🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <370A0142.A6CD8FD0@bellsouth.net>,
Roger Alexander <rlalexNOSPAM@bellsouth.net> wrote:

    [..with some serious paragraph reformatting, so that I can read the
    sucker...]

>Some three or four years ago, the price of coffee on the world market
>went way up to above $2.50 per pound.  The price of ground roast coffee
>went up lock step.  For the past two years or so, coffee on the
>exchanges has been between $1 and $1.10 per pound.  Coffee loses about
>30 % of its weight when it is roasted, so this translates into $1.40 to
>$1.54.  In the skimpy 2 1/7 to 2 1/2 pound cans the cost of the coffee
>is anywhere from $3.00 to $3.75. Coffee should retail anywhere from
>about $2 to $3 above the cost of the coffee, so we should see sales from
>$5 to $6.75 on coffee, the higher amount being generous.  That prices
>have hung higher is due to "stickiness" which is unduly prolonged this
>time.  I put this down to lessened competition, and decline of store
>brands.

    I put it down to a different cause:  Coffee prices shot up 3-4 years
    ago ostensibly because adverse weather conditions (or some other
    natural disaster) seriously damaged coffee crops in Central (and
    IIRC parts of South) America.  Since there doesn't seem to be much
    one can do about an act of nature, the buying public sadly accepted
    the new reality.  Then the adverse condition passed and the crops
    recovered, but prices have remain at their increased level-- this
    works because people have now forgotten the cause of the increase
    (some have forgotten that there even =was= an increase), and have
    become accustomed to the current price.

    Last year, the prices of certain produce items (lettuce, celery,
    etc.) rose sharply in the US as a result of the El Nin~o rains which
    flooded out farms in Central California.  This past winter has had
    below normal rainfall, but not quite a drought, and certainly no
    further flooding.  I believe retail prices on Central Calif. produce
    are near their post-flood levels from last winter.  Let's see if
    they come down any, this summer.

    I can't remember the first agricultural product I saw this happen
    with, but it has since been repeated with item after item.  The last
    effective "grass roots" consumer action I can recall against food
    price increases was the sugar boycott of (what was it? 10 years ago?
    More?).  Sugar prices began to rise again almost immediately
    afterward (and whatever happened to the woman who spearheaded the
    boycott the first time?).

    This phenomenon isn't even limited to goods:  I saw a remark in
    la.general about how taxes on traffic fines were increased in Los
    Angeles during the recent recession, but haven't been rolled back to
    previous levels in this time of relative prosperity.

    The pattern is the same in all these cases:  If the price of
    something is seen to be increased arbitrarily, then protest,
    boycott, and other actions will probably result.  However, if a
    reason the public will accept is proffered for the increase, even
    though that reason be temporary, people will forget and accept the
    new rates as "normal".

>This then is the rationality in the market.

    Yep.

-- 
jhurwit@netcom.com                                       Jeffrey Hurwit
         "Sometimes, I just can't help myself!"  --Babs Bunny