Desperate Measures? Ok

A 2008 Dodge Ram 2500 STARTS at over $37,000. I’m willing to bet he paid close to that if not more when he bought his. So a few years ago he was apparantly making enough to purchase a $40,000 vehicle now he isn’t. You have to adjust with the times not the other way around. I have no real problem with skipping the middle man, but in doing so you’re affecting X number of people in other parts of the industry. I also don’t have a problem with the demanding a fair price for their product but they certainly didn’t have any problem charging through the roof when they had the chance now did they? No, they sat back and charged as much as they could, bought their big trucks, nice houses, quads and all the other toys that the times were so fortunate to give them. The whole thing is a big cycle, eventually they’ll be back to getting the prices they’re used to for their catch but until then I don’t want to hear about how horrible they have it in the world when so many other industries have it just as bad an/or worse and still manage to go out there and make it work. And trust me, if I could find a lobster for $5 a lb where I am I’d jump all over it so quick your head would spin.

yes a 2008 ram does cost that much however you don’t know he bought it new, you don’t know what year it is and you don’t know he has a mansion with a garage filled with toys. And the Laws of supply and demand still apply to lobster. The truck in question, regardless of price at the time of purchase or whether he bought it new or used is a DODGE RAM…a working mans truck, not a hummer or an Escalade. its part of the cost of doing business. when you fish lobster you need a truck…period. Its just a fact of life that heavy duty work trucks cost that much. I am sure his boat cost sever times that so why no issue with that?and these fishermen are not looking for people to feel bad for them, they are just making sure they are going to see a return on their investment ( licence, fuel, crews wages, equipment etc ). They are simply trying to bring their product to market at a price that will be profitable…..ya know…like every other business that exist.

Fishermen don’t set the prices –the buyers do. Buyers also decide which market is most profitable for THEM by adding as much markup as the traffic will bear and selling to a market that will pay that price. Buyers buy lobster from fishermen at the lowest cost they possibly can, then sell it at the highest price they can get from supermarkets, restaurants, etc. who ALSO mark up. So if a fisherman is getting $2.25 /lb (which is what the buyers are apparently suggesting now as opposed to closer to $4/lb in recent times), why shouldn’t a lobster fisherman get in his truck and drive his catch to a highway or parking lot and sell it for $5/lb direct to the consumer instead of us spending $7-$8/lb in the supermarket?On the “poor guy has a great big shiny truck” debate – in past years a lobsterman could easily make upwards of $60k/year, (on paper) which means gouging banks and finance companies will FINANCE them for stuff. Therefore, they are borrowing against the money they are expecting to make, and said banks and finance companies are taking a chance on them. He may end up getting his big shiny truck repo’d which will help screw him out of his business.

I have a grip, and I’m from a lobster/fishing community. I’m not generalizing this one guy in the paper, he was just a jumping off point. And as I already said my issue isn’t with them selling directly to the consumer but that because they’re seeing a down turn in their business now after years of upside they think they should be pitied much like the automotive industry. I love how easy some people find it to get personal on here and accuse others of being uniformed when they are just as uninformed to begin with.

Through my work we get a %75 discount at Creative Basics….if we get that sort of discount and they still make a profit it kind of makes you wonder.

More asked ” I understand there is some mark up… but that’s nearly a 150% mark up ! ! ! ! …IS this the same for every product we buy at a grocery store?”Um, yeah – much the same for everything you buy everywhere. Ever been to an outlet, wholesale, or discount store? If they make enough profit to stay afloat charging 1/2 the price of retail, of COURSE retail prices are inflated…

The “green shit” isn’t shit, it’s tomalley(lobster liver). Sooo tasty, especially in bisque or a sauce. You just have to make sure you don’t eat more than 2 of them per day.

Can’t Smell the Rat? That’s incredibly intelligent, clever, quick witted and relevent. Once again, I didn’t hear a single fisherman say that the escalating lobster prices should be regulated because it isn’t fair to charge so much to the consumer for this product. If that had of been case I would stand behind them %100 to fight for a more competitive price in todays market. But they didn’t do that so now I have no problem gouging them for cheap lobster (if I was still somewhere where you could get cheap lobster). As I previously mentioned chances are this will do a 180 and some point down the road they’ll be laughing all the way to the bank again, should we expect to get any pity from them when we’re paying $35 for a lobster again? I highly doubt it. Not to defend the “Corporate Fat Cat” either, but to assume that they’ve never lifted a finger and don’t know what hard work is beyond “uninformed and way off base”. What happened? Did they graduate high school, walk down to the local pool hall where some random dude asked him if he wanted the job, and once he took the job all he had to do was sit in his nice big office playing solitaire all day? Yeah, that sounds pretty realistic. They certainly never worked at all to get where they’re at.I’m also not discounting the amount of work or effort it takes to run/own a boat. Maybe you didn’t read the part about growing up in a fishing community.

Scott, I’ll take a guess. Expecting the farmer or fisherman to also market their product is like running several different businesses. Imagine if you knew how to farm but you couldn’t be successful at it unless you also had the skills and facility to be a marketer, distributor and/or retailer. All of a sudden your business is subject to a bunch of policy, law and standards formers don’t usually and shouldn’t have to concern themselves with. Farmers / fishermen are just good at what do and capitalism is designed to let them. I agree, if I were a farmer I’d likely try to sell my wares directly but if I’m a farmer producing tons and tons of product how could I spend even a minute of time or any of my resources on any other business? Lets face it… we can be really good at one thing or spread ourselves out to be mediocre (or utter failures) at many things.

Thanks Kay, that is so simple. I should have thought of that. What about some sort of marketing board that actually has the Farmers and Fishermen’s best interests in mind? Probably something like that in existence, but if there is it is not working as it should.

Part of the problem is that we’ve grown into a society in which farmers are expected to grow thousands of one crop in order to live off it because they are then somewhat forced into selling them to a middle man for far less than they’re worth to the consumer so that the middle man can make money selling them to us. If Farmers grew say, 500 tomatoe plants, and then sold them to the consumers for what we’d pay for them, maybe 2.99lb they could easily live off that. But now that they have to go through the middle man, because thats what we’ve accustomed them to do, they only make 0.50lb so they then have to grow 10x the amount in order to make the same amount of money. We’ve gotten used to this because we don’t want to have to drive 30 mins out of the city to get tomatoes, we want to drive 5 minutes to the grocery store and get them. And if it’s not tomatoe season, we still want to have BLT’s so we need to have them year round.

I think the main concern and point of this post is not insulting or anything like that. It’s merely a debate that a consumer has. Lobster over the summer was at $10.99 a lb. Lobster fishermen are nova scotians and they knew how expensive it was being sold at stores. I persoanlly know someone in Sambro who’s neighbour is a lobster fisherman. She’s an older lady and she attempted several time to buy lobster directly from him, and he refused. Lobster fishermen always knew that we suffered here and Lobster was really a commodity in NS. Instead of helping us out, they decided we’ll sell it the US, and gouge NS. Now they’re asking the consumers for help because Lobster is dropping in price, simply because the US doesn’t want to buy it to try and save money. So they’re trying to sell it at a lower price than normal to nova scotians. I’m all for buying directly from the fishermen and cutting out the middle man, but the fishermen should have thought about that before they refused to sell to that old lady directly. I persoanlly feel their pain, because I know how it feels to have your hours cut at a job, but at the same time, they shouldn’t have burnt bridges from the start. Had they taken care of their own people, their people would have taken care of them. It’s hard for people to see it from that perspective, but that’s the reality of it. It’s the principle behind it. It’s not about Lobster fishermen being bad, it’s about greed and gouging. Now they need help, well I’m sorry, but I’d rather keep my $5. I tried to buy Lobster in Sambro back in the summer and they were looking for $8 a pound. I couldn’t have lobster back then, well you can’t have my money now! simple as that!regarding the over-priced Items, well from time to time you’ll find a good deal in a flyer from brick about how if you bought a mattress set that they’ll throw in a 42″ LCD HD TV for free. How overpriced is that Matress, or that TV that they’re giving away that TV. I went to bedroom Depot in bayers lake to check out foam mattresses. Memory foam ones start at 1500 for queen. I checked Jysk in dartmouth crossing, same make of mattress, which had the same logo I saw the weekend before was at $650 for queen, and that’s the original and not sale price. How over-priced is that mattress that jysk can still make a profit. If that’s not bad enough, imagine the amount of money Bedroom Depot is making.On wednesday, a 10K gold necklace was priced for $1300 (10K is so crappy that it’s not on the market in a lot of countries, instead they carry a min of 18k) now it’s on sale for $650, and I don’t think it’s worth that even. Gold on the market keeps going down yet in NS the price of gold keeps increasing. Oil dropped today, trading at 36.22 a barrel. Gas was at 59.9 last time oil was that price. Today gas goes up. boggles the mind doesn’t it.