The Conservative Cave
Current Events => Economics => Topic started by: bijou on February 23, 2008, 05:04:05 PM
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...The Fairtrade Mark – familiar to anyone who shops in Britain's leading supermarkets – guarantees that producers in developing countries receive a fair price for their goods.
Last year, British consumers spent more than £300million on Fairtrade products.
But the report Unfair Trade claims that the organisation's "positive image appears to rely more on public relations than research".
It adds: * Fairtrade helps only a very small number of farmers while leaving the majority worse off. * It favours producers in better-off nations such as Mexico, rather than poor African countries. * It holds back economic development, paying inefficient cooperative farms and discouraging diversification and mechanisation. * Supermarket chains profit more from the higher price of Fairtrade goods than farmers. * Only a fifth of produce grown on Fairtrade-approved farms is actually purchased at its guaranteed fair price.
Tom Clougherty, policy director of the Adam Smith Institute, says: "At best, fair trade is a marketing device that does the poor little good.
"At worst, it may inadvertently be harming some of the planet's most vulnerable people."
Most damning of all, the report claims that Fairtrade is hurting the poorest group of all in the production process of its goods – the casual labourers hired by farmers to pick the bananas, coffee and cotton.
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=517823&in_page_id=1811
It is fair trade fortnight here and we are all being encouraged to buy overpriced stuff to 'help' the Third World. Fair Trade coffee is all but undrinkable, poor quality coffee at a premium price. Yet again a liberal idea backfires.
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Ma'am, would you pay us the privilege and courtesy of adding this to the ammo forum?
ECONOMICS: Fair Trade Policy Does More Harm Than Good
Or if you prefer, I'll do the legwork...I have the legs for it.
Great find.
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The Law of Unintended Consequences.
Immutable.
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Ma'am, would you pay us the privilege and courtesy of adding this to the ammo forum?
ECONOMICS: Fair Trade Policy Does More Harm Than Good
Or if you prefer, I'll do the legwork...I have the legs for it.
Great find.
Will do.
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Why would these kooks think that such a feel good, liberal, socialistic plan like Fairtrade actually work? Oh, I answered my own question.
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Fair trade coffee cost more anyways. Stupud idea also.
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You didn't actually expect liberals to UNDERSTAND market-based economics, did you?