Growing food bank lines are a sign that society has lost its way, a Groceries and Essentials Benefit would help the most vulnerable citizens
Growing food bank lines are a sign that society has lost its way, a Groceries and Essentials Benefit would help the most vulnerable citizens
Nine million Canadians worry about where their next meal will come from.
Nine million Canadians worry about where their next meal will come from.
Repeat after me
Nationalize
The
Food
Chain
Farmers don't make enough to pay employees, groceries make too much for it to make sense, fuck that shit, crown corporation to run the whole thing.
Seriously. Even my dad who has a seemingly near-religious belief in capitalism (hello from 'murica) thinks that nationalizing food production wouldn't be unreasonable.
(I don't think my dad is as much of a capitalist as he thinks he is, but don't even think about using the scary S word around him. He'll try to find any excuse to say that capitalism is better than socialism. I don't think he really understands what socialism is, but he's not really interested in learning either so I just avoid using the term when talking to him. *shrug*).
Another idea:
Make the entire food sector non-profit.
Unfortunately that doesnt do anything. Non-profits are just as bad as for-profits under the system we have. Nationalization or bust. Obviously nationalization doesn't mean the federal government is in charge that still can mean that it's locally operated and run.
Singapore was able to moderate the price of groceries by opening a government owned grocery store chain called FairPrice in the 70s. This forced all the other stores to actually compete on price. Nowadays grocery stores match or beat FairPrice on cost and (shocker) are still profitable.
It wouldn't solve the production issue though. We shouldn't have to rely on foreigners to grow our food locally but people won't work in that field unless salaries and conditions make sense and that won't happen unless it's nationalized or profits are distributed in a more fair way...
Crown corp would be great but letting them monopolize the entire process might not be the optimal thing to do. In some cases it worked well (e.g. hydro-quebec prices are very competitive) but in others it gives them unlimited power to set the prices as they want in order to achieve a target profit, with potentially murky decisions like automatic bonuses and millions in severance payments.
Oth crown corps competing in the market allows it to be more efficient since other players cannot push crown corps out of the market through acquisition, yet crown corps have to adapt their practice to be competitive and lean; good example is CDPQ infra participating in a competitive market when building light rail systems across Canada/UK.
Crown corporations can be non profit, that's what the SAAQ is and it's the reason why it's so cheap to get insurance as a driver in Quebec compared to Ontario for example.
We need to break up the grocery conglomerates. Nowhere else in the world is the food system so heavily monopolized and vertically integrated. Go tell an American about Cara Foods/Recipe Unltd[1] — they won’t believe you!
They operate a bunch of mediocre chain restaurants, not grocery stores - unless I'm missing something?
A "Groceries and Essentials Benefit" is basically a wage subsidy, and you can bet the grocery chains would raise prices by just a little less than the benefit, and if it's like food stamps in the US, it'll be chipped away at and rendered humiliating and useless.
We've seen this play out with gas tax reductions: resellers know a lot about price elasticity, and any savings from a tax cut gets quickly eaten up by price increases.
Here's what we could do:
- Tax the rich until we can afford to pay for services again
- Raise marginal and corporate rates, forcing companies to re-invest instead of hoarding profits
- Make stock buybacks illegal
- Significantly raise capital gains taxes
- (this is tricky) find a way to tax net worth as income
Did someone say UBI? UBI. UBI, FFS!
Yeah. Patchwork benefits are ass to navigate. Like, almost dehumanising.
Actually Canada is the closest it has ever come to getting UBI, as there are two bills (C-223 and S-233) being reviewed for it right now. It still is going to need a lot of support though, so head over to https://www.ubiworks.ca/guaranteed-livable-basic-income to sign the petition, learn more about these bills, and otherwise tell everyone you can, and we might have a chance!
I'm so tired of people thinking these "benefits" are a solution to the problems we have today. At best they ease things temporarily for those that receive it, while continuing to allow the grocery corporations to pad their profits by charging way too much. We either need regulation about how much profit can be taken on food (at least on a large list of the types of foods people should be buying), or the addition of significant competition within the space and a complete ban on acquisitions within the sector.
True, if a person has been shot, you have to go after the person with the gun to prevent them from doing it again. But I'd also like the person who got shot to get immediate medical aid.
This is just one of the effects of late stage capitalism in a first world country! Any suggestion other than move from a capitalist society is like treating cancer with rubbing alcohol!
Okay. In detail, how do you manage complex, shifting supply chains without some kind of market?
Like, I'm also team eat the rich, but nobody can ever answer this.
Market has always existed before capitalism! We are lead to believe the market would exist if not in a capitalist society! I just recently joined the mailing list from https://marxist.ca/ to know more! I’m not part of the group but reading the resources can guide you to overcome the myths and lies about socialism and communism!
There isn’t any easy fix to something complex as our current socioeconomic arrangement, however we should point out the root cause of our current affairs is due to the nature of capitalism!
Have you ever heard of Technocracy? It was designed specifically to do this, to provide every citizen with the highest possible standard of living without the gross inefficiencies of money based economies, to take advantage of technological automation to increase production and reduce work needed without reducing the standard of living by breaking the tie between income and labor. And it's a pretty detailed idea too.
Because there is no answer. All systems are corruptable and capitalism at least puts that corruption out in the open. I'd argue the problem is that government stopped giving a shit about its civilians instead choosing to trust in the market to solve all problems which we are learning that is not the case.
Things will not start changing until government grows a pair and starts doing what it's supposed to do.
Is it?
Isn't the goal is to have 100% of people fed by food banks? The complete abolition of commoditized foods?
Food banks are privately organised and staffed by volunteers.
They're a patch that tries to barely cover the gaping hole in tax-funded welfare for the citizens.Yeah, they should be funded by tax dollars.