Peter over at Bayou Renaissance Man posted an article and asked for opinions on a position paper titled "The True Cost of Food".
The basic premise of the paper is that people can be coerced or "educated" into eating "healthy" foods. The Bloomberg/de Blasio war on soft-drinks (and other Blue-Hive cities) failed because residents simply stopped giving their business to in-city vendors and bought their preferred drinks (and other groceries) outside the city. The True Cost of Food is an escalation of that war and they intend close that "loop-hole" by making the ban or tax nation-wide.
Another angle that they are working is to promote concentration in the marketplace. One reason the attacks on Big Tobacco were successful was because the litigation only involved a few, big, profitable companies. Using the war analogy, the best place to ambush your opponent is in a natural choke-point. US agriculture is not that concentrated, yet.
"...business incentives..." is Orwellian. They are really proposing taxes that can be partially avoided if the business dances to their tune. And the music will speed up until nobody can dance to it.
One wonders why the authors think there will be less political opposition to taxing high-fructose corn syrup and trans-fats than there would be to subsidizing health insurance discounts based on annual BMI or VO2Max measurements....oh, wait...that is a "pre-existing condition".
Stop screwing around and dancing around the issue. Putting more citrus fruits in inner-city convenience stores will not result in them eating significantly more fruit. Look at the bananas. If they are not eating the bananas then it is magical thinking to believe they will eat oranges, tangerines and apples.
High fix-costs
One issue that troubles me is the increase in "fixed-costs" associated with the Rockefeller Foundation's proposal. Inspections and certification costs money.
Significant warpages in prices occur when operations with high fixed costs encounter downturns. They tend to drop prices to slightly above the variable cost to churn revenue and attempt to service interest payments. That is devasting to mom-and-pop companies that are pricing on a continuing-operation basis rather than pricing to make the next quarterly report look rosy.
Another issue is that concentration attracts attention from venture capital firms like Cerberus. These "investment" firms pounce on profitable, successful businesses with pricing power. They use the business's cash reserves to finance their purchase. Then they use the business's reputation and market position to borrow astronomical amounts of money which is passed through a fire-wall to the mother company (the venture capital firm). Then the formerly viable company is cast adrift with fatal amounts of debt in their name.
The cynic in me sees the Rockefeller Foundation proposal as setting up the chessboard to enable the Vampires of Wallstreet to swoop in and make a killing.
Buzzword Bingo
- Expanding access
- Healthy food
- All Americans
- Infrastructure investment,
- ‘food is medicine’
- Interventions
- Integrated...health care delivery,
- Business incentives,
- Greater consumer education,
- Strengthened federal nutrition assistance programs
- More active regulatory
- Labeling policy
- Reduce diet-related disease
- Relatively quickly
- Improve individual and population health
- Eliminate many
- Health-related cost
Junk food is cheaper than healthy food. I has a longer shelf life and being sweeter and fattier most people prefer it. Thus most people will choose fattening junk food over healthy food. Because the average person is stupid. They choose what they like now over potential benefits tomorrow. We are a clever species. Not an intelligent one.
ReplyDeleteYou are just cynical because you have an over-room-temperature IQ, a decent memory, and many decades of experience observing evil scum playing evil games.
ReplyDeleteWhy was that article posted?
Cui bono? Who benefits?
Indeed.
ReplyDeleteDrugs are bad, we'll just ban those. That'll fix it!
Prostitution is no good either (can't tax 15% of a blowjob), so we're going to have to ban that, too.
See... So easy, you rubes in the red states, dunno wtf is wrong with you deplorables. Liberals can solve any problem.
I have an MBA and a CPA. For many years now, I have made a good side living via investing - that is after I blew a decade's worth of "investing" to receive an "education".
ReplyDeleteIf the Rockefeller Foundation or any Wall street firm is involved, you can bet your last dollar that they do not have anyone's interests at heart but their own. This is why they are early advocates of fighting climate change, etc. Look good to the rubes while they get the money flowing their way.
Ignore this at your financial peril.
Excellent analysis. I spent a good part of my early career financing those leveraged buyouts. In the early 1980s, when you could buy a poorly managed company at close to or even below book value and improve its cash flow through good management, they made great sense and saved many jobs. From about 1986 onward, all most of them did was play a Wall Street shell game and destroyed many good businesses, and the jobs of hundreds of thousands of people. I'm not proud of that.
ReplyDeleteYup, sounds to me like an effort to control and consolidate the AG industry, like they've been doing in medicine for the past decade.
ReplyDelete