Comment by handmodel | Hacker News Reader

Comment by handmodel | Hacker News Reader

The researchers compiled all the negative externalities of cheap food and added them all together. However, studies like this don't even attempt to determine if there are any positive externalities.

By setting up an equation where you add in any possible negatives and don't consider any positives you are by definition going to get a result like this.

For instance, they say how much we spend because cheap food makes obesity possible, but think of the number of people that would be cutting corners on their housing/health if their food budget increased another $300 a month. They even list a negative cost of people having food insecurity but that would only get drastically worse with more limited cheap options. They say that the current food regime is bad for workers because there is underpayment of wages and jobs that lack benefits - but are these workers going to be better off if the price of McDonald's goes up 2x, people eat out less, and the jobs get eliminated completely.

I think there are a lot of obvious policy things we could do to improve our health (shifting corn subsidies to other things, for instance) but I don't get the point of studies like this.

I don't get the point of studies like this.

And it's why I can't stand these alarmist articles that liberal rags are churning out daily. Even the end of the article is just like "Well we need to do...something! Now! " and this kind of hasty inaction is how we get completely ineffective shit like carbon taxes. But hey, at least I can now go around moralizing about you needing to reduce your carbon footprint!

We need to do shit as you mentioned: shifting subsidies. But that'd require our leaders actually putting in effort and, you know, working on behalf of the fucking people and not big business.

> think of the number of people that would be cutting corners on their housing/health if their food budget increased another $300 a month

Then it seems the solution would be to increase wages, no? ("Oh dear heavens, noooo!", scream the conservatives as they hear this). But increased wages mean the wage of that migrant fruit picker/food factory worker would also have to go up, and the price of food have to go up accordingly, a spiral of higher prices!

We seem to forget that money is a tool for barter, so everyone including corporations and Bezos, etc, would rather hoard it then use it, maximising profits by delivering the worst quality products with the cheapest labor but with the highest prices the customers tolerate. In the improved version 2 of the planet, one should get decent food (and shelter) for decent work, and the price would include all the environmental effects.

If you continue to flood a country with people who are willing to work for lower wages, supply and demand for employment and wages will continue to work as intended. People look around and they wonder why for 60 years wage increase has largely stagnated. It's not a mystery. So then, unwilling to accept the root cause as one that must be addressed, some seek government intervention to artificially increase wages. Then you're left with a large and ever increasing supply of workers but the demand for workers will necessarily decrease because you can't just suddenly double the cost to run a business and expect the employer to say no problem, I'll have just as many employees as before.

We know this doesn't work because we've been trying it for a long time. It seems to me that some people, when faced with failed policies, will think "we just haven't done this enough yet." As though if we were only increasing the minimum wage even higher the effects would be the opposite of what we've seen in the past.

Right now, apparently, there is a shortage of labor caused by the government paying people more to stay home than they're worth to pay to do work. It's something to keep in mind. Work is only worth so much. It doesn't make sense for a fast food restaurant to pay someone $30/hour. So, when minimum wage increases, those people simply aren't hired. So now instead of whatever wages they might have been paid, they now make $0 (or however much is coming out of your taxes for them to stay home).

There are other factors like the cost of housing that make this more complicated, but "we just need to force businesses to pay people more" ignores many important factors contributing to this situation. Which is why nothing gets better. It's time to try something different, not double or triple down on things that just don't work.

>If you continue to flood a country with people who are willing to work for lower wages, supply and demand for employment and wages will continue to work as intended.

Discussing the labor market in this way is overly reductionist and leads to incorrect conclusions. I could even find an article by the cato institute(yes) that concludes:

>Restricting immigration will not have a substantial positive impact on native wages, at least in real terms.

via https://www.cato.org/cato-journal/fall-2017/does-immigration...

I don't think it's reductionist at all. It strikes at the core issue. One thing the study says is that immigrants and natives take different jobs. Sort of the "someone has to mow our grass" argument. But someone would have to mow the grass either way and it's people who cannot find other work who would fill those jobs. That's why the low-skilled immigrants are taking them. That and the apparent willingness to accept lower wages.

The US isn't simply two groups of people: low skilled people from Central America and rich-ish middle class people. We have all types of people native born. We have our own legion of low skilled people who need work.

I'm extremely skeptical of any studies purporting otherwise because it smacks in the face of what we've been seeing, let alone the obvious outcome we'd expect. These sorts of "don't believe your lying eyes" studies that suggest, no no, keep going along this path because it's having no impact on your life hold no water with me because it's quite obvious that reality is not matching up with what they're suggesting.

I actually do think a good solution would be to give people money - yes.

But I don't see how that is relevant to the study on food prices. People who are struggling economically would obviously benefit the most from lower food prices.

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