Excess in one place nearly always means shortage elsewhere. This is no exception:
Mexico is in the grip of the worst tortilla crisis in its modern history. Dramatically rising international corn prices, spurred by demand for the grain-based fuel ethanol, have led to expensive tortillas. That, in turn, has led to lower sales for vendors such as Rosales and angry protests by consumers.
The uproar is exposing this country’s outsize dependence on tortillas in its diet — especially among the poor — and testing the acumen of the new president, Felipe Calderón. It is also raising questions about the powerful businesses that dominate the Mexican corn market and are suspected by some lawmakers and regulators of unfair speculation and monopoly practices.
Tortilla prices have tripled or quadrupled in some parts of Mexico since last summer. On Jan. 18, Calderón announced an agreement with business leaders capping tortilla prices at 78 cents per kilogram, or 2.2 pounds, less than half the highest reported prices. The president’s move was a throwback to a previous era when Mexico controlled prices — the government subsidized tortillas until 1999, at which point cheap corn imports were rising under the NAFTA trade agreement. It was also a surprise given his carefully crafted image as an avowed supporter of free trade.
Yeah, well, I guess he gets that you can support free trade all you want, but if nobody votes for you because they’re starving, then it don’t mean jack.
So yet another band-aid fails to stop the cultural hemmorhaging of oil dependence because Living. Out of balance. Can’t. Work. Gosh, if these quick fixes keep making bigger problems, we might eventually have to resort to something drastic like creating sustainable local neighborhoods and work near home.
wonder what this will do to the flow of illegals?
Not that I’m against it altogether but it should be interesting to see if there is an increase
If living out of balance can’t work (and I agree that it can’t), and if all the world’s people aspire to a first-world living standard (and I think most of them do) –
then there are probably N times too many people on Earth already, for N somewhere between 2 and 100.
This is such a gorilla in the room that it is never, ever mentioned.
Well, at least Calderon didn’t say
“let them eat pan dulce.”