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[smjjames]

How much of that 40% waste happens before the consumer buys the food? I know theres the problem of 'food waste' in the sense of people throwing out food that's still good or not eating leftovers, but what about the part of the waste that happens BEFORE it gets to the customers?

That waste would be considered lost profits and the food industry would definetly love to prevent the lost profits. The waste that happens after the customers buy it is out of their control. At least everyday customers, customers like restraunts are another matter.

Not really. Capital growth far exceeds material growth or labor growth in the US, and has for some time now. The "smart money", is investing in "money."

You only need an inexhaustible supply of currency, and activity requiring currency to drive the demand for currency. Even still, there is no such thing as either of those. While currency might be theoretically inexhaustible, it is based on debts/promise of repayment. There is only so much debt a person can get into, or even theoretically be able to pay back, so not in actual practice. Similar with economic activity that drives demand for currency. There is only so much raw material that can be utilized at any one time, etc-- so there is indeed some limit on the maximum possible economic activity.  So, quite right, the notion of eternal economic growth is the pipedream.

Isn't that the stock market? We're talking about the physical economy.

[Neonivek]

How much of that 40% waste happens before the consumer buys the food? I know theres the problem of 'food waste' in the sense of people throwing out food that's still good or not eating leftovers, but what about the part of the waste that happens BEFORE it gets to the customers?

It can be rather significant. Mostly because Food has such small margins that a simple shift in the market can make the price of storing food more expensive than simply throwing it out.

Some food markets are notorious for having too many sellers and not enough buyers.

But that is just from producers (Primary), what about stores? (secondary) I have no idea.

[wierd]

How much of that 40% waste happens before the consumer buys the food? I know theres the problem of 'food waste' in the sense of people throwing out food that's still good or not eating leftovers, but what about the part of the waste that happens BEFORE it gets to the customers?

That waste would be considered lost profits and the food industry would definetly love to prevent the lost profits. The waste that happens after the customers buy it is out of their control. At least everyday customers, customers like restraunts are another matter.

Not really. Capital growth far exceeds material growth or labor growth in the US, and has for some time now. The "smart money", is investing in "money."

You only need an inexhaustible supply of currency, and activity requiring currency to drive the demand for currency. Even still, there is no such thing as either of those. While currency might be theoretically inexhaustible, it is based on debts/promise of repayment. There is only so much debt a person can get into, or even theoretically be able to pay back, so not in actual practice. Similar with economic activity that drives demand for currency. There is only so much raw material that can be utilized at any one time, etc-- so there is indeed some limit on the maximum possible economic activity.  So, quite right, the notion of eternal economic growth is the pipedream.

Isn't that the stock market? We're talking about the physical economy.

No. The banking industry. The stock market is the futures market. Capital growth is the growth of the money supply, and the future demand for money.

[Frumple]

But that is just from producers (Primary), what about stores? (secondary) I have no idea.

Can't give you numbers off the top of my head, but it's fairly significant. Grocery stores et al throw out quite a lot.

[wierd]

Supermarkets waste around 30% of the stock they have on the shelves.
http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/09/25/351495274/supermarkets-waste-tons-of-food-as-they-woo-shoppers

Sadly, this is due to human psychological behaviors.  Humans will pick from the bigger pile every time, even when the food in the smaller pile is just as good.

Short of going all "5 year plan" on the human race, there is no reliable way to fix this.

[redwallzyl]

Supermarkets waste around 30% of the stock they have on the shelves.
http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/09/25/351495274/supermarkets-waste-tons-of-food-as-they-woo-shoppers

Sadly, this is due to human psychological behaviors.  Humans will pick from the bigger pile every time, even when the food in the smaller pile is just as good.

Short of going all "5 year plan" on the human race, there is no reliable way to fix this.

that doesn't even include stuff thrown away by farmers because it doesn't look exactly right.

[Baffler]

-snip-

But again, what industry? This isn't like the late 18^th century, where people can go by the tens of thousands to become a different type of laborer. Retraining takes time, effort, and options are more limited; and with the USA having the regulatory environment of a modern country it's still probably cheaper to get some foreigner to do it, whether that be through outsourcing, exploiting illegal immigrants, H1B abuse, or one of myriad other options that politicians from both parties have created for their corporate masters. And even then automation reduces the number of jobs needed to do the same amount of work. Those things lower prices, yeah, yet both real wages and the standard of living have fallen over time (sources are good) for everyone except those already in the highest levels, and by extension restricts people's ability to "vote with their wallet" (and bargain collectively due to lack of financial security but that's a different issue entirely) like those Buy American campaigns try to get people to do.

Modern economics' hardon for free trade has pretty clearly failed the average American. Bringing back manufacturing from overseas isn't a perfect solution with automation looming over the horizon, but it's a bit misguided to just pump money in while hoping something will come along to replace the things bad policy killed, and downright foolish to just give up and put large swathes of the country on life support so they can die in peace.

Supermarkets waste around 30% of the stock they have on the shelves.
http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/09/25/351495274/supermarkets-waste-tons-of-food-as-they-woo-shoppers

Sadly, this is due to human psychological behaviors.  Humans will pick from the bigger pile every time, even when the food in the smaller pile is just as good.

Short of going all "5 year plan" on the human race, there is no reliable way to fix this.

that doesn't even include stuff thrown away by farmers because it doesn't look exactly right.

There's not as much of that as there used to be. They're increasingly used for less glamorous purposes like pastes, canning, starch, feed, compost, or whatever else to get some use/money out of it rather than raising a whole crop for just that purpose. It's still a problem, but people are wising up, and things have become a lot more efficient.

[WealthyRadish]

There's reasons ... to desire a domestic manufacturing base.

Sure, creating a diversified economic base is extremely important if you're a developing economy dependent on agriculture or a single export, and large tariffs may be a way of supporting that if the government is only able to apply the bluntest tool possible (it also happens to be very popular with corrupt governments). The United States, however, isn't exactly a banana republic, considering it's the model of the most highly developed and diversified economy on the planet.

Plus, in some cases, local manufacturing is better for the environment.

If you mean the need to transport goods, sometimes it isn't, somewhat surprisingly. Shipping something over the ocean in a modern cargo ship is extremely efficient, and sea transport from half a world away often has a carbon footprint smaller than trucking or trains over even local distances.

The rest of this environmental angle here comes off as very hokey. The United States ecology and environment was not improved by industry. I don't think you are appreciating how terrible our cities used to be, or how terrible industrial areas in China are now.

But I think a progressive tariff, based on how many labor, safety, health, and environmental standards are not met or enforced compared to the U.S. would help a lot in several ways. And if they levy a tariff back on us, so be it.

These regulations would be the sort of things to put in a trade agreement, rather than attempting to unilaterally force an agenda on a trade partner with an inflammatory tariff and then just going "whoops we pissed them off and now everyone else is putting up tariffs now, oh dear oh dear there goes the global economy again".

I've seen it a few times now that no nation has successfully industrialized without hefty protective tariffs.

"Despite" is a better way of putting it, if speaking about the centuries of terrible trade policy pursued by the Europeans and United States as they industrialized. For more modern examples, an export driven economy centered on manufacturing has in the past been an excellent way for a developing country to industrialize, if the government is capable of investment in heavy industry and careful control of the currency. Tariffs can certainly aid early firms, but there are many examples (in Latin American in particular) of countries that attempted aggressive broad import substitution and failed, partly because they lacked a domestic consumer market strong enough to stimulate domestic production. If the smaller countries had instead rejected tariffs to encourage a healthy consumer market and concentrated on specializing in an area of advantage for export (rather than attempting to be self-sufficient in everything), they may have fared better.

Once again though, none of this is relevant to the United States. The United States is not an industrializing nation, it is a fully industrialized nation with a service economy.

Comparative advantage based on a lower regulatory burden is a shell of an advantage, not one based in resources or ability.

Comparative advantage isn't just about a country's capabilities or hurdles in the way, it's about what a country would need to give up to produce something. For example, the United States would be far more capable of producing vast quantities of textiles than countries in Southeast Asia are, but we don't produce many textiles because to do so would mean giving up more productive uses of our resources. A developing country may be at a strict disadvantage in every way compared to an advanced economy (which has better access to capital, educated workers, infrastructure, heavy industry and so on), but the developing country can still have a comparative advantage, because the advanced economy would need to give up more productive industries to produce in that market and can benefit by instead trading for it. If our economy regressed 100 years, then sure, maybe textiles (in this example) would again be the best we can do. That would not be a good thing.

[Frumple]

[snip]

What industry would be the question gov't agencies should be answering and policy trying to provide for. Dem platform last year talked about funding green energy stuff to come into such regions, as a singular example. It obviously wouldn't be enough on its own, but it'd be one more brick in a new foundation. Exact options depend on the situation on the ground, and many potentials would probably take government/non-profit investment to bring to the table since for-profit stuff just isn't going to bloody happen under local conditions. But you do have to actually go out and try to bloody find them instead of throwing your hands in the air and trying to shore up an industry that's already proven it can't manage what you need.

Retraining et al does indeed take time and effort, and what options are available are largely not going to be what was there before. That doesn't mean it's not what has to happen if things are going to not go to pot. It just means the GOP in particular fucked 'em by doing everything in their power to prevent the process from starting a decade or four ago, and the chicken's coming home to roost. If the situation needed tens of thousands to become a different type of laborer, we should have been working through that back when the process was going to hurt less.  We didn't and now we're here, still dealing with the same necessity but with less time before situations turn even more critical and a greater number of options cut off before they could be attempted.

What's failed the average american isn't free trade -- it's probably one of the primary catalysts, but it's not the cause -- it's our government's refusal to react to it properly and our populace's continued insistence on electing people that make sure the refusal's happening. What that means is that the only way these places are going to survive in even a diminished state is start trying to fix the bloody problem instead of claw back a yesterday that no longer can exist without things going to complete hell, and suck up their pride in the mean time and request and accept what help they need to keep them alive while they're doing it. Or these regions are going to die, at the absolute least until they contract into much smaller entities.

Lot of these areas are going to need life support regardless, and there's fuck all we can do about that at this point, unless we really are going to just let them die and to hell with the populations within. Starting the retraining processes, finding out what's needed to bring things in or figuring out where the people need to go to manage, is going to be the difference between going on life support so you can heal and indeed just ruddy giving up.

... though even if it's the latter, we can at least work to let the areas die in peace instead of forcing everyone inside them to suffer for the failures of their forefathers. It's better than what the GOP is trying to force happen.

All that said, though, even without automation looming, bringing back manufacturing isn't even an imperfect solution, just an inefficient way to attempt to stem the bleeding. It's been dead in the water so far as these regions go since the day productivity started to increase (which is basically to say since day 1), and there's sod all that can be done about that. Even trying to artificially cripple the industry's output is just going to mean people buy elsewhere, losing chunks of whatever part the market a hold was kept on. Trying to rely on an industry that just flat out doesn't need as many workers is going to do nothing but put you in worse shape than you were previously, and without any road forward to improve things. Even without technological advancements, raw methodological ones would have still been contracting that particular work force.

Domestic manufacturing is always going to be part of what we do, but it very literally can't -- physically can't, without all kinds of incredibly terrible shit happening -- be something we rely on anymore. It just doesn't friggin' work, and trying to convince communities it can is doing nothing but making sure they die and die as painfully as possible. Foreign competition isn't what's causing that (though it accelerates and exaggerates), it's just the nature of the work involved. We got too good at it, we're still getting better, and unless we start murdering everyone else that figures out how to do that, trying to roll back the clock on that front is just going to make everything about the process worse.

E: And in other news, fuck. Cheers GOP voters, yet another attempt at privacy protection struck down by the bastards you voted for. Except for those that elected the 15 that give even the intermittent appearance of a single shit about the electorate, I guess. I guess it's conceptually possible trump vetoes i- yeah, I can't even finish typing that.

[wierd]

Because that advertising money is not going to collect itself, am I right!? /s


Fucking idiots.

[misko27]

Interesting tidbit: People in china tend to be happier than people in america.

Citation needed.

Probably due to the fact that their situation is continuously improving

Citation needed.

(and communal culture instead of individualist means the whole authoritarian corrupt government thing isn't quite as upsetting or burdensome),

Citation needed.

whereas that's not true for america.

You've made an absolute load of comparisons which might have anyone of a billion causes. Communal culture? Why not because China is still, in general, much poorer and developing, and thus large sections of the population remember what it is like to be dirt poor? That's why Yugoslavia worked, after all; absolutely not because of any sort of vague "communal culture", but because economic growth and general prosperity tends to be good for business. In general, this trend tends to peter out as the middle class develops, leading to increasing demands for rights (ungrateful bastards). But really, I could propose any number of reasons: the unique institution of Chinese Communism, years of indoctrination by a deeply authoritarian government, confucian influences, the economic factors, social factors, environmental factors, geographic factors, the unreliability of public polling in China. For all we know the weather is just much nicer in China (the smog is lovely this time of year). I mean China and America are very different places, one being a newish form of government for an extremely old nation, and the other a slightly less newish government leading an equally new nation a hemisphere away. I could wax about possible social and ethnic reasons, or about the influence of christian thinkers, or protestants, or the effects of slavery. There's an entire universe of criteria, varying widely in usefulness and accuracy, which I could use. China and America are almost incomparable using the broad strokes you've given.

Sidenote: There's reasons and means to oppose globalisation/globalism other than those, and to desire a domestic manufacturing base.

Such as?

Plus, in some cases, local manufacturing is better for the environment. Significantly better, sometimes, depending on where it's shipped from and their rules about how okay it is to fuck over the environment.

Examples being?

There's ways for most everyone to win here.

Sounds like you're selling something.

But I think a progressive tariff, based on how many labor, safety, health, and environmental standards are not met or enforced compared to the U.S. would help a lot in several ways. And if they levy a tariff back on us, so be it.

Sounds easier said than done. But what about our exporter industries? Of which there are many? Just because there's a trade defecit doesn't mean we don't sell a load of stuff back to them, they just sell us more stuff.

I've seen it a few times now that no nation has successfully industrialized without hefty protective tariffs.

Well if you've seen it a few times, perhaps you could provide examples?

We'll still have trade with other highly developed countries, too, and it helps make up for the difference in labor price in terms of allowing our manufacturers to compete with foreign ones. World peace through free trade sounds great, and mostly works, but I doubt China would start a shooting war over it.

It's not the shooting war we're worried about. It's the trade war (although the shooting war is admittedly much scarier).

If you're worried about prices rising for the poor, the solution is the same as ever: tax the rich, use it to help the poor. Wealth gap is growing, income gap is growing, and taxes on the wealthy are still very low. I would personally make a new tax bracket where, past 1 million dollars, ~80% of your income is taxed(still not the highest we've had though to be fair we're not in wartime). We've had upwards of 70% taxes on the upper class for several decades after WWI. It was cut by Reagan, and never went back that high again. Wealth gap and percentage of Americans in poverty has increased since, rather than decreasing as it was previously.

Beyond being unacceptably communist (and as we all know, communism is the very definition of failure), I don't believe that you have the numbers to back any of this up.

I don't actually have any argument to make here, and I'm neutral on the issue. I'm just pointing out that what you said is so short on factual statements it's more of a suggestion of possibility than an argument. I mean I didn't know Chinese were apparently happier than us, from where did you hear that? Are these people reliable? What was the exact question asked?

[wierd]

Apparently the great restructuring of the DNC is underway, with demands that all current staffers resign.
http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/embattled-dnc-asks-all-staffers-resignation-letters-n739676

Guess we will have to wait and see if the DNC restructures more like its original roots, or if it follows the GOP's lead after its restructures, and turns into a populist cesspit like the GOP did.

[Starver]

Interesting tidbit: People in china tend to be happier than people in america. Probably due to the fact that their situation is continuously improving (and communal culture instead of individualist means the whole authoritarian corrupt government thing isn't quite as upsetting or burdensome), whereas that's not true for america.

I think there's been the interpretation that (at whatever quality of life) equality of circumstances with one's neighbours drives happiness (or perceived inequality, usually in a downward direction, drives discontent). China tends to keep people 'levelled', whether an entire village in subsistence farming, a  neighbourhood in downtown Shanghai or somewhere more prosperous. Very little mixing, traditionally, or much awareness of higher tiers apart from "first among equals" officials, who may be the sole focus of perceived inequality.

Modern-day China has 'uplifted' and connected people to US levels of awareness of "there could be better", but at the upper end of the spectrum first, with (so far) less trickle-down to the poor end who will only be ome more aware of potential for social mobility once they get that punch of improvement.

Modern-day America has mostly run out of opportunities to globally run with improvements (where the pursuit of improvement might still be behind the pursuit accomplished by the higher-ups, but you don't notice because you're too busy enjoying your own run), and the freedom of cross-demographic information shows people the relative greenness of not just the grass the other side of the fence, but the grass on the other side of the mountain...

(Or so it could be put.)

[Sergarr]

About 4 years ago now, Oxford University ran a pilot study into the effects of automation on the US economy. The results were not pretty. They estimated that 25 to 30% of US employment will be replaced with robots or software agents within 20 years. They additionally torpedo the canard that new jobs will replace the old ones, citing work by several of their peers indicating that at an increasing rate, college educated students are seeking employment traditionally held by significantly less educated people, as the jobs that are supposed to be being created for them, are not being created.

http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/The_Future_of_Employment.pdf

You know, the job of personal human servants are always gonna be open. In Singapore, as I've been told, almost every middle and high class family already has at least one of those, Victoria era style. That seems to be where the future of mass employment is - being a domestic slave for the rich people. Soooo, you may want to watch out with your anti-rich rhetoric. It may deny you a job in the future.

[Gizogin]

In recent news, the House has voted to repeal the requirement for ISPs to obtain user permission before selling personal information. This means it now goes to the White House, where Trump is expected to sign it into effect. How on Earth can anyone have thought this was a good idea?

Here's the report on the earlier Senate vote. My favorite quote: 'Flake [R-Ariz.] said at the time that he is trying to "protect consumers from overreaching Internet regulation."'