Conquer Club

Metsfanmax wrote:

Phatscotty wrote:
$1.25 a day can buy a ton of food in many of those countries, so your guilt trip is misleading.

It is not misleading. The World Bank's poverty estimate (what my claim is based on) specifically takes account of purchasing power; that is, 1.3 billion people quite literally do subsist on less than what $1.25 purchases in the United States. Most people would spend more than that on a bottle of water at a convenience store without batting an eye.

But let's go down your path. How would that work? You think it would be a good idea to feed the world, but is it actually possible? without breaking the very market that provided the surplus in the first place?

Yes, it is possible through one of two routes. One is by personal donation. For example, if the top 10% of America donated a modest amount of their income to international aid efforts, America could singlehandledly be responsible for achieving the UN's Millennium Development Goals, which basically aim to eradicate poverty and hunger on the global scale. I'll spare you the details unless you're interested, but it could be done with a progressive scale starting at 5% of income for those earning more than $100,000 per year. The rest of America would not even have to donate, although they could (and should).

Another is by switching to vegetarian diets on the large scale. Annually, the world feeds hundreds of billions of tons of grain to feed animals that we later eat. But the process is incredibly inefficient. For cows, for example, we get fewer than a 10% return in food compared to what we put in (in terms of pounds of food produced). If most of the developed world stopped eating meat, there would be enough food left over to end world hunger. I'm not exaggerating.

Dukasaur wrote:That's not a fair accusation. The world's poor aren't starving because the Americans stole their food

the world's poor are starving because their own leaders stole their food. Almost every country on earth has a food surplus now.

Virtually all hunger is created by the nabobs in power, the Parasites in Parliament, the Warlords on their Gilded Humvees, the putrescent corrupt armies of bureaucrats, the corrupt judges and thieving cops, the rent-seekers of every level, choose to extort the wealth of the countryside and concentrate its fruits in their own palaces.

You want to know the cure for hunger? It's called the guillotine.

Funkyterrance wrote:

saxitoxin wrote:There's a premium endcap display next to the register right now at every 7-11 for Hostess. I'm sure Li'l Debbie would love to get her whore hands on that endcap.

Don't you EVER talk about her that way. I've got half a mind to pimp slap you across this thread.

I'm sure that the hostess workers cracked all kinds of sexist jokes about Debbie in the breakroom at the hostess plant but who's laughing now?
Tbh, I think it's even somewhat comical that the hostess workers went on strike in the first place. Did they think that their job of producing rot-gut pastries was that important? They'll loaf for a while until their unemployment runs out and then come crawling on their hands and knees to to Little Debbie's doorstep. Ginger-SNAP.

Phatscotty wrote:I have been giving up my annual cost of living increases just to hold on to my health insurance since 2003.....

Hostess could have ensured the Twinkie's survival simply by paying the executives less, one of the unions organizing company workers alleges.

Of course, to hear the company tell it, the maker of Wonder Bread and Twinkies simply can’t survive ongoing worker strikes at its plants. The company claims its hand was forced when it only came to an agreement with one of its two unions after several months in negotiations.

The union says there’s another way the Twinkie-maker could have avoided liquidating and laying off all of its 18,500 workers: by paying the executives less money. In a press release, the BCTGM claimed Hostess tripled the pay of CEO Gregory Rayburn up to $2,550,000 as the company prepared to file for bankruptcy.

Hostess’ creditors accused the company in April of manipulating executive salaries with the aim of getting around bankruptcy compensation rules, the Wall Street Journal reported at the time. In response, Rayburn announced he would cut his pay and that of other executives to $1 until Dec. 31 or whenever Hostess came out of bankruptcy.

That was after Hostess had already awarded Rayburn’s top four executives raises of between 75 and 80 percent, even though the company had already hired restructuring lawyers, according to the WSJ.

The situation isn't specific to Hostess. Over the last 30 years, CEO pay grew 127 times faster than worker pay, according to a July report.

Phatscotty wrote:America is already #1 in food donation. Most of it goes to feed Americans

Why is the answer with you Progressives always "take xyz away"?

also, just wondering how that fits in with how I assume your position is on world population. I would guess that you think there are too many people on the planet, especially under the lens of someone who believes in global warming. You do understand that if hunger in the world were eradicated, the population would explode and possibly become an even bigger problem, since the number of mouths to feed would at some point eclipse the levels currently produced. Any thoughts on these " consequences "?

Maugena wrote:

Funkyterrance wrote:

saxitoxin wrote:There's a premium endcap display next to the register right now at every 7-11 for Hostess. I'm sure Li'l Debbie would love to get her whore hands on that endcap.

Don't you EVER talk about her that way. I've got half a mind to pimp slap you across this thread.

I'm sure that the hostess workers cracked all kinds of sexist jokes about Debbie in the breakroom at the hostess plant but who's laughing now?
Tbh, I think it's even somewhat comical that the hostess workers went on strike in the first place. Did they think that their job of producing rot-gut pastries was that important? They'll loaf for a while until their unemployment runs out and then come crawling on their hands and knees to to Little Debbie's doorstep. Ginger-SNAP.

Hey! I LOVE that sentence! It's my new god damn signature!

Evil Semp wrote:

Phatscotty wrote:I have been giving up my annual cost of living increases just to hold on to my health insurance since 2003.....

Didn't you just change jobs in the past couple of years? I thought you moved to accept another job.

One reason these employees don't want to give up what the company is asking for. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/1 ... 47043.html

Hostess could have ensured the Twinkie's survival simply by paying the executives less, one of the unions organizing company workers alleges.

Of course, to hear the company tell it, the maker of Wonder Bread and Twinkies simply can’t survive ongoing worker strikes at its plants. The company claims its hand was forced when it only came to an agreement with one of its two unions after several months in negotiations.

The union says there’s another way the Twinkie-maker could have avoided liquidating and laying off all of its 18,500 workers: by paying the executives less money. In a press release, the BCTGM claimed Hostess tripled the pay of CEO Gregory Rayburn up to $2,550,000 as the company prepared to file for bankruptcy.

Hostess’ creditors accused the company in April of manipulating executive salaries with the aim of getting around bankruptcy compensation rules, the Wall Street Journal reported at the time. In response, Rayburn announced he would cut his pay and that of other executives to $1 until Dec. 31 or whenever Hostess came out of bankruptcy.

That was after Hostess had already awarded Rayburn’s top four executives raises of between 75 and 80 percent, even though the company had already hired restructuring lawyers, according to the WSJ.

The situation isn't specific to Hostess. Over the last 30 years, CEO pay grew 127 times faster than worker pay, according to a July report.

Metsfanmax wrote:

Phatscotty wrote:America is already #1 in food donation. Most of it goes to feed Americans

Metsfanmax wrote:Americans are not the ones who need it most. There are hundreds of millions of people in other countries that we should be feeding before Americans, whose poverty is on a completely different level from poverty in undeveloped nations.

Phatscotty wrote:Oops, forgot everything is based on "to each according to their needs" and wouldn't understand Americans helping out their neighbors that they see with their own eyes and have skin in the same game, and expect the help to be redistributed to strangers on the other side of the planet who's government is probably hostile to our own and we are just feeding their soldiers.....

Why is the answer with you Progressives always "take xyz away"?

Metsfanmax wrote:I'm not trying to take anything away from anyone. I want people to take a serious look at the world around them and feel enraged that this still happens in the 21st century. I know that there are around 2 billion people who live on less than $2 of US-equivalent purchasing power per day, and I want to help. I feel morally responsible to help those who I can help without significant cost to myself.

Phatscotty wrote:Yes, you suggested meat be taken away. I'm sure that will happen someday under an advanced planning program through Obamacare, because banning meat would save the government millions on treating heart disease

also, just wondering how that fits in with how I assume your position is on world population. I would guess that you think there are too many people on the planet, especially under the lens of someone who believes in global warming. You do understand that if hunger in the world were eradicated, the population would explode and possibly become an even bigger problem, since the number of mouths to feed would at some point eclipse the levels currently produced. Any thoughts on these " consequences "?

Metsfanmax wrote:Actually, you've got it backwards. In undeveloped nations the fertility rate is quite high; mothers have lots of children because some of them inevitably die young (in sub-saharan africa, more than 10% of children die before they reach age five!), and they need children to work to earn money and grow food for the family. Many developed nations actually have a fertility rate below the replacement level. So, paradoxically, solving world poverty and world hunger would most likely decrease the world's population (which is indeed one of the things I desire to happen).

Phatscotty wrote:I knew it! I think if we solved world hunger, there would instantly be a billion more mouths to feed by the end of the first year. I do see your points partially, and they are good points, but I think the main factor is that access to and production of food is the main driver of population growth.

Phatscotty wrote:Oops, forgot everything is based on "to each according to their needs" and wouldn't understand Americans helping out their neighbors that they see with their own eyes and have skin in the same game, and expect the help to be redistributed to strangers on the other side of the planet who's government is probably hostile to our own and we are just feeding their soldiers.....

Phatscotty wrote:Yes, you suggested meat be taken away. I'm sure that will happen someday under an advanced planning program through Obamacare, because banning meat would save the government millions on treating heart disease

Phatscotty wrote:I knew it! I think if we solved world hunger, there would instantly be a billion more mouths to feed by the end of the first year. I do see your points partially, and they are good points, but I think the main factor is that access to and production of food is the main driver of population growth.

Phatscotty wrote:okay, I want to ask something else.

How much food can you get for $1.25 in China? Laos? Somalia? Guatemala?

Metsfanmax wrote:

Phatscotty wrote:Oops, forgot everything is based on "to each according to their needs" and wouldn't understand Americans helping out their neighbors that they see with their own eyes and have skin in the same game, and expect the help to be redistributed to strangers on the other side of the planet who's government is probably hostile to our own and we are just feeding their soldiers.....

It is indeed human nature to feel more kinship for those around them, who they are close to and possibly see on a regular basis. But that does not justify a moral stance where people are dying of preventable problems and we can be the ones to prevent them, and instead we do nothing. If people are dying and living in extreme poverty, even if they are halfway around the world, should we not help? Should we let this awful state continue because we cannot see them? I don't know how one can justify this. If there were Americans living like those in sub-Saharan Africa, you would have a strong argument. But Americans have a much higher standard of living than those in undeveloped nations, even the Americans under our poverty level. From a moral perspective, I would argue we need to solve world hunger and world poverty as a foremost priority. That is not necessarily exclusive with also helping out those in America, obviously, nor should it be. It would be senseless for a government to abandon its citizens. But doing both would require a significant rethinking of how our government collects and spends money, and it is not a change that can happen quickly.

Phatscotty wrote:Yes, you suggested meat be taken away. I'm sure that will happen someday under an advanced planning program through Obamacare, because banning meat would save the government millions on treating heart disease

Actually, it may very well happen someday, but because of the very same food shortages we are talking about and not by choice. See, for example, this article.

Phatscotty wrote:I knew it! I think if we solved world hunger, there would instantly be a billion more mouths to feed by the end of the first year. I do see your points partially, and they are good points, but I think the main factor is that access to and production of food is the main driver of population growth.

Well, that is true in the sense that as long as we are able to keep producing more food, there will be no natural incentive for global population growth to decline. But the people who run the numbers on this seem to come to the conclusion that population growth is going to continue and eventually outstrip food production increases (in fact, this may already be happening -- the Guardian article talks about this a little bit). In other words, it looks like people are going to continue to have babies even if there's not enough food to put in their mouths. I mean, isn't this what has already happened? We couldn't have gotten to the situation we're in without unchecked population growth. In fact, we may very well have been in a Malthusian scenario if the Green Revolution had not occurred. That held off the issue for a few decades, but population growth hasn't slowed, and we're going to face the problem again in the coming decades.

Since taking steps to end world hunger would end suffering that is occurring now and at least has a chance of slowing population growth (based on the argument I made about how developed nations have lower fertility rates in general), I believe it to be the morally correct choice.

Phatscotty wrote:Can you post a source for that?

World Bank ICP wrote:Purchasing power parity conversion eliminates both these inconsistencies. PPP is defined as the numbers of units of a country’s currency needed to buy in the country the same amounts of goods and services as, say, one US dollar would buy in the United States. They are computed on the basis of data collected in benchmark surveys, which are undertaken usually every five years but sometimes even longer. Statistically, PPPs are expenditure-weighted averages of relative prices of a vast number of goods and services on which people spend their incomes. By eliminating price differences, PPPs yield comparisons based on real quantities of goods and services. As the PPPs are adjusted over time (between surveys) by relative rates of inflation, they also track movements in real quantities over time.

Since one dollar converted at the PPP rate would buy the same amounts of goods and services in every country, it has been possible for the World Bank to estimate the number of people in the world living under “ a dollar a day” or “two dollars a day” . It is not possible to make such estimates on the basis of exchange rate converted values since a US dollar converted at exchange rate does not typically buy the same amounts of goods and services in every country.

thegreekdog wrote:Have you donated time or money to ending world hunger?

I would consider donating 5% of my annual income for one year if certain assurances were made. I'm of the same opinion as Dukasaur in that underdevleoped countries would probably not be able to do much with my 5% (through no fault of their own).

thegreekdog wrote:

Metsfanmax wrote:

Phatscotty wrote:Oops, forgot everything is based on "to each according to their needs" and wouldn't understand Americans helping out their neighbors that they see with their own eyes and have skin in the same game, and expect the help to be redistributed to strangers on the other side of the planet who's government is probably hostile to our own and we are just feeding their soldiers.....

It is indeed human nature to feel more kinship for those around them, who they are close to and possibly see on a regular basis. But that does not justify a moral stance where people are dying of preventable problems and we can be the ones to prevent them, and instead we do nothing. If people are dying and living in extreme poverty, even if they are halfway around the world, should we not help? Should we let this awful state continue because we cannot see them? I don't know how one can justify this. If there were Americans living like those in sub-Saharan Africa, you would have a strong argument. But Americans have a much higher standard of living than those in undeveloped nations, even the Americans under our poverty level. From a moral perspective, I would argue we need to solve world hunger and world poverty as a foremost priority. That is not necessarily exclusive with also helping out those in America, obviously, nor should it be. It would be senseless for a government to abandon its citizens. But doing both would require a significant rethinking of how our government collects and spends money, and it is not a change that can happen quickly.

Phatscotty wrote:Yes, you suggested meat be taken away. I'm sure that will happen someday under an advanced planning program through Obamacare, because banning meat would save the government millions on treating heart disease

Actually, it may very well happen someday, but because of the very same food shortages we are talking about and not by choice. See, for example, this article.

Phatscotty wrote:I knew it! I think if we solved world hunger, there would instantly be a billion more mouths to feed by the end of the first year. I do see your points partially, and they are good points, but I think the main factor is that access to and production of food is the main driver of population growth.

Well, that is true in the sense that as long as we are able to keep producing more food, there will be no natural incentive for global population growth to decline. But the people who run the numbers on this seem to come to the conclusion that population growth is going to continue and eventually outstrip food production increases (in fact, this may already be happening -- the Guardian article talks about this a little bit). In other words, it looks like people are going to continue to have babies even if there's not enough food to put in their mouths. I mean, isn't this what has already happened? We couldn't have gotten to the situation we're in without unchecked population growth. In fact, we may very well have been in a Malthusian scenario if the Green Revolution had not occurred. That held off the issue for a few decades, but population growth hasn't slowed, and we're going to face the problem again in the coming decades.

Since taking steps to end world hunger would end suffering that is occurring now and at least has a chance of slowing population growth (based on the argument I made about how developed nations have lower fertility rates in general), I believe it to be the morally correct choice.

Have you donated time or money to ending world hunger?

I would consider donating 5% of my annual income for one year if certain assurances were made. I'm of the same opinion as Dukasaur in that underdevleoped countries would probably not be able to do much with my 5% (through no fault of their own).

Phatscotty wrote:okay, I want to ask something else.

How much food can you get for $1.25 in China? Laos? Somalia? Guatemala?

Metsfanmax wrote:

Phatscotty wrote:okay, I want to ask something else.

How much food can you get for $1.25 in China? Laos? Somalia? Guatemala?

I used to make the assumption you did, PS: when people quoted numbers about how many people were living on less than $1/day, I knew that one US dollar would purchase a lot more in those nations than it would in the US. When I learned that this assumption was incorrect, and that the estimate of > 1 billion was based on purchasing power parity, I was stunned. It is quite seriously true that for 1.3 billion people around the world, their daily subsistence is based on what you could buy for $1.25 in an American supermarket. You can't buy a lot for that amount of money in such a supermarket. As I pointed out, a two liter bottle of soda costs more than that. Another way to think about it is to take what $1.25 would buy in the US, and convert that to whatever amount of local currency units would buy the same amount of food. The end result is the same. It's explicitly not based on exchange rates, which is what you are thinking of.

I'm such an American that I can hardly even imagine what it's like to live that way, and I've never visited an undeveloped nation that could help me see for myself. It's honestly hard for me to process, given how much relative wealth exists around me. I just know it's bad.

patches70 wrote:I'm not too sure why anybody is blaming much of anyone else, the business died is all. It happens. Lots of factors cause these things to happen, labor costs being one of them. Yeah, it's the Union's fault, it's the changing tastes of the consumers, it's the business cycle and many other things all combining to bring an end to the company. It's like blaming the clouds for raining out your picnic. I suppose you could do that, but it serves no purpose.

On Ebay, seriously, you can find people trying to sell twinkies for outrageous sums of money. A testament to how stupid people are and how little many understand the bankruptcy process. Here, someone is thinks they can sell a single twinkie for $8,000-



That's one of the more crazy things, most are selling (or trying to) for-

three boxes of SEALED Hostess Chocodiles for $89.95 (16 sold so far, LOL)
Rest assured, twinkies will still be sold, just not by Hostess is all.

It's this same misunderstanding that led to the bailout for the auto industry, the mistaken belief that what was being produced by those bankrupt companies would no longer be produced at all. Instead, people believed all the worse lies and so contract law was turned upside down on the basis of mistaken understanding.


Hostess is going out of business and a bunch of people are going to lose their jobs. Meh. It's called Life.

Phatscotty wrote:I just want to explore the reasons the union members walked off the job.

AOG wrote:Isn't Hostess just going to sell the rights to the Twinkie to some other brand?

patches70 wrote:

Phatscotty wrote:I just want to explore the reasons the union members walked off the job.

I have no idea, I'd guess because they weren't making enough money. Now they're making nothing, but it's all good. Now each person can explore other options in life, instead of trying to rely on a dead company.

"Let the dead bury the dead"

AOG wrote:Isn't Hostess just going to sell the rights to the Twinkie to some other brand?

Yes! Anything of value will be liquidated. I'd bet a nickel to a doughnut that Grupo Bimbo will get many of the various trademarks of Hostess. They tried to buy the company outright back in 2006, after all.

Phatscotty wrote:
I can't help but wonder if 99 weeks of unemployment benefits has something to do with it. They will probably take a 20% cut, but I bet that's okay with some of them, if not many of them

Lawrence Garfield wrote:Amen. And amen. And amen. You have to forgive me. I'm not familiar with the local custom. Where I come from, you always say "Amen" after you hear a prayer. Because that's what you just heard - a prayer. Where I come from, that particular prayer is called "The Prayer for the Dead." You just heard The Prayer for the Dead, my fellow stockholders, and you didn't say, "Amen." This company is dead. I didn't kill it. Don't blame me. It was dead when I got here. It's too late for prayers.