Culture Wars
The Gray Lady Channels Marie Antoinette, Or, Let Them Eat Pastel?
by Clay Staggs
Anyone who knows my political leanings will not be surprised to learn that I’m no fan of the New York Times editorial page. Yesterday’s editorial about the price of corn, however, was one of the most astonishing things I’ve ever seen them print.
For anyone who’s not heard about this yet, a bit of background is in order. For years, ethanol made from corn has been pushed as an alternative fuel for cars. However, with gasoline approaching $3 per gallon, and with the abject hysteria in some quarters over alleged human-induced global warming, alternative fuels have taken on a new urgency, and the demand for ethanol has increased, meaning, of course, a greater demand for corn.
What do we (well, those of us who acknowledge free markets, anyway) know is going to happen when demand for ethanol made from corn increases? Surprise, Surprise! The price of corn has gone up. OK, big deal, right? So the bag of Doritos costs a few cents more - so what? That’s all well and good here in the good old USA, but south of the border, it’s a different story.
It seems that in Mexico, there are protests in the streets over the spike in the price of tortillas. According to the AP, “[Mexican] workers earning the minimum wage of about $4 a day could spend a third of their earnings on tortillas for their family.” The article goes on to explain that poor Mexicans get 40% of their protein from tortillas. It’s as much a staple for them, or even more so, than bread is for us. If they can’t afford it, malnutrition is a serious possibility.
This seems very, very bad. The poor are being squeezed by this turn of events. Surely something should be done. Ah, yes, but that inflexible law of supply and demand. It puts the impoverished workers of the developing world at cross-purposes with the zealots of global warming. With whose side will the all-compassionate NYT editorial writers cast their lot?
Since their site is registration required, I’ll reproduce that editorial below:
The current price of corn is $3.23 a bushel, more than half again what it was a year ago, and beginning to bring to mind the record $5.545 a bushel set in July 1996. There are many reasons for this price spurt. The ethanol boom has created a sharp new demand for corn. The Department of Agriculture revised its estimate of the 2006 corn harvest downward by some 200 million bushels because of weather and other factors. There is also a smaller corn reserve on hand than usual — the smallest in a decade — which parallels shortages around the world. Add to this the growing weight of commodities funds investing in agricultural markets, and you have daydreams — or nightmares — of that $5 mark. Yet all this has taken place against the backdrop of three record harvests in a row, a sure sign of how strong the ethanol appetite for corn production is turning out to be. It’s tempting to assume that the effect of sharply higher prices is confined primarily to the agricultural sector. But where corn is concerned, we are all part of the agricultural sector. The historical cheapness of corn has driven it into nearly every aspect of our economy, in the form, most familiarly, of corn syrup. The low price of corn over the past half-century lies at the very foundation of America’s historically (and unrealistically) low food prices. Gratifying our two major appetites — cheap food and cheap gas — used to seem easy because both corn and oil were abundant. Cheap oil helped keep corn prices low because it cost farmers less to run their tractors and combines. But we are entering a new dynamic now. While there has been talk recently about refining ethanol from sources other than corn, that could take a while. So at the moment what we are trying to do is gratify those appetites from the same resource: agricultural land. No matter how high prices go, what will need to change isn’t the amount of corn acreage available or even the size of the enormous harvests we are already getting. What will need to change is the size of our appetites.
Get that? The Mexican poor had just better change the size of their appetites. I guess we know now where the NYT’s priorities are. Keep Al Gore and his acolytes happy, and the peasants can just eat cake, or something.
Posted by Clay Staggs at February 7, 2007 09:13 AM
Clay, very sharp observation…To give the author benefit of the doubt, it doesn’t seem that he has even considered the plight of the Mexican poor while writing his article. Is this the source of your discontent? Or do you believe the author does, indeed, know of the correlation, and ceases to publicly recognize it? Creative title, BTW…
Tim,
Good question. On Feb. 1 (five days before the editorial ran), the NYT published an article on the tortilla marches in Mexico. Its here. Now, since it’s their paper, I’d say it’s fair to charge them with the knowledge of major world events on which they report. What I really think happened is that the NYT editorial writers, whose wont it is to constantly point out the plight of the poor, found another pet issue (global warming) that they deemed more important, and the poor Mexicans and their little tortilla problem went down the memory hole.
And, because they’re the NYT editorial page, they don’t even bother with consistency because they think that no one has a megaphone big enough to call them on it.
While I’m on the subject, the whole idea of “we just have to make do with less” is the worst possible solution to the problem, anyway. It’s totally unAmerican, it sounds defeatist, and nobody likes gloom and doom. It reminds me of Jimmy Carter sitting in the White House wearing that insipid cardigan sweater begging folks to turn down the thermostat.
One of your Elders was concerned about traveling to Cincinatti this week because of global warming, or the lack therof!
There is a quotation that I wish I had (I think it’s Marilynne Robinson) that says something to the effect of liberalism prefered to deal with charity and worthy causes in the abstract but shied away from the individual. This exhibits itself in pushing government “solutions” but not helping in the soup lines and charity hospitals or Mexican peasants.
Global warming has taken on a life of its own. Those really intelligent and knowledgeable Hollywood stars are pushing it and it’s the easiest of political targets, i.e. “That party is not doing enough!”
Ok, Fair enough…I don’t think it is unAmerican to have less— WWII is an excellent example. People did with less metals, gas, butter, etc.— all for a unified and worthy cause. But, (and this helps your point) is the science and specter of global warming worthy of a unified cause of national proportions? I guess I have yet to see Al Gore “treatise” on global warming, but some moderate reviews have said that the science is, at best, unproven, and, at worst, a house of presuppositional psudo-science. I guess I need to do more reading before I offer a strong opinion. Have I ever mentioned that I want to be on your side in the court rooom?
The WWII example is interesting, and may be a rare exception to my rule. I wonder, though, given the advances made in technology and the completely different economic world that we live in, whether there’s any such war that would require such sacrifice.
The fact is that, compared to the 40s even, and certainly before that, we do so much more now with so much less, it’s utterly amazing. We have an army now that is small compared to historical standards. And yet, by conventional warfare standards, it’s clearly the most lethal on the planet.
Civilian life is really no different. Consider how energy inefficient this country was in the 60s and 70s. What was the average gas mileage on a Chevy then? What is it now? How much pollution did cars spew then versus now?
The reason that Carter looked so bad in that cardigan (and, by extension, why the global warming zealots do today) is that they look at the world and humanity as a zero sum game. If they identify an energy shortage as a problem, they reflexively conclude that we must use less. That’s a negative approach. A more positive approach is to tap the ingeniuity of the human mind and say, OK, let’s find more energy or let’s find a way to use what we have in a smarter way (more efficiently) so that we can do all that we want to do. That’s essentially what Reagan said and did. He asserted (I believe correctly) that if the government got out of the way, the free market, driven by human ingenuity, would eventually right the market.
So, really, though I don’t believe that mankind has anything to do with global warming, what gripes me the most about it is that the zealots’ solution is privation, not ingenuity or creativity.
I love the ‘Wood!
Applause to all bloggers herein.
JM