A10 牛奶价格         ==78mins
The following appeared in a letter to the editor of a Batavia newspaper. "The department of agriculture in Batavia reports that the number of dairy farms throughout the country is now 25 percent greater than it was 10 years ago. During this same time period, however, the price of milk at the local Excello Food Market has increased from $1.50 to over $3.00 per gallon. To prevent farmers from continuing to receive excessive profits on an apparently increased supply of milk, the Batavia government should begin to regulate retail milk prices. Such regulation is necessary to ensure both lower prices and an adequate supply of milk for consumers."



Things change over time regardless of the plan we made for it. However, in this part of the letter, the author takes it for granted that the thing, the very diary consumption of Batavia is an exception of timing process, alleging that the local government should implement some measures to regulate the prices and the supply of milk. After close examination as follows, the flaws of this argument would be uncovered. Taking aside the way how the statistics is gathered by the department of agriculture in Batavia, let us pay attention to the statistics.

Above all, according to the report, there are 25% more diary farms than it was 10 years ago. Thus, for the sake of taking no notice of increasing consumption of milk, the author claims that the 25% more milk supply should be eliminated, nevertheless, as a common sense to us, ten years is so long a period that demography may convert from what was before greatly, mostly together with an increase in population, and this would leading to the lack of milk supply. Even though the actual number of the citizens in Batavia does decrease in this period of time, the arguer makes a too hasty conclusion to be convincing, unless providing evidence for the former population and the up-to-date one.

After discussing the demand and supply, then let us take the prices, the result of these two factors into account. There is a true story for us, once upon a time, when I was 10 years old, approximately, the price of the local bus ticket is 0.1 yuan, but now, the same bus ticket acquires at least 1 yuan, and now I am 23. Such increases are common to us, maybe due to economical prosperity or devaluation of money, thus, how can things stay the same as ten years ago in Batavia. It is entirely possible that, on one hand, the comparative price of milk reduces greatly, for instance, 10 years ago, the price of milk per gallon equals to that of steak per kilo, but now when you purchase a gallon of milk, you can use the same amount of money to buy only half a kilo of steak; and on the other hand, when the cost to raise milk cows makes a bigger portion, some deficit may rise resulting from the low price.

Last but not least, whether governments should be involved in this issue is questionable. Maybe these apparent excessive profits, such as 1% more, are not appealing to the authority's attention, and this condition maybe a short-term phenomenon due to the increasing number of immigrants from foreign countries.

On balance, the argument is not durable to close scrutiny, unless, more evidence concerning demographical situation, cost of diary industry and comparative value of milk is provided to bolster this claim, or else, it is absolutely too hurried to recommend the government to regulate the milk industry.

[ 本帖最后由 zxcasdts 于 2008-6-9 18:14 编辑 ]

下午刚写完的，望大家不吝赐教，多多拍砖

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