Cheap eats and other things

There must be something in the air.  A few days ago I was wandering through the web and found an article about the reasons we have become consumers (in The Atlantic) and then last night Mr. Beagles was discussing consumerism.  Maybe he read the same article, but I prefer to think that the BeagleBoys have their fingers on the pulse of humanity and are well on the way of  resolving all social issues.

It's not all beer and skittles, though.  A different article from The Atlantic was discussing the "case against reality," which may throw a monkey wrench in the previous musings (re: objective reality) of Uncle Ken.  I know he subscribes to the magazine so I will await his analysis, but it seemed like a lot of gobbledygook to me.

So, what is it with The Atlantic, anyhow?  I don't agree with all of their analyses but I have come to respect them; they are reasonable and well written, and seem to cover a lot of topics that I am interested in.  Have their marketing consultants decided to zero in on the Urban Geezer demographic?

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For a long time I was under the impression that food in the United States was cheap and plentiful, but there was something I saw quite a while back that changed my mind.  I did a little digging and found it, a pictorial presentation that shows families around the world, what they eat, and how much they spend.  It's an eye-opener to compare and contrast.  There's a family of twelve in Cairo that spends less than $70 a week on food, while a family of four in Germany spends $500.  Both the families and all the food are shown, but the most amazing to me was the family of twelve in Bhutan that spends a whopping $5.03 a week for all of their food.

This boggles my mind.  If I extrapolate correctly, if a family of twelve can be fed for one week then, as a family of one, I should be able to be fed for twelve weeks.  Okay, some of the family members are little kids and older women who won't eat as much as the adult men, but still, it makes me wonder what the hell is going on.  Is packaging and shipping more costly than the food itself?  You can file this under food inequality and see the images here: http://whgbetc.com/hungry-planet.pdf

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Another failed impression I had was that corporate CEOs were the ones making all the big dough.  Wrong again, it's the banking and brokerage industry that hauls in the really big cash.  A few hundred million a year is nothing; there's one guy that made over 3 billion in one year.  What does a hedge fund manager do to earn such an amount?  There must be more to it than sitting at a computer and talking on the phone; the financial system must really be rigged.  This is where I read it, maybe you guys can make more sense of it than I was able to: http://www.emolument.com/career_advice/bank_bonuses_2013