Should the price of milk be set by the market or the state?

[Borachio]

Oh but methane, though 20 twenty times more effective at contributing to global warming than CO2, lingers in the atmosphere for only a very short time.

Anyway, keep the cattle indoors all the time, and you can capture all that methane. Allegedly.

 

[Camikaze]

But the problem is that the two go hand in hand. While obviously it's possible to over-subsidize food production, prices being too low is a threat to stable food prices.

Because if you tell farmers to simply shut down production if prices get too low, they'll do just that, until food prices get high enough to encourage reinvestment in production, at which point people will have to reinvest capital to return to the previous food production level.

The problem is, food is not a product that people can tolerate being subject to major price fluctuations. No matter what, we have to eat food, whether it costs two dollars a pound or twenty.

Subsidizing the industry when prices are too low and fixing the cost when they are too high is the price we pay not just for cheap but stable food prices.

Sure, but that's hardly applicable when the market price has been lower than the cost of production for European farmers for the last 40-50 years. It's not a matter of prices being temporarily low.

 

[Cutlass]

The thing to do if the market price is below the production price is to reduce production until price comes up to what the market can produce and make a small profit on.

 

[Zelig]

The market should determine price, but the state should provide enough of a safety net so that people can buy as much as they need.

So none.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I am of course in favor of the free market rather than government policies of protectionism for specific politically connected interests at the expense of the rest of the economy. I also don't think that milk should be such a major part of the adult human diet. I personally consume cheese and yogurt (the Publix store brand fruit on the bottom kind) quite regularly, but very rarely drink milk.



If I recall correctly, Methane is actually a very poor greenhouse gas by itself. It only absorbs and emits radiation only within a very small portion of the thermal infrared spectrum. It just so happens though that that a huge proportion of the Earth's heat escapes as EM radiation of those wavelengths though, as none of the other gasses in the atmosphere are effective on that part of the spectrum. Methane fills the gaps almost perfectly.

 

[rugbyLEAGUEfan]

I far prefer to have little individual farmers running around, getting up at sparrows fart to milk Bessy etc than charmless, industrial dairy farms.

I'm no fan of the homogenization of industry.

 

[Fugitive Sisyphus]

I think subsidizing milk is rasist. It's the white people that can metabolize lactose.

 

[dutchfire]

You may well do, but I don't see how that's relevant?

Well, I think €100 per capita in wasted government money isn't as terrible as the EU-sceptics always make it seem. Sure, it's quite a bit (probably ten times as much as our monarchy), but I can tolerate it.

 

[Camikaze]

I think the 47% perspective is better. If 47% of the EU budget is wasted, that's pretty bad. That the EU's budget is pretty small only makes it better to the extent that it's not hurting you as much as it could.

 

[potatokiosk]

It's not in the interest of consumers to be taxed and have that tax money be given to dairy farmers to drive down the price of milk, so no, these subsidies should not be done. Like any other business if they can't bring their costs down to the market price dairy farmers should find something else to produce.

 

[Leoreth]

We should get out Mitt Romney to tell Europe that 47% of its budget is wasted on lazy farmers.

 

[ace99]

I would think there's a sufficiently compelling government and social interest to subsidize staple foods and/or implement price control to ensure a healthy population provided you don't just end up succumbing to big agro and subsidizing corn syrup, meat and whole hosts of unhealthy product.

 

[Quintillus]

By and large, I think agriculture should operate like most other businesses (i.e. be subjected to the free market). However... I think it makes sense to have a certain amount of state influence as well. Simply because, agriculture is what produces most of our food these days, and it's a lot worse if tons of your farmers go belly-up and and you have insufficient food than if a bunch of your automakers go belly-up and ask for a bail-out.

Put in another way, suppose we get rid of agricultural subsidies and then there are 3 really bad years in a row for, say, carrots. A lot of carrot farmers would go belly-up, and either switch to something else, or quit being farmers entirely. The weather might be great for carrot production next year, but if we've already lost 25% of our carrot farmers, we're still going to have a shortage. Across a wider scale, we could potentially have a rather severe loss of farmers in general, and I'd rather somewhat subsidize agriculture than wind up short on food. 100 Euros per person per year, in the big picture, is fairly cheap as insurance for a stable food supply, considering how important food is.

 

[NedimNapoleon]

Things should not have prices.....They should be distributed by the all powerful all seeing STATE.

 

[Tahuti]

By and large, I think agriculture should operate like most other businesses (i.e. be subjected to the free market). However... I think it makes sense to have a certain amount of state influence as well. Simply because, agriculture is what produces most of our food these days, and it's a lot worse if tons of your farmers go belly-up and and you have insufficient food than if a bunch of your automakers go belly-up and ask for a bail-out.

I far prefer to have little individual farmers running around, getting up at sparrows fart to milk Bessy etc than charmless, industrial dairy farms.

I'm no fan of the homogenization of industry.

The crux is that subsidies almost inherently lead to the large conglomorates rugbyLEAGUEfan is talking about. You know, some businesses are just better in getting subsidies than others.

 

[rugbyLEAGUEfan]

I far prefer to have little individual farmers running around, getting up at sparrows fart to milk Bessy etc than charmless, industrial dairy farms.

I'm no fan of the homogenization of industry.

The crux is that subsidies almost inherently lead to the large conglomorates rugbyLEAGUEfan is talking about. You know, some businesses are just better in getting subsidies than others.

Truth be told, I was just trying to create a suitable platform for my "homogenized" gag which unfortunately seems to have gone unappreciated.

 

[GhostWriter16]

If you don't already know my answer, you haven't been paying enough attention

Spoiler :

Government intervention is bad. Period.

 

[Zelig]

nvm, change my mind about the previous post being of sufficient quality to respond to given the rest of the thread.

 

[Goodfella]

Get out of your house, it's mine now, otherwise I'll shoot you.

He'll probably think you're speaking from the point of view of a big government bureaucrat.

 

[Borachio]

Truth be told, I was just trying to create a suitable platform for my "homogenized" gag which unfortunately seems to have gone unappreciated.

I noticed. But I suspect this a homemade gag. And therefore more in the way of the makings of a joke, than an actual joke itself.

But I'm perfectly willing to be proved wrong, if there's more to it.