Goddamn it union workers, you've gone and done it now. **** where you sleep why don't you. You forced yourself and your fellow 18,500 workers out of a job and forced an American icon to be lost forever. Twinkies, Ho-Ho's, Ding Dongs, Sno *****, all gone!!! Hostess made a mean coffee cake as well. ******* greedy bastards, they probably already made twice what they were worth. Though honestly I have no idea what the union dispute was over.

Oh, and Wonder bread is another lost icon.

 

Oh nose!

 

Not that I particularly liked any of their snack cakes more than any other over sweetened, over processed snack cake, but still. It's pretty ******* iconic, the products they made.

 

oh noes, how will we ever go into a sugar coma again?

 

Actually, upon further reading, seems that the company is only being liquidated. I'm sure someone will buy it and keep it alive, with non union workers this time...

I still find it amazing that a company of this size, in this day and age could just be gone like that. You would seem with all of the government support all of these useless companies get, they could have had some sort of safety net...? I don't really know or care, just found the news sort of interesting. 18,500 more employees to further saturate the market and make jobs that much harder for some people to find.

 

Well when the zombie apocalypse comes, Tallahassee will really never get his beloved Twinkies...

 

Won't somebody please think of the children?

 

Eh, can't really blame them. How long do you think Hostess was going to keep running anyway? Take a pay cut now so they can just lay you off next year when they file for bankruptcy again?

Besides, our free-trade agreements were far more damaging to the confectionery industry than unions could ever be.

 

You think Chinese labor killed the Twinkie?

Open your eyes, man. Once the US accepted the rule of a central bank and abandoned the gold standard in the early 20th century, the demise of our snack foods industry was inevitable. I'm amazed they managed to hold on this long with nothing but worthless fiat money to work with. The soft drink industry isn't far behind.

 

No, it has more to do with the sugar tariffs that tripled the price of sugar overnight.

I know because my family owns a candy factory in Chicago, and have since moved all but the sugar-free production over to China. Not because of labor costs (though obviously that helps).

Now the price of sugar is going up in China, so they are looking elsewhere now, I forget where.

 

And what do you think CAUSED the price of sugar to increase?

The Federal Reserve bank.


How can you people not see that EVERYTHING which goes wrong is the fault of the Federal Reserve?

Stub your toe? Blame Bernacke.

Neighbor's dog shitting in your lawn? Blame Bernacke.

Car won't idle on right on cold mornings? Blame Bernacke.

Got Herpes? Blame Hustler. Then blame Bernacke.

 

I have serious doubts that workers desiring a living wage and reasonable benefits is the reason for hostess to declare bankruptcy, makes a nice scapegoat however.
I hope they will be replaced with smaller companies making tasty treats with locally grown and less processed ingredients.

 

Ah, I got you.

Well **** Ben Bernake for forcing us to buy US sugar (which by the way the US can't actually meet it's own demands for sugar). Also **** him for pushing Ethanol as an alternative fuel despite its utter uselessness for everything besides high-boost cars, which also raised the price of corn syrup so we couldn't even just use more corn syrup rather than sugar.

 

I suspect you can blame the corn lobby for sugar tariffs. I’m sure they are also working with Monsanto to make GMO high fructose corn syrup as addictive as Tobacco. Profit at all costs.

 

The Federal Reserve secretly controls the corn industry.


On a more serious note however:


How the hell do you go bankrupt selling sugary snacks to fat people with poor impulse control?

I mean, that's almost a joke. Like the common expressions "It's as easy as selling cold beer to people in hell" or "It's like calling the inbound shipping department at a hobby and craft store in Reno."


I'm going to start using that expression. "Techsalvager is such a retard, he couldn't figure out how to make money selling Twinkies to fat people."

 

What? Where... I want to visit and reap some free MT candy.

 

Unions didn't kill that company, human nature and greed killed it.

Years ago land owners and large business owners abused their power and greedily abused their employees. Therefore unions were born.

Unions gained power and greedily abused their employers.

As long as humans are involved in this process their inherent greed will cause it to succeed and then subsequently fail.

 

Triple the price of sugar overnight, and then have US producers fail to meet demand anyway! It's not that hard. Oh yeah also obviously the price of corn syrup has gone through the roof also.

 

I understand the supply-side constraints.

What I don't understand is why Hostess cannot simply pass those costs along to the consumer. It's not like their target demo is going to stop buying Twinkies just because the price went up by 20 cents.

Snack-food production is not a regulated market. There are no price controls. Manufacturers may elevate prices in response to increased production cost, and then observe the resultant shift in demand. This is how capatalism works. (Listen to me, I sound like friggin' Jason...)

 

Haha, sorry. Anything having to do with corn or sugar prices always rustles my jimmies.