Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Thursday, June 5, 2008

A basket of dollars for a bag of groceries

By Fester



I have written a couple tongue in cheek food inflation posts in the past couple of months as I have noticed things are getting more expensive at the grocery store and when I'm grabbing lunch at work.  Portion sizes are getting a little smaller, more vegetarian options are popping up as meat option replacements at my favorite (and nearby) Indian buffet and getting a good burger is costing a couple of bucks more. 



Barry at the Big Picture has an amazing video from the Secretary of Agriculture on food inflation. 

"Internationally we're looking at a 43% inflation rate in food this year," Ed Schafer, US secretary of Agriculture, told CNBC Tuesday. Schafer said the big driving factor was energy

In middle class America the proportion of our income that goes to food is comparatievly low so while signficant price increases will be noticable, it will not be amazingly painful.  However once you leave the industrialized world middle class, the proportion of an individuals' budget that goes towards food is significant.  Poorer countries have typical individual food budgets of between 30% to 70% of individual income. There is no disposable income cushion that allows for relatively easy substitution between eating the same basket of primarily vegetarian options and anything else other than reducing overall food consumption. This means going from two meals a day to a single meal a day in parts of India to a single meal a day.  This means shifting from complex and nutrient rich carbs to simple and empty carbs.  It means a lot of suffering among the least advantaged.  It also means massive political instability.



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