ECONOMICS-CONTINUED

Sgt Fluffy said...

Economics is economics weather its taught in high school or college. But you cannot deny we as consumers set the price depending on the demand of the product. Look, if you want to get pissy, Lets look at the price of bottled water. Why aren't people crying about the price of bottled water? Its what $1.29 per 20 oz's. Lets sue big water because hey, they are making one hell of a profit. What about capping the price of water, hey we need it to to survive. Lets just cap the price on everything that is sold because someone out there is going to make a profit on it perish the thought that someone will make money in this country and have more money than most of us, so hey, lets just penalize them for making money. Lets just have mass executions of people who make more money than you and me, that'll teach those bastards to be smarter than us, yap, you are right Kenny, lets kill em all and then everything will be fair. We need that level playing field after all. As for the egg and milk board, how many family owned poultry and dairy farms are left in this country because of price fixing. Not many, because they didn't PROFIT from it. Price Fixing ruins the economy

This price of bottled water doesn't affect every aspect of our daily lives. We can live without bottled water, just by a water filter and attach it to your faucet. But getting back to consumers and they market price. I worked for 3 yrs with a farmer at the Home Depot. Yes he was a full time farmer on a working farm but had to work at Home Depot too. Now, back in the days of the movie "Field of Dreams" with Sally Field and Danny Glover, back then, the farmer who brought is crop in first got the highest price. Then as the market got saturated, the price went down. Now crop prices are set by the commodities market.

As Mike the farmer told me, he grew soybeans and cotton and corn. He had a guy who would come out and look at his fields, how many acres he had for each crop. Once the crops were planted and started coming up, the County agent or who ever he was would come out and estimate the yeld per acre and set the price on each crop based on that estimate. Now, no matter what happens, an extremely dry, or wet summer, that price is what Mike is going to get. Now, if Mike's crops don't produce as estimated, then Mike has to make up the difference, thats what crop insurance is for. But then thats money out of Mike's pocket. So, no, the consumer doesn't set the price of Mike's crops, the Commodities market does. Just like every day they have the hog futures out of Chicago, and those futures affect farmers nation wide.
Now, the futures market can be affected by such things as weather, but that's on prices months away, not today.