Can you afford to feed your family?

[DainBramaged]

"THESE ARE tough times. The economy shed more than 80,000 jobs in two months. Prices are up at the gas pump and in the supermarket. Housing values are down. Hard-working Americans are concerned."

It might not seem obvious, but these words from George W. Bush in a recent speech at the Economic Club of New York were meant to reassure the public and investors that the U.S. economy was fundamentally sound and would continue to grow. But as Bush pointed out, consumer confidence is rapidly tanking. For working families, a skyrocketing grocery bill is one of the most ever-present of reminders that they have been making do with less. Each week, it seems, the price of staple food--everything from eggs to milk to cereal--edges up higher.

"I've spent $300 in a matter of two weeks," one shopper, Roseann Fede, told the New York Times as she left a Bloomfield, N.J., supermarket. "It used to be like $150. Milk, eggs, nonperishable things--everything has gone up in price." According to U.S. government figures released earlier in March, grocery costs increased 5.1 percent over the past 12 months. The U.S. is undergoing the worst grocery inflation in close to 20 years, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture predicts prices will climb another 3 to 4 percent this year.

The problem is especially obvious when you look at the cost of individual goods. According to the Labor Department, milk prices are up 17 percent. Prices for dried beans, peas and lentils are up the same amount. Cheese is up 15 percent, rice and pasta 13 percent, and bread 12 percent. And the price of eggs has risen 25 percent since February 2007--and 62 percent in the last two years. In all likelihood, food inflation will continue, driven by a number of factors, including the rising price of oil--hitting as high as $112 a barrel recently--which has raised the cost to deliver food and run farm and factory equipment; increases in the cost of farm commodities like milk, corn and wheat; and the declining value of the dollar, which is encouraging exports of U.S. crops and food products.

Increased government mandates for ethanol production are not only driving up the price of corn used for making it, but are pushing up prices for other staple foods--since, for example, land is being diverted from staples like wheat and soybeans to produce corn. By the end of the 2006-07 crop year, 19 percent of harvested corn was made into ethanol--a 30 percent increase in just one year. Increased demand for ethanol helped boost the price of a bushel of corn from $2 in 2005 to $3.40 in 2007.

more at link

http://www.socialistworker.org/2008-1/666/666_05_Food.shtml

[hobbit709]

1. Those price increases they cite are low.

In the past year at my local grocery eggs went from $1.09/doz to $1.94/doz-that's a bit more than 30%. The bread I buy has increased about 50% in the last 4 months. I'd say the minimum increase has been above 30% overall.

[warren pease]

2. Since we're quoting The Commander Guy..

Yup, it's getting harder to put food on my family. But I'm confident that if we can just make the pie higher, everything's going to work out OK.

In fact, here's a little blank verse in George's own words to explain everything:



MAKE THE PIE HIGHER
by George W. Bush

I think we all agree, the past is over.
This is still a dangerous world.
It's a world of madmen and uncertainty
and potential mental losses.

Rarely is the question asked
Is our children learning?
Will the highways of the Internet become more few?
How many hands have I shaked?

They misunderestimate me.
I am a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity.
I know that the human being and the fish can coexist.
Families is where our nation finds hope, where our wings take dream.

Put food on your family!
Knock down the tollbooth!
Vulcanize society!
Make the pie higher! Make the pie higher!




Pretty much says it all, eh? Oh, and let's roll...


wp