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Originally Posted by Ironduke
I went to the grocery store a little while ago... there was no white rice in the store (not including Minute Rice). It wasn't even on sale... there must have been a run on it. All I wanted was a 5 lb. bag.
I wanted to pick up a big bag too... I've been trying to cut back on my grocery bill and even if rice is expensive it's still cheap relative to other foods. I find myself making flour, milk, and margarine drop biscuits just about everyday recently. I guess I could eat potatoes for a different starch until rice shows back up on the shelves.
Me too. With lots of Kikkoman soy sauce.  Now I have Kikkoman soy sauce but no white rice.  |
Go to Asian Food Markets. They have 50-pound rice bags by the pallet.
Although they probably cost a bit more now and might be a little scarcer.
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LOW-COST rice production in countries like Thailand isn’t geared to meeting higher foreign demand, as it would be in a freer market. When more rice is needed, capacity is limited and the grains are slow in coming. And the protected rice from wealthy countries is simply too expensive to alleviate hunger in very poor countries.
Lately, it’s become fashionable to assert that, in this time of financial market turmoil, the market-oriented teachings of Milton Friedman belong more to the past than to the future. The sadder truth is that when it comes to food production — arguably the most important of all human activities — Mr. Friedman’s free-trade ideas still haven’t seen the light of day.
Tyler Cowen is a professor of economics at George Mason University.
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You can always tell when you're reading a person that doesn't know what being threatened with a gun by a mob is like.
And that's the ultimate reason for these countries' food policies. Prof. Cowen is seriously living in a fantasy world that does not exist, countries where people don't really care about the free market, don't have a lot of money, just want to eat, and if they don't eat, they can overwhelm the rulers in a coup and start killing the government officials responsible for the shortages. Is that rational? Of course not, but it's what would still happen and some populist could use the temperament of the locals to his advantage.
Doesn't he realize that most of the places he is talking about, the rule of law is not just assumed to be always true?