He is right that people are being exploited somewhere along the chain, but surely the answer is to stop supermarkets making billions in profits rather than making food in an already struggling nation more expensive?
He is right that people are being exploited somewhere along the chain, but surely the answer is to stop supermarkets making billions in profits rather than making food in an already struggling nation more expensive?
Grocery prices are a total of shipping and handling, packaging and cooling, farm labor and store labor, and business profits. Below a certain point, there’s no way the workers are earning
Ultimately, the price of food is an indirect social relation of how much one person’s time can be bought by another person.
The solution to food affordability is price ceilings, public assistance, state-run groceries, universal access to allotments, or some combination of these. Prioritizing low prices feeds in to the capitalists’ framing.
In the very next paragraphs Polanski is quoted in support of free school meals and a £15 minimum wage. He’s not saying affordability is a bad thing, but that this market-mediated instance of it shows a need for change.