global economy

[paul123456]

Hello there ,

been quite on this topic so here we go .

Global economy and VALUE FOR MONEY.
Just bought 3 garlics from Aldi for 1 Euro ! Wow very cheap , but is this what we really want ?
Looking on the label it says it is imported from China , 3 garlic bulbs for a euro ,
some poor farmer must have planted them and watered , harvested them ,
some trader must have bought them
some wholesaler must have sorted and packed them
some shipping company sent them to Rotterdam in a 40 foot container
some dutch company distrubuted them
some transport company shifted them to Germany
some wholesaler sold them to Aldi
Aldi made at least 25% profit otherwise they do not sell them

so how little does the chinese grower , or even worse the poor BU@#*% get for all the hard work ?
Is this the global economy we want ?

As for being ss , does this tend to go the same way ?
Like not wanting to pay , or wanting the supplier a decent wage or price for the produce they supply .
Where is the border line ?

regards ,

Paul

ps no knickers in a twist

[MKG]

Some poor German farmer must have planted them and watered , harvested them ,
Some trader must have thought about buying them ...

... and then thought "hang on, I can get these cheaper from a Chinese grower by buying via a Netherlands distributor. They'll be cheaper, and I'll get a bigger profit".

Sadly, the way of the world. And the trader has a point. Could it possibly be true that European growers/manufacturers/producers have successfully priced themselves out of the market?

Mike

[Andy Hamilton]

Well being self sufficient I think is very different. Personally, I make savings by growing, foraging and homebrewing etc and these savings might go to buying a good cut of pork from a local butcher, supplied by a local farmer or I might buy more ethical milk.

This means I don't buy the cheap stuff from Aldi and am not supporting the poor working conditions. But this isuse is slightly more complex, as what happens to the workers when they are not earning? I guess we just have to do what we can.

[Odsox]

Another thing to take on board is that you can't compare the cost of living in Europe for our local farmers and the cost of living in China.
The yuan is kept artificially low just so that the Chinese can export at ridiculously low prices.

The Chinese are doing to the world what Te$co et al did to the UK high street grocers

[grahamhobbs]

The system neither seems sensible or fair, but there is a logic behind it all, dog eat dog, each capatalist trying to out do the others, by making and selling things more efficiently and more cheaply, including obviously by reducing wages. Thus it comes about that it becomes too expensive to make things in the West because the third world can be exploited to make things cheaper, by paying a fraction of the wages.
In this country I read we produce about 50 - 60% of our food, but 80% of that comes from just 20% of the available agricultural land. So 80% is seriously under utilised, economically unviable, small farmers going bust and swathes given over to grazing riding horses.
Before I went to the Third world, I was under the impression that people were poor because they had nothing to do, far from it, many places are buzzing with activity, people working like crazy, everyone desperate to make a living or rather to keep starvation from the door. Into this comes the West and sets up a factory and offers wages just a fraction above starvation level. Meanwhile a local corrupt government is maintained to keep a lid on things and the people quiet.
It is a sick and horrendous system, the Victorian workers and slums have been exported to the Third World. The bankers make millions out of this system and up until now, we have been given a tiny share of this to keep us quiet. But the world is changing fast, the world is in debt to China, India is rising fast....and we are promised savage cuts to maintain the bankers in the extravagance that they are used to.

[paul123456]

Hello there ,

yes I suppose everybody is right .An aqaintance of mine does business in China , says a factory worker is happy with €100 a month . To live a year China to a high standard € 5000 will get you far .
When he is in a traffic jam in Hong Kong there are more Maybachs and Lamborgini's to be seen than in any euopean city .

China is the new owner of Volvo ! the production and R&D will be kept in Europe , for the next 5 years , probably until they stop getting financial support , then they move production to ....China or even a cheaper
country like Europe , maybe at that time we will be working happily for € 100 a week .Want to make a bet that China will buy a German car brand within 5 years .

But look on the bright side , Volvo wil be able to sell cars , alone in China round 500 million !We Europeans
will have alot of work on , it is looking good for us .

The European stock markets closed LOWER today , bet the €750 billion was spent ,maybe the governments
will cough up another €750 B this weekend ( money yet to be taken from us ).

Looking forward to a hard working weekend in the garden , and a nice back ache because of that ,

regards ,

Paul

[seasidegirl]

One thing that always bothers me is the way that as a country we import so many products because they are so much cheaper but then as a country it costs us so much.

Recently I re-watched the t.v. programme The Victorian Kitchen garden and was amazed by the vast numbers of people employed in horticulture and agriculture in those days. Also the range and quality of produce was so extensive and impressive. The cost of laboour was, I think, perceived as one of the main problems but the people who worked to produce this food also ate the food which was seasonal and fresher and healthier.

But now there are so few jobs in these industries and I don't think it has to be this way. When we have so many unemployed, especially young people, and so many more than the official figures show, why cant investments be made in training them to produce our food.

So many people and families on welfare for various reasons who could be better paid, healthier and happier if we learned again, as a country, how to feed ourselves.

Going back to the original question, why on earth do we need to import garlic anyway? We don't. Wouldn't the Chinese people be better off growing their own food too?

[Flo]

The reason why the Victorians employed so many people in agriculture was really a twofold thing. Manpower was plentiful - that was cured by the loss of life in World War 1 leaving the land without the staff. Likewise, economics changed and big estates could no longer afford to employ large numbers of labourers. My step father was from generations of farmers and had seen the changes resulting from both two war and the resulting running down of the large estates that had employed so many people. He was very interesting on the subject when I wistfully said it must be brilliant to work in a walled garden of a large house as a teenager in the late 1950s.

The result of the lack of manpower was the development of modern mechanisation in farming. Nowadays contractors with a specialist machine will go do the ploughing on a number of farms, whilst someone else will come in to shear, combine harvest, bail.

Small farmers are going out of business because the way that the pricing structures for their products are set up makes it uneconomical to run small scale enterprises. We buy cheap food from countries with cheap labour where there are fewer options for other employment. It would be a terrible shock to us if we had to revert to growing most of our own food with minimum wages to be paid raising costs. And I'm not sure how many people realise that farming can be a 24/7 job 365 days a year. Milk the cows and feed the stock before you get to open your Christmas presents - been there, done that.

We've moved away from the land and a move back would be a nasty shock to those who have no experience at all of what it involves. We've also moved away from eating what we can grow and produce in the UK because other countries have found that we have a market for their goods. Strawberries on Christmas Day? Not UK ones. And anyone who can stand a week or five picking daffodils or strawberries, raspberries or whatever crop is there to be picked whatever the weather, come hail, snow, heat, wind and rain, is a better person than me. Some things are still hard manual labour. Just remember that when you buy those strawberries, blue berries, raspberries, daffodils, roses ....

[seasidegirl]

Flo, I agree with everything you say.

My own background comes from all areas of food production and growing. My granddad was trained in the Victorian system at a property now owned by the National Trust. He then went on to work as a gardener on a small estate which meant that he was provided with a cottage (beautiful) while he produced much food from the walled garden and greenhouses.

His employers were very wealthy but they invested this wealth in food production and local jobs because they valued fresh food but more importantly local community. There are still plenty of very wealthy people though arent they. The sort of people who will spend £1000 on a handbag or ten grand on some silly watch could easily afford to invest in growing and local community but why would they bother?

The people who now live in the big house where my granddad live now have contract gardeners in to keep things tidy and the gardeners cottage is rented out and earns them around £2000 a month in rent.

I think this is very relevant to a lot of our problems. Greed over property values has robbed us of all our original values.

[MKG]

Absolutely spot on.

Our garden - though not entirely in vegetable production - produces what we want and I spend a great deal of time in it. If it was entirely under veg/fruit, we'd probably be completely self-sufficient in that area (apart from grain). But I'd never get out of it. Now, if I was doing that for someone else instead of for us, it would be a full-time job and I would expect a decent wage. OK - let's get rid of high-pay skews in the data and be a bit generous and ungreedy - I'd want £20,000 per year. That's roughly £400 per week for the employer, which is a hefty veg. bill. On top of that, of course, the employers would have to pay their NI whack and then ensure that I was properly versed in Elf & S (well-documented), then there'd be ... oh, you get the gist. Taking everything into account, it would probably cost £500 per week - which is very expensive potatoes.

Or I could say to those people "Look, don't employ me. Just give me a contract to supply your vegetables - it'll cost you £200 per week - and I'll see to everything. Oh, and you get a lovely green lawn". Then I get on the phone to the Netherlands.

Simples. If we demand a society with a fair pay structure and good welfare arrangements, we simply price ourselves out of certain markets and begin to exploit other societies in which low pay and ancillary expenses still exist. I'm not an advocate of this, but it's a fact of life. Of course, the opposite is true - if we accept lower wages and a less-enveloping welfare system, we would be able to reinstate all of those manual jobs we've lost.

We have a choice to make - I wonder what it will be?

Mike

[seasidegirl]

Of course, the opposite is true - if we accept lower wages and a less-enveloping welfare system, we would be able to reinstate all of those manual jobs we've lost.

We have a choice to make - I wonder what it will be?

Mike

Mike,

I don't think we have much of a choice with the budget deficit. I'm sure that the UK is effectively broke. I think with the forthcoming budget jobs will go, wages will fall and the welfare state will shrink as well.

Somebody mentioned that some of the jobs we are talking about are pretty difficult. Harvesting flowers and vegetables for example. When you look back in history I think men who mined coal, and men, women and children who worked in factories or cotton mills, would have jumped at the chance to be out picking sprouts or daffs.

I've done hard physical work in my time, as had my husband, but I'd choose that anytime (as long as fit enough) over working in a call centre for example. How unhealthy and stressful that occupation must be.

Going back to property values. I know somebody, a retired person, who tried to sell her house recently. Having been told by an Estate Agent that the house was worth four times what she paid for it twenty years ago she declined the only offer which was twenty thousand lower. The money from the sale was needed not just to buy an affordable next home but also to pay off the equity release and interest that had been used to travel the world. Also she expected cash to hand around to all the family and a little nest egg for home improvements in the new home and further holidays. I think each property owning generation (or many of them) has effectively borrowed their expensive lifestyles from the next generation.

If the cost of living (and particularly of a home) were reduced then we wouldn't need the level of wages that we do.

[the.fee.fairy]

I live and work in China at the moment, and the cost of living is phenomenally low!

To rent a room in one of the teachign apartments here (admittedly, this is subsidised by the University is 100rmb, or £10 a month. I earn 4000rmb (£400) a month, and i can easily save at least 2000rmb (£200) a month. My average weekly shop costs about 150rmb (£15), and that's an extravagant westerner shopping, not an average chinese shopping, they usually spend about 50rmb (£5) a week.

To eat out is extremely cheap. I can get a meal of 4 dishes of food and as much rice as i can eat for about 30rmb (£3), and that's enough to feed 3 people.

The food here is very cheap. The supermarkets are the expensive places to buy, the farmer's markets are extremely cheap. Last week, i bought a half kilo of some pork fried nuggety things with extra flavour, and it cost me 12rmb (£1.20). These fed me for 2 meals and then i cooked the rest for a party for 6 people.

The garlis is really cheap for a supermarket in the UK because if you told a chinese person that you bought 3 garlics for 10rmb (£1) they would look at you in shock and amazement, ebcause 3 garlics here is about 1jiao (10p). They would be asking where to send their excess garlic to make 10rmb for 3!

[selfsuffclub]

Look at it this way: you wouldn't pay that euro, that Chinese farmer would be left with nothing. They're doing OK because they're self sufficient, it's the modern society we need to worry about. Most Americans can't / won't grow their own garlic. If they don't BUY it, they starve.

Is the population explosion leading to some nasty anomalies or what? :)