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Prices for key foods are rising sharply

By Kevin G. Hall

The Bureau of Labor Statistics said in its June inflation report that egg prices are 19.5 percent higher than they were in June 2006. Over the same period, according to the department’s consumer price index, whole milk was up 13.3 percent; fresh chicken 10 percent; navel oranges 19.8 percent; apples 11.7 percent. Dried beans were up 11.5 percent, and white bread just missed double-digit growth, rising by 9.6 percent. These numbers get lost in the broader inflation rate for all goods and services, which measured 2.7 for the same 12-month period. Across the economy, rising food prices were offset by falling prices for things bought at the mall: computers, cameras, clothing and shoes.

Yeah, good thing poor folk are buying computers and cameras to offset the discounted value of their disposable income by the rising cost of basic food. Oh wait, they don't. In Bush's fine tradition of looting the middle and lower class, once again we pay more to live day to day so the Riches can get a deal on a Dell.

Of course, this is Bush's America, so it gets worse.

To make more milk, or raise more chickens that lay more eggs, farmers need feed corn and other feed products. But corn prices have soared over the past year as Congress pushes ethanol, a renewable fuel made from corn. Fields that previously grew soybeans are now yielding corn, and that’s driven up the price of soybeans as they become scarce.

Iowa State University’s Center for Agricultural and Rural Development shocked the farm sector earlier this summer with a report that corn farmers are expected to lock in prices of $4 a bushel through 2010, about double what corn fetched two years ago.

Brilliant! $4 a bushel for corn! Sure hope the poor folk can live off the fumes of the ethanol-powered SUV the Riches are driving, and got from yet another Bush tax break.

The sheer insanity of Bush's welfare system for the Riches are leading us to a recession, the offshoring of our jobs are leading to slow-to-no output growth of hard products, and the shaky dollar is leading to a recession.

Not to mention Bush has borrowed more money than the first 42 presidents combined, creating a huge government debt that makes increasing the money supply by purchasing government debt an investment some are starting to shy away from. Like say China.

And if the price of basic goods and services rise, while we head into a Bush economic policy invoked recession, we are headed to one of the most dreaded lands in economic theory:

Stagflation.

But not because government regulation caused a failure in the market, but because the Bush Administration used the government to loot the lower and middle class and in a transfer of wealth to the riches in a gross mishandling of the allocation of goods and services. He took from the many and gave to the few, but that was the plan all together. To cause a special situation called differential accumulation, the playground of the "weapondollar-petrodollar coalition."

This is when the big boys of capitalism use stagflation to beat the average on return on investment. But here Bush and the Gang of the Haves really took it up a notch, instead of completing mergers and acquisitions during times of "peace", they are using this system to accumulate wealth at disaggregate levels in a self-created Mid-east crisis with high oil prices. It really is a work of economic art, pure evil, but still beautiful in its own way.

Of course, differential accumulation causes huge strife in the stratas of society, since the have-nots have to be looted to complete cycle of returns for the Riches. But who is gonna stop them? That is the real question for 2008.

Someone needs to, otherwise we won’t even be able to afford the egg on our collective faces.