> To be clear, "price stability" in this case means a higher price compared to absence of government intervention.

Depends on how it works. There are a few different cases.

One is for a commodity where increased supply and lower cost does not increase demand much. Rare earths are like that. The cost of the metal is a small part of the cost of the finished product. A drop in rare earth prices will not increase motor sales much. So overproduction from multiple sources will crash the price. This is why commodity prices are so volatile, despite relatively constant supply and demand. A slight imbalance in supply and demand produces huge price changes.

Here's the historical price of copper.[1] The price has varied over a 4x range in the last 15 years. 2x in the last 5 years.

Futures trading can help stabilize prices, but too much futures trading relative to the actual commodity can increase volatility.

[1] https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/copper

> I'm all for a country subsidizing food to ensure sufficient domestic production but I am not for pretending it's good for a "price stability" reason.

Price stability itself is a valid goal. Yes, consumers may pay a liiiitle more for their eggs, milk or bread, but the price of the good can be relied upon which is very important for low-income households and their financial planning.

Are you absolutely sure that low prices wouldn't be more important to low income families? It seems like low prices-low income is a better match than slightly high prices-low income.

My understanding of the situation was that low income shoppers are typically extremely keen for a bargain and are quite happy to shop around. And on paper they can just pretend the price is higher than it really is if stability matters that much to their planning.

See my reply to another person raising a similar question. Price discounts are a good thing for consumers, but what particularly sucks is over night price hikes for basic staples.

> Yes, consumers may pay a liiiitle more for their eggs, milk or bread

> very important for low-income households and their financial planning.

Paying more is beneficial for low income households, I see. That looks like expert level mental gymnastics detached from the reality.

This is an argument that you felt bad. Is it an argument that you were worse off? Homeless people tend to have a huge stack of problems and how they feel isn't #1 as I understand it. And while I'd expect it to be a reasonable guide I don't trust the instincts of a homeless person to work out what is in their own best interests when those instincts are saying "systemically push the price of food up, that'll help". Frankly, it sounds like a traumatic experience and the response to the trauma would lead to bad policy.

I don't want to thoughtlessly minimise feeling bad, but between (having more food), (shelter) and (feeling good), society would be doing better to prioritise in that order when it comes to trying to help. We're talking about a situation where you have 20 cents; a 2% average reduction in the price of butter means you get around 2% more butter and associated calories. If we trade off price increases for higher average prices you'd literally just have had less butter to eat. Those differences will add up over a month, even if sometimes there is a tough shopping trip.

If the price stability thing is for poor families there are many better policies than pushing up the average price of food. Like pushing the price of food down, then finding ways to communicate what is cheapest this week. Ie, solving the "You can only find that out when you are in the store" part.

you must not be buying eggs lately

I'm European, we don't hold chickens in such absurdly large farms as Americans, my eggs come from the farm next door...