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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: elmatador who wrote (142800)	7/30/2018 1:50:30 PM
From: Elroy Jetson	Respond to of 217830

Farms are still becoming increasingly automated, making goods cheaper. Much vegetable production has moved into greenhouses which eliminates the need for pesticides, increases the rate of growth, less fertilizer, and makes mechanization even easier. As little as illegal farm workers were paid, mechanization is cheaper still. Before WW-II, people around the word used to spend twice the current percentage of their income buying food. But that has dropped, even as people now buy much of their food in restaurants already prepared. In the US grocery margins have dropped as the landscape becomes increasingly vertically integrated with the addition of European grocers like German grocer Aldi-Nord operating as Trader Joes, Aldi-Sud as Aldi, Lidl. The only grocer which made a hash of it was Tesco - and now Amazon plays with Whole Foods. I grow vegetables for fun, but the price at Trader Joes one block away makes it an economic absurdity. Even Filet Mignon is a mere $19 a pound as Trader Joes buys on long-term contracts giving them a huge price advantage. Old village plots in Ireland which once barely provided those who farmed them enough to eat are now lawns with playground equipment as food production moved to cheaper places. It's been an amazing change.

To: elmatador who wrote (142800)	7/30/2018 2:30:48 PM
From: Elroy Jetson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 217830

Fuel cost, the largest cost in transport, has been the biggest cost reduction in *air transport* which has declined in price like food - and yet another cost reduction in food delivery. Aircraft now use less than half the fuel per passenger mile than they used in the 1950s. This is mostly due to increased engine efficiency with the rest coming from reduced air-frame weight and improved aerodynamics. - theicct.org In the process, the number of passenger flights has increased dramatically, which combined with computerization, has created huge economies of scale which weren't possible before. Regulated prices went away when the airline industry no longer needed it. Deregulation temporarily worsened safety, but improved design and regulated maintenance practices have also made air travel exponentially safer than when I flew 2 or 3 times a day for business in the 1980s. Note this chart is the absolute number of fatalities annually. If shown per passenger mile, fatalities have become nearly zero.