myopic that we have to suffocate on this one planet and never reach?
You know what the end game is, and if we could just cut to it while we still have a chance to at least kinda salvage the climate and biodiversity, that would be great.
If the prices didn’t go up because of a shortage, because there was never a shortage, why did prices go back down again?
The law of supply and demand explains the price of eggs. If you’re saying it’s wrong then what’s your better egg-splanation?
The prices went back down right after the federal government announced a price fixing investigation and a bunch of news coverage came out about how their claims were bogus.
[citation needed]
It’s correlational, not causal. There isn’t going to be a definitive source on this
the federal government announced a price fixing investigation
a bunch of news coverage came out about how their claims were bogus
Then you can find it, if you really care.
The harder you look, the more conclusively you prove you’re right!
The law of supply and demand is not real. When wealthy money addicts rip you off they pretend its a force of nature ripping you off. Behind every money transaction there is a human being with an address who made a choice.
The law of supply and demand is not real.
Lol, okay bud. If that’s the case you should start a business selling eggs for $100 each.
Eggs? You can offer to buy and sell stocks at whatever price you want. You just won’t complete any trades if you offer to buy at $1 and sell at $1,000,000 dollars per share. If “supply and demand” didn’t exist, you could become a millionaire in one trade.
Although, I suspect what this person means is: many markets are not free from price collusion. The stock market is very liquid because there are many buyers and sellers. You literally cannot corner the market because it would require too much money, and it’s illegal.
This creates quick movements based on news and sentiment. Food prices do not operate this quickly, but they do move based on available supply and demand.
Other markets have much more collusion. When there are only three producers, collusion is inevitable. If one seller raises the price and still finds buyers, the other two will follow without any communication between them. The solution is doing whatever you can to not buy what they are selling. Demand moves markets, not supply. They are raising the price because people are paying it.
Also, better regulation from the FTC would help.
you should start a business selling eggs for $100 each.
Mike? Mike Nelson? Is that you?
“Eggs are complicated, they should cost like $100 each!”
The law of supply and demand is not real.
Um, so you don’t think that when a commodity becomes more scarce that the demand for it increases as a consequence?
There’s also a thing called price gouging where companies fuck over the public because they know they can. And then they keep the prices artificially high even after supply increases two, three, four fold over demand. Because they know they can.
Not that I am suggesting corporations are corrupt and would let people starve just to make a profit. Heaven forfend.
To be clear, price gouging is an example of supply and demand
Keeping prices high is an example of price fixing, not supply and demand. It requires companies colluding with each other because, otherwise, one company would just lower their prices to get more business and make more money
Raising your prices by a reasonable amount to meet extra costs is supply and demand.
Raising your prices by three, four, five or six times a reasonable amount is gouging and is not supply and demand. It’s gouging and fucking over your customers, especially those who need your products.
Scarecety-induced demand is not law of supply and demand
Er, please explain your logic.
the law of supply and demand is only true in true capitalism. True capitalism doesn’t exist because it doesn’t work.
Hey I’d love to see the population stats, got a source?
I searched egg laying hen population by year. The end of 2022, after the culling, it was 377 million.
Based on the article another comment had, the 80 mil was total birds killed, not just egg hens, so it was likely actually less than the 17% I estimated.
This is very relevant.
Weber’s company, Sunrise Farms, had to slaughter its entire flock of egg-laying hens — 550,000 birds — to prevent the disease from infecting other farms in Sonoma County
During the past two months, nearly a dozen commercial farms have had to destroy more than 1 million birds to control the outbreak (as of 27 Jan 24)
the current outbreak of the virus that began in early 2022 has prompted officials to slaughter nearly 82 million birds, mostly egg-laying chickens, in 47 U.S. states
In California, the outbreak has impacted more than 7 million chickens in about 40 commercial flocks and 24 backyard flocks
Also, shit: https://www.texastribune.org/2024/04/01/texas-cows-bird-flu-human-infection/
The numbers are insane. Over a million chickens
Some (at least) were killed brutally. Gassed in the hen houses, panicking as they died, trying to peck their way out. Poor birds.
I don’t advise you to look up what they do when they find out a chick is a male.
That’s just in Sonoma County, between Dec '23 and Jan '24.
Eggs were. At least for me, I can no longer afford eggs.
Millennials are killing the eggs industry.
One can only hope
They need to stop eating that eggvocado toast.
gen z* FTFY
Don’t take that from us.
the millenials get the avocados, the gen z get eggs. Seems fair to me.
You can have all the eggs you want, but killing industries is our thing.
am i allowed to kill industries? I would like to engage in industry killing practices.
As a zoomer, you are only allowed to unalive things. Killing is forbidden.
hope it gets better for you
I hope it gets better for all of us.
Action is better than hope.
Action does not mean voting.
Thank you, I doubt it will though.
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Toxic positivity for the win, there are people worse than you, so you can’t feel depressed or defeated ever.
101 in how to feel like you helped and pat yourself in the back without doing a thing.
Wat I get from toxic positivity is its okay to do rape if you carry a dagger around with you, and point out that you could be stabbing your victims in the chest and fucking them right in the heart and getting that sweet sweet rib pressure, so anything you do short of that is fine.
“You aren’t dying of cancer, so stop whining about your hand getting chopped off.”
Sure you can, you just need a bigger purse/pockets!
I don’t shame people for buying unnecessary things. But, I will think you are a little stupid if you are nearly starving but have a brand new car. You aren’t responsible for the system you live in, but you can at least try to make it a little better for yourself.
I’m not talking about people that just spend some money for something they like, quality of life is important. I mean people that will literally cripple themselves financially just for a status symbol. Especially if you have people that rely on you.
Brand new luxury car is perhaps more apt for your example.
Can be hard to find a way to pay monthly for used cars, I believe, vs. plentiful options for installments on new ones.
Can you point to specific examples of someone you have encountered in your daily life, someone who is nearly starving… but chooses to spend their money on an unnecessary indulgence? Because it sounds like you’re otherwise just perpetuating stereotypes.
Nearly starving is almost an impossible to do involuntary in the United States, so that’s poor criterion to use here.
But yes I know many people who fit the description, who go on trips, buy cars, expensive clothes to improve their image, when they don’t have the income nor the savings to support it.
You’ve never ran into that guy who gets temp work in roofing, landscaping, or as a rig-pig, who gets a loan for a six-figure truck?
I used to live in this weird apartment building that once had been fancy, so it had large common areas with fitted carpet; but now was “significantly less desirable”, and residents used to let their dogs shit on the carpet. It was the cheapest 1-bed flat I could find at the time. 2/3 of the cars parked outside were recent BMW’s or Audi’s. Everyone will choose how they spend their own money, but some fall for the glamour of consumerism more than others, and for many young men with jobs but no families that means the coolest car you can manage, even if you have to live in a damp hovel and wade thru dog shit to get to it every morning 🤗
Doesn’t sound like someone who’s minutes away from starving buying something that was obviously unnecessary though, does it?
And if a guy with shitty credit and unsteady income is able to get financing on a six-figure truck, that’s more the banks fault.
I will think you are a little stupid if you are nearly starving but have a brand new car.
The original comment didn’t say that you needed to be starving before the purchase, just that you are both starving, and have a new car.
And if a guy with shitty credit and unsteady income is able to get financing on a six-figure truck, that’s more the banks fault.
Pig rigs don’t go to the bank for the loan, there are moneylenders and car dealerships where the most of their business comes from these guys.
Why do I need to provide personal anecdotes to prove the fact that there have been poor people that make bad decisions? It really is not that crazy of a concept.
If you are going to make a statement about people, generally speaking, we like to have proof.
Have you actually seen this new car welfare person or is this a straw man born of your keyboard?
Yes, I have met people who have ruined themselves financially for stupid reasons. But, that’s purely anecdotal. I could be lying and you would have no way of knowing. That’s why it doesn’t make sense to ask about my personal experience when you’re looking for proof. Here’s something more convincing: There are many stupid people, and many poor people. Naturally, there will be some amount of overlap. So, it is reasonable to assume that some of these people who are both stupid and poor will make stupid financial decisions.
What if you need a car to get to job interviews? If you don’t get the brand new car, you can’t get to job interviews, so you lose the unemployment benefit because the government feels you don’t deserve it?
Or you need the car to get to the job because the public transport is so shit and unreliable that the car is the only way to get there without fail and if you rely on public transport then you risk getting fired if you are late again?
Sometimes people have reasons that might not be obvious but are there because of the system.
Why would you need a brand new car? Like I agree with your main point but brand new?
I was using “brand new” as in they buy a new car to replace the car they have. Not necessarily a shiny new, newest model up to date state of the art car, but a they replace the car they have with a new car.
Believe it or not there are people who would say “How can you say you are poor – you just bought a new car?” then tell The Daily Mail that illegal immigrants are using tax-payers money to buy new cars.
A new car is not that much more in a lot of places than a used car, especially right now. Plus, you can earn supplementary income with a new car that you might not be able to in an old car. In some markets you can’t drive uber without a very new car.
This is why the advice is basically not to judge so much, especially considering billionaires are literally making record profits off of food and medicine right now.
I’m in a position that forces me to own a car, but I drive a 2008 minivan. Simply get a car that isn’t new.
you can buy a new car two years ago when finances were good, and then suddenly, shit hits the fan, prices get fucked, you no longer have a job, and you can’t find one trivially. Suddenly you have no money, and a really nice car.
My family recently just traded in both cars for newer models, we’re doing alright at the moment, but it’s definitely a possibility.
A car is not a very liquid asset. I’ve know people with very nice cars who experienced a change in their economic situation and had to pick up from the food bank in a brand new SUV. I’ve known people to live out of a mercedes benz.
Shame the rich who can waste money on a 100k Patek Philippe fucking watch.
I’m a lot less concerned about watches than about cars (much bigger environmental impact) and real estate (very closely tied to a huge chunk of most people’s livelihood).
I do consider this a type of wealth redistribution. Sort of.
I see you point, but they’re still rich, and we’ve twisted our society into making things normal people can’t even have
Yeah, it’s shit. I don’t even want one. But the whole idea is fucking silly.
You shall only have the things you need to be a good worker robot.
There’s a word for that.
Electricity?
Slave
Oh right yeah.
They’re posting this on a platform where people like me read it. People who eat $1.50/loaf, bread sandwiches, to save money. This is just after clearing the threshold to qualify for food stamps this month.
As a non-american, is $1.50/loaf supposed to be expensive or cheap?
$1.50/loaf is pretty cheap. You can find $1.00/loaf at Dollar Tree stores. The cheapest alternative would be to make your own loaf of bread. If you buy an expensive, organic loaf of bread, it can be over $5.00/loaf.
i’m all for not shaming people and everything, but we also do need to be conscious about what we’re buying and consuming.
You probably don’t need a macbook, and if you do need a laptop, there are almost certainly better options that are cheaper, and more repairable. Please don’t buy a macbook, they aren’t good products. (though now with M series macs they actually do work, kind of)
consumerism is not good, we shouldn’t be encouraging it. We should be encouraging conscious spending.
100% yes. And start shaming rich people for wanting us to eat bugs and live in coffins while they live in giant mansions and eat all the real food they want.
Bugs are a source of cheap protein too, and it’s more of a cultural thing that they are not prevalent in most western cuisine. And there’s nothing wrong with small apartments; there are more needed anyways, since people tend to live alone these days. If there were more small, cheap living spaces in the US, then the suburban carcentric design, where you can’t reach a grocery store without a car, would have real competition. Higher population density also helps out communities because of lower infrastructure costs.
I’m not rich, but there’s nothing wrong with different food and small living spaces.
To be more specific, there’s nothing wrong with those things being a CHOICE. The problem is with specific individuals telling people that millions of others need to cut their carbon footprint to near zero so that they, as an individual, can keep using their private jet without feeling guilty. And that attitude can go die in a hole. But you knew that.
Yeah, i agree on all of those points; but i believe not everything should boil down to personal choice, we have governments to steer things.
Subventions for livestock should be on the chopping block - the emissions from livestock are about 1/3 of all of human-caused methane, so we should really discuss if dumping prices for meat is the way to go, and thats still ignoring the ethical angle of the meat industry.
And reducing the amount of car travel needed for daily things like work (WfH as an guaranteed option where possible for example) or groceries (including the fight against food deserts, in which zoning laws have quite an impact) is also something that can be worked towards and would help against climate change.
Nevertheless, the absolute waste of energy and resources, the excess the rich are living in has to go, or everything else is a moot point.
Fucking bootlickers, I swear.
Hey man, I’ll eat bugs to supplement my protein. I don’t want to eat only bugs, but it’s another protein option, and I see that as a good thing
Dude, i’m not a bootlicker for advocating for cheap available housing or additional sources of food. I’m also not a bootlicker for pointing out that the zoning in the US is completely fucked up, or that i would definitely have a better conscience eating a burger made with bug protein than one with the meat of an animal that had a short, brutal life, which also massively contributed to climate change (livestock is about a third of human-caused methane emissions)
I’m open for options, i don’t say to force them on people.
And to be clear, at least in german speaking europe, far-right groups use(d? i don’t actively follow nazi propaganda) fear of “bug burgers” to campaign against anything the left leaning green party did, so please forgive me when my nazi detector misfired.
e: a word
Ok buddy bootlicker
Yup - God forbid poor folks have nice things rather than funneling every penny they earn to the rich to satisfy their ever-increasing hunger for money.
The average person earns £1,000,000 in their lifetime, and I struggle to see the justification in anyone, and I mean anyone being worth 100s, 1000s, or even over 100,000 human lifetimes.
It’s sickening to see hard-working people having to fight month after month to survive on meager earnings while some dickheads are out there buying megayachts that cost a human lifetime per year just to maintain.
Do both. Most people won’t do the right thing unless they’re pressured into it. I don’t give a shit if you want a tablet, that’s your problem - I do give a shit if you buy a new tablet every couple years when the old one works just fine. Swap “tablet” for pretty much any non-essential thing.
Non essential as in…if you are poor you deserve the basic nutrients to not die and that’s it?
America is the richest most powerful country this globe has ever seen and you want to shame poor people for wanting the occasional shiny thing?
Also, why the fuck would anyone work for a regime that is destroying the world for all future and some current generations, AND has thrown them away in a way we make a crime to do with our actual literal garbage? Fuck you if you want me to, y’know?
Still more pathetic than the glorious Roman Empire…
Rome gave poor people a grain allotment every month.
Are you braindead or just illiterate? I straight up meantioned not caring about the occasional trinket so rubes like you wouldn’t need to think too hard.
Why are you like this?
Buying a new tablet every couple of years: something poor people notoriously do.
Swap tablet for phone, and the answer is yes.
The answer is no there too. I don’t think you understand what ‘poor’ means. Many of them have phones that are subsidized.
For example- https://www.lifewireless.com/plans/minnesota-lifeline-free-phone-service
Poor people don’t buy phones every few years because they’re poor.
Or, sometimes people who are poor have to constantly buy new phones because they frequently can’t keep up with the payments.
When you lose service for nonpayment, you may have few options other that to buy a new phone (as part of a service plan) once you can afford it.
Still the point is that it’s an essential item and it’s kind of a jerk move to be judgemental about that when billionaires got richer faster than any other time in history through the pandemic.
tell that to the big companies that produce ewaste tablets from the get go, that no longer get updates after two years.
How about doing neither, like a decent human being?
No, I think shaming rich people for exploiting the poor is behaving like decent human being. I think if more people did that society would be a much better place.
Honestly, it was a troll. I completely forgot about it - but it’s good to see people took it seriously.
Shame on you, first of all. For defending the rich and for pushing the idea that opinions are insignificant and caring is stupid.
Are you dense. Look how it’s brought everyone together. I’m providing a service.
I’m pretty sure everyone was already brought together in this post before you added anything to the discussion with your “troll” defense of the rich.
“Complex emotional needs”
homie you can be a troll while being satirical. It’s easy.
This is funnier to me for some reason.
(grin) Sometimes it’s fun just to throw live grenades into a room, right?
(metaphorically. Don’t try this at home with actual grenades. It does not end as well as you think. Unless you want to get out of the spring cleaning, of course)
The rich should be shamed for exploiting workers.
