Did you know that gas prices are down 47% since May?

Discussion in 'Politics' started by Max E., Jun 27, 2012.

  1. Tsing Tao

    Tsing Tao

    See above edit. I had to change after noticing you were responding to FOOD prices being down, not energy. Sorry about that.

    Food prices are not down.
     
    #21     Jun 28, 2012
  2. Tsing Tao

    Tsing Tao

    Glad it's trivial to you. Not so much to the poor you supposedly are so eager to champion causes for.
     
    #22     Jun 28, 2012
  3. Ricter

    Ricter

    You're not going to go commie on us, are you?
     
    #23     Jun 28, 2012
  4. Tsing Tao

    Tsing Tao

    You dodged the question on food prices being lower, unsurprisingly.


    As for going commie, why would you say that? Because I don't want the poor to suffer higher gas prices??
     
    #24     Jun 28, 2012
  5. Ricter

    Ricter

    #25     Jun 28, 2012
  6. Tsing Tao

    Tsing Tao

    It's not my job to go out and prove your points. I do plenty on points of my own (which you rarely refute).

    Just because commodities come down on the market does not make food in the grocery store cheaper. As I have stated many times, I work in an FMCG company that has over 50 some brands we all know in the grocery store. We have taken over 40 price increases in the last year and a half, and not one price decrease. The reason? It is extremely difficult to take price with a grocery customer, and we do not believe lower input costs will last.

    So all of our price increases, and those of the many competitors we have are completely in place. Your UN think tank doesn't capture any of that.
     
    #26     Jun 28, 2012
  7. Tsing Tao

    Tsing Tao

    Here you go, El Matador. Don't just take my word for it. Go check out the government's food price index:

    http://www.bls.gov/cpi/cpid1205.pdf

    Pay close attention to "FOOD" and "FOOD AT HOME".

    Notice all the "declines". Oops.
     
    #27     Jun 28, 2012
  8. Ricter

    Ricter

    Ok, gasoline prices are down and food prices are up. So your Fed Theory of Everything is wrong.
     
    #28     Jun 28, 2012
  9. Tsing Tao

    Tsing Tao

    With each post you reveal your incredible lack of depth of understanding anything related to economics.

    Food prices aren't able to decline as rapidly as energy prices. Food companies aren't meant to deal with massive volatility in commodity prices. They take price moves annually, sometimes every few years once import costs reach a margin threshold. Once they take price, they almost never lower price. In my 17 or so years in the food/pharma industry, I've only ever seen one significant price decline taken, and that was in 2009 when commodities collapsed completely. At that point the customers were demanding price declines to compensate for increased manufacturer margins. And even then, most of these price declines were actually dialed back with extra trade promotion dollars to affect "temporary price declines".

    Gas stations can simply adjust gas prices based on the price they pay from suppliers. It's very fluid. Food prices are here to stay.

    So Fed printing can quickly raise energy prices based on the market price of crude. It can take much longer to raise food prices as those input costs have to flow through the manufacturing system before they can get to the consumer level of the grocery store shelf. Same too on the down side when the Fed decides to stop printing or (God forbid) tighten monetary policy. But the downside on food prices is far more limited and far, far slower to materialize.

    Too much for you to grasp?
     
    #29     Jun 28, 2012
  10. Only because the economy sucks. Cheap gas with no job is not so cheap
     
    #30     Jun 28, 2012