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  • 16 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
Cake day: June 23rd, 2023
  • BlackJerseyGiant@lemmy.worldtoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•How will SNAP benefits running out affect the food market?
    1·
    3 months ago

    On the face of it, it would seem so, but despite those big numbers, the bigger picture they fit into says no. The AI bubble is poised to burst and have an effect on the economy orders of magnitude greater than SNAP can or will. Right now, the top 7 companies on the stock market are all AI related and account for about 30% of US GDP. Cerebralhawks has the gist of what is going on, i.e., this is all a standard part of the dictator handbook. I would posit that this isn’t about politics so much as it is about the realities of the two economies mentioned colliding. The “real material economy” is constrained by physical limits and laws, such as oil is a finite resource and thermodynamic efficiency limitations, whereas the ability to make more money is limitless. I think that the rise of tRump, his dictatorial policies, and the rise of right-wing authoritarianism worldwide are all symptoms of the real problem, which is that the days of cheap energy that enabled the “golden years” of capitalism in the post-WW2 era are gone, never to return. When capitalism falls on hard times, fascism and authoritarian policies come to the forefront as a last ditch effort to maintain the status quo.

    Yes, everyone should prepare for the worst eventuality. Societal collapse has happened many times throughout history, and while the commonality in those collapses is the extreme inequality of wealth distribution, our particular coming (happening?) collapse is unique in that unlike past times we live in society that spans the globe, and is full of people who do not have the knowledge or ability to be self sufficient. As such, most people won’t benefit, like happened in past collapses. After the fall of Rome, people got taller and healthier. This seems to be attributed to relief from the tax burden of the state. These days, with most our population in large cities, and with so many of the world’s natural resources either used up, or replaced by humanity and our foodstuffs, most people would not be able to capitalize on that same relief. So, yeah, buckle up, cause the next couple of decades is gonna be a wild ride very much unlike anything humanity has experienced before.

  • BlackJerseyGiant@lemmy.worldtoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•How will SNAP benefits running out affect the food market?
    5·
    3 months ago

    Very good points. I apologize for making assumptions. There’s a lot of anger out there, mine included, keeping people from being their best selves, and my assumption is symptomatic of that. No excuse; sometimes explaination is necessary, IMO.

    I like to think of the “economy” as two economies, the real material economy, and the fiscal or money economy. The former doesn’t really seem to matter to economists, as they believe that enough money can solve any problem, hence they only reference the latter “economy”. So, to my way of thinking, as SNAP amounts about 8 billion $ a month and the US GDP as defined in the “fiscal economy” is around 2,542 billion $ a month, it’s a very small drop in a very large bucket, in those terms at least. I would imagine that with the stock market being so enamored with AI right now that there won’t be any appreciable reaction there to the slight change in Walmart’s bottom line. The General Merchandise side of such super-stores is vastly more important to profits than the grocery side due to very tight margins on groceries, so probably no perceptible change there. I think the biggest effect would be on those few small and local grocers, as they are more “real economy” based, so a decline in their sales would further exacerbate the “business as usual” of them being forced into insolvency by competition from big box stores. The biggest consequences I forsee from the lack of snap benefits os a speeding up of what is already a well established pattern. One more thing attributes to the opinion asked for in the original post that I am finally and at last getting around to; the top 10% of earners account for 50% of consumption. So with all that crap in mind, I think that until the people at the bottom are squeezed hard enough that they are forced to turn from single person shoplifting to organized group theft, looting I guess, that there will be no real change in grocery prices.

  • BlackJerseyGiant@lemmy.worldtoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•How will SNAP benefits running out affect the food market?
    354·
    3 months ago

    It is interesting that you seem to assume that your average person who will be unable to purchase food with SNAP will be stealing food. People also have the option of not paying other bills to afford food, or going to food banks. The majority of theft in the retail setting comes from employees. Also: Is it worse to steal to eat, or to steal to make your bottom line look better? Wage theft grossly outpaces losses from theft year after year. Maybe stop villanizing the disadvantaged folks in our society, and put that anger towards the people who have stolen so much from the majority that they put the disadvantaged in the position they are in.