Inflation: Food, oil, utilities...???

[Samrob]

How is it that the "developing world"/ the west can't feed its self? Too many subsidies to not grow
This is what we get when RWingers decry welfare for people but applaud subsidies to corporations. Just like oil companies are refusing to drill oil on the land on which they hold leases just to jack up the oil prices. The US first became energy independent under Obama. Then Trump bragged about making America energy independent. WTF??

So now the farmers that we have been paying to not grow shit are not growing shit and probably don't know how because they have been subsidized for so long. We aren't even "food independent." Imagine that.

Keep the prices high by any means possible!

[Lancero]

1. We are food independent, but it has some caveats.

Food is sold on the open market, much like oil. As the adage goes, the first world pays more, and the third world starves.

But market aside, a lot of our food independence is rather... inefficient. A excessive amount of crops we grow aren't for eating, at least by us. It goes to feed livestock. Be it for milk, eggs, or to be slaughtered for meat. Extremely inefficient in terms of cost and water usage, which is just the kind of thing we need while dealing with a drought.

And the last big thing, we aren't exactly fans of seasonal diets. We want our choice of fruit and vegetables, year round. We want our choice of seafoods that we've long since depleted our own stocks of. So a lot of the food we do export is done to cover the imports of anything offseason.

We have everything we need to be truly food independent. Except the actual will to be independent. And I'm not talking about on a governmental level - This stuff is straight down to the consumer. Most people want to consume extremely inefficient meat and dairy. Most people want to consume off-season fruits and vegetables. And most people want to consume products that, in many cases, we don't actually produce ourselves.

As much as the average American consumer might claim to want cheap food, their purchase habits show otherwise.