What are your recommendations on how to solve the soaring price of food and other basic commodities?

Question

What are your recommendations on how to solve the soaring price of food and other basic commodities?

Answer 1

What would help solve soaring food price is by cutting down gas prices.  You do that by first cutting back demand for oil.  Consumers need to do that.  They have to keep reducing their usage of gas and stay away from the pumps.  Also there needs to be more private sector involvement in alternate energy..maybe public/private efforts can do it.  Together, with working together and cooperation, the two can work and create more alternate energy, which would reduce gas prices b/c there would be less need for oil.

Another thing consumers can do is to REDUCE their purchases.  Buy food..ONLY when you need to buy it.  Don't buy excessive kinds of food.  Just buy it when you need to- lower demand for the low amount food.

The government can't really do much, at least without harming things.  Maybe they could provide relief to poor farmers, but I don't know.  I'm mostly against government grants for farmers..b/c they don't work.  They are ineffecient and help richer farmers.  In fact, the rich get most of them.  And they give too much help to them.  International farmers can't export their goods b/c they have a lot of competition thanks to lowered food prices from subsidies- so prices could be lower when subsidies are gone (farmers in other countries are pretty efficient (not saying that American ones aren't) and can produce food at less prices).

Answer 2

Do nothing.

Eventually consumers will respond to price signals and consume less, reducing demand, while the market will respond to the higher prices by producing more, increasing supply.

By historical standards however, food is still extremely cheap (which is why we have an obesity problem), and gas in the US is way cheaper than other parts of the world. So we shouldn't be compaining.

Phil Gramm was right, we're becoming a nation of whiners.

We need to stop demanding the government tinker with every tiny little aspect of the economy, every time something is not to our total personal satisfaction. All it is doing is creating an enormous bureaucratic state that is both a massive drain on the economy and a straight-jacket on society. Stop the micromanagement!

Answer 3

The problem is that the federal reserver (a private bank) prints off all the money they want or the govt wants, to pay for everything and anything.  Not a single note of currency is backed by gold, silver, copper, nothing.  So the trillions they print off every day devalues our dollar, and the more they print, the more it loses its value. Example, market loses a trillion in one day, bush prints a trillion off, market bounces back, people feel better, money goes down in value again.

Get rid of the fed reserve, have each dollar backed by a precious metal, and give the middle class better wages.  If you employ someone as a cashier at a gas station, if you don't pay them enough to even come to your own station and buy smokes, soda, etc, then you are losing customers.  The balance of wealth in this country has now gotten to heavy at the top that it may never be fixed.

Answer 4

Consume less