Food Prices

Re “Officials Shop for a Solution to High Food Prices,” March 22.

I consider this article disgusting, pitiful and unworthy.

Who is this reporter, anyway? Who was his editor? Is it true that neither one knew that the economic system in the USA is based on the law of supply and demand? Why then are they allowed to write for you, and to edit for you?

That system simply recognizes that the seller acts to maximize his profit and the buyer acts to minimize his costs. The interaction between the two is what sets the price at which goods are traded.

If the seller is making an unduly high profit then other sellers will come along to take his business away by undercutting him, price-wise.

Do I see any reference to this in the article? Hell no.

Just look at your lead paragraph or two. Pitiful. Ms. Tostado struggles to carry bags of groceries home from the bodega, for which she has “overpaid” $3.50 out of $15. And why? Because her husband took their car to work. No, dammit. That was because she [didn’t] go shopping when the car was available. Or, otherwise, because she considered [that] she was too affluent to worry about $3.50, more or less.

And I can assure you that there is, in fact, a Costco plus several supermarkets within two or three miles of the location mentioned.

JOHN C. HYSORE, Ventura