Corporations profit while many starve....

[countrygma]

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/05/04/8710/

Monsanto and other companies are making record profits at the expense of the poor.. Sure wish I knew something we, the common person could do to help.
:(

[uprooted_kentuckian]

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/05/04/8710/

Monsanto and other companies are making record profits at the expense of the poor.. Sure wish I knew something we, the common person could do to help.
:(

Oh, well, back to disagreeing. We don't live in a communist country. Business has to make profit and none of those numbers looked like anything out of line. The first step would be to stop burning food for energy in some misguided attempt to help a nonexistant global warming problem. Also, do we actually control the pricing of food in the nations that are being most hard hit? I have no idea, but I doubt it.

[countrygma]

Oh, well, back to disagreeing. We don't live in a communist country. Business has to make profit and none of those numbers looked like anything out of line. The first step would be to stop burning food for energy in some misguided attempt to help a nonexistant global warming problem. Also, do we actually control the pricing of food in the nations that are being most hard hit? I have no idea, but I doubt it.

It would take too long here to go into detail about how our govt is involved.. but suffice it to say we are.. and corp. like Monsanto and their roundup ready crops have caused much of it too.

Read Confessions of an Economic Hitman. :rolleyes:

[RozieDozie]

Oh, well, back to disagreeing. We don't live in a communist country. Business has to make profit and none of those numbers looked like anything out of line. The first step would be to stop burning food for energy in some misguided attempt to help a nonexistant global warming problem. Also, do we actually control the pricing of food in the nations that are being most hard hit? I have no idea, but I doubt it.

Well, I believe in businesses making a profit, but hyper-capitalism (I don't know if that is a real term :)), i.e., profit no matter what the consequences, goes against my personal values of being a responsible member of the planet earth. In my opinion, a business should look at all of the consequences of promoting and selling a product, especially in this age or information.

Some corporations have presented their products as safe when, indeed, they were not and some continue to market and sell their products regardless of the consequences; for instance, cigarette companies marketing to teens and yes, monsanto marketing their expensive seeds and fertilizers to other nations. I personally think that there is likely to be a consequence for companies that continue to be greedy no matter what.

[bunkie]

Oh, well, back to disagreeing. We don't live in a communist country. Business has to make profit and none of those numbers looked like anything out of line. The first step would be to stop burning food for energy in some misguided attempt to help a nonexistant global warming problem. Also, do we actually control the pricing of food in the nations that are being most hard hit? I have no idea, but I doubt it.

what's living in a communist country have to do with it?

i agree we should stop the burning food for energy, but disagree with your 'nonexistant' part of global warming problem.

i believe we do, in part, control the pricing of food where the citizens are getting hit the hardest, or, rather, i should say our corporations are doing so. and the WTO and IMF and other such organizations that our country belongs to don't help the problem either.


http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/05/04/8710/

Monsanto and other companies are making record profits at the expense of the poor.. Sure wish I knew something we, the common person could do to help.
:(

gma, here's some ideas from the comments...

click on this item and then read/scroll down and find how “Grassroots Consumer Action Could Halt Use of GM Crops in US”
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_10691.cfm

[B]The 12 Myths of Hunger[/B

(excerpt copied from http://www.foodfirst.org/en/12myths)

Why so much hunger?

What can we do about it?

To answer these questions we must unlearn much of what we have been taught.
Only by freeing ourselves from the grip of widely held myths can we grasp the roots of hunger and see what we can do to end it.

Myth 1: “Not Enough Food to Go Around”

Reality: Abundance, not scarcity, best describes the world’s food supply. Enough wheat, rice and other grains are produced to provide every human being with 3,500 calories a day. That doesn’t even count many other commonly eaten foods - vegetables, beans, nuts, root crops, fruits, grass-fed meats, and fish. Enough food is available to provide at least 4.3 pounds of food per person a day worldwide: two and half pounds of grain, beans and nuts, about a pound of fruits and vegetables, and… enough to make most people fat! The problem is that many people are too poor to buy readily available food. Even most “hungry countries” have enough food for all their people right now. Many are net exporters of food and other agricultural products. ....more...

[countrygma]

what's living in a communist country have to do with it?

i agree we should stop the burning food for energy, but disagree with your 'nonexistant' part of global warming problem.

i believe we do, in part, control the pricing of food where the citizens are getting hit the hardest, or, rather, i should say our corporations are doing so. and the WTO and IMF and other such organizations that our country belongs to don't help the problem either.

gma, here's some ideas from the comments...

Thanks much, bunkie. I will study those links. I was at a meeting yesterday where a group of us are wanting to figure out some positive things we can do to help overcome some of what is going on. These look like good places to start.

[uprooted_kentuckian]

It was an oversimplistic term I guess. You know what I meant. Corporations exist to make profit, but I will agree that they can run over people sometimes to do so. The question here is what exactly is causing the food prices to go up so quickly and who, if anyone, is controlling it. Simply stating a company made more money and associating with the starving who can't afford food isn't showing causation. I don't believe Corp. America is causing the problem, but I may be very wrong on this issue. From the "experts" I've heard talk about it, they can't seem to pinpoint a central issue either. It seems to be more of a perfect storm of situations all coming together to cause the problem.

[countrygma]

It was an oversimplistic term I guess. You know what I meant. Corporations exist to make profit, but I will agree that they can run over people sometimes to do so. The question here is what exactly is causing the food prices to go up so quickly and who, if anyone, is controlling it. Simply stating a company made more money and associating with the starving who can't afford food isn't showing causation. I don't believe Corp. America is causing the problem, but I may be very wrong on this issue. From the "experts" I've heard talk about it, they can't seem to pinpoint a central issue either. It seems to be more of a perfect storm of situations all coming together to cause the problem.

the "experts" you are listening to are being paid off. You aren't getting it. :rolleyes:

Here is a good example of corporate pay off. Dr. Richard Doll was an excellent scientist and had a great reputation..then he ruined it by getting greedy .. pretty sad what greed does to people.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/jan2007/doll-j09.shtml

[uprooted_kentuckian]

Sorry gma, but I'm never going to agree that every "expert" and every scientist are bought and paid for. It simply isn't true.

[bunkie]

i thought this was very clever.........

Why There’s a Food Shortage; Or, All Mafia Must Die!

http://cody.blogs.foxbusiness.com/2008/04/22/why-theres-a-food-shortage-or-all-mafia-must-die/

As rationing has become the best case scenario in the food markets (rioting being the worst case scenario), we have to wonder if there really is starting to be a shortage of food in the world. And if so, why?

I think we’re seeing food shortages for these reasons:

1.* The food markets are totally manipulated and controlled by the developed world’s governments and their cronies. The UN and all these hurtful food-aid programs that have continually undermined any chance for a self-sustaining, virtuous farming and food industry in places like the entire continent of Africa and all of Lebanon, Palestine, etc.* Meanwhile, farmers in developed worlds are paid billions to grow certain crops, billions to not grow anything at all sometimes, billions to subsidize their lifestyles…

But again, the farmers in Africa?* Oh, my bad, I didn’t mean to float an oxymoron — there’s practically no such thing as an African farmer, as we don’t let farmers in Africa develop any markets because the governments in the developed world also use your money to buy up billions of the crops that do get grown in the developed world to send as “aid” to the developing world, and the vicious cycle continues.* The only reason these hurtful, unproductive and outright evil policies exist is because technology and excess capital had enabled the developed world to overproduce for itself, making food costs in consequential to the “average” developed world citizen.* That game has officially ended, in large part because of the next point below…

2.* The Fed’s quickly accelerated the pace at which it’s destroyed the value of the dollar in the last year or so.* I explained it this way to the students in the macro econ class I taught at UNM a couple weeks ago:* Let’s say there’s one bottle of water and one dollar bill in the entire economy.* I give you the dollar bill and you give me the water.* Now I print another dollar bill (because, say, I’ve got a “credit crisis” or some ** like that). Can I give you the dollar bill for another bottle of water?* No!* Because you can create new dollars out of thin air but you can’t create new bottles of water without actual productivity.* So how much is a dollar worth after I’ve printed two?* A dollar’s suddenly worth half a bottle of water instead of a whole bottle of water.

Let’s put this into the real world now.* Let’s say you’re a grandma at home and you’ve lived cautiously your whole life and you own your home outright and you’ve got a fixed income that you’re living on.* Suddenly, your dollar’s worth half a bag of rice instead of being worth a whole bag of rice because the Fed’s printing money for everybody who’s speculated on a mortgage, levered up on their credit cards, or works for a bank, especially an investment bank.

It’s largely this line of thinking that has me constantly calling the Democrats, Republicans and Fedheads in charge a bunch of thieves for all the ways their printing new dollars out of thin air.* And it’s very much their recent actions that are causing the skyrocketing prices, and therefore a perceived “shortage” of food out there.* There’s more of a glut of dollars than a shortage of food in some ways, see?

3.* There’s an ever-growing number of citizens on this planet gaining access to excess capital and the wonders that happen when private property laws are at least somewhat recognized.* There were 1.5 billion people on the Internet a couple years ago.* Now there’s 1.7 billion.* That’s 200 million more people feeling safe enough and nourished enough to log onto MySpace, Bidu and Google.* Thomas Malthus, the classic economist argued that there’s a natural limit to the number of people our Earth can support.* Technology and constant improvements to productivity has made his theories laughable for centuries.* I expect that to continue though certainly there will be counter cycles along the next few centuries just as their has been in the past. More to the point, let’s hope Malthus continues looking like the historical idiot he always has because that means we will, over time, actually start feeding and communicating with the 4.3 billion citizens of the world that still don’t feel safe enough and nourished enough to log onto the Net too.

4.* Ethanol.* Farmers get billions of your taxdollars to grow food for an energy program that actually requires much more energy to create the energy in the program than any scientist can seemingly explain that the energy program might someday produce.* It’s called cronyism and it’s a SCAM!* Ethanol is a scam.

5.* You’re grandma again, and you’re seeing the value of what you can spend disappear before your eyes every week, every month, every gas tank fill, every utility bill, etc.* Might you not start hoarding as much as you can, since, as noted in point #2 above, rice holds its value in an era of created money?

The good news, IMHO, is that it’s likely most of this stuff will simply play itself out over the next few months and quarters as the forces of Revolutionomics carry through here once again.* Revolutionomics is my theory that all power dissipates from the center to the edge over time.* All these central controls and scams by the Democrats, Republicans and their cronies in power will be undermined by the black markets for food until the very framework of any attempts to control our world’s food supply will fail.

Oil’s got the evil OPEC mafia.* Food’s got the evil FooPec mafia of its own too, huh?

All mafia must die!

[Porcelain Interior]

I believe in allowing business to prosper. I don't believe in the government helping certain companies to become rich, monopolize food and handing them our health on a platter while their doing it.

Monsanto has poisoned America with it's lies and hostile takeovers. Here we are getting cancer and eating things made in a lab and almost no one takes issue with it or realizes the government today is intrinsically involved.

This business needs to be taken down.

[countrygma]

I believe in allowing business to prosper. I don't believe in the government helping certain companies to become rich, monopolize food and handing them our health on a platter while their doing it.

Monsanto has poisoned America with it's lies and hostile takeovers. Here we are getting cancer and eating things made in a lab and almost no one takes issue with it or realizes the government today is intrinsically involved.

This business needs to be taken down.

::clap, clap, clap.::

[countrygma]

Sorry gma, but I'm never going to agree that every "expert" and every scientist are bought and paid for. It simply isn't true.

Well, "every" expert isn't, but those who back dishonest, unethical companies that are spreading toxins throughout the world to pad their own pockets certainly are.. and the wasn't who are not.. are in a minority.. and of course you won't listen to them, nor read their research. so I guess we are not going to agree on this subject, because you aren't willing to look at the truth. :rolleyes: