What is rationing? This is the controlled distribution of limited resources, goods or services, or the artificial understatement of demand. Rationing revises the size of the diet, which is a permitted part of the resources allocated for a day or some other period of time. There are many forms of this control, and in Western civilization people experience some of them in everyday life without realizing it.
Causes
Rationing is often carried out to maintain prices below equilibrium, determined by the process of supply and demand in the free market. Thus, such a process can complement control over the value of items or services. And yet, what is rationing? An example of a process in the face of rising prices took place in various countries where the volume of gasoline was controlled during the energy crisis of 1973.
The reason for setting the value lower than the market would understand could be that there is a shortage that would lead to a very high market price. This arrangement of affairs, especially if necessary, is undesirable for those who cannot afford them. However, traditional economists argue that high prices help to reduce the loss of scarce resources, and also stimulate the production of more.
What is rationing?
Such a process using food brands (coupons) is only one of the types of non-price distribution. For example, scarce foods can be rationed using queues. Today it can be observed in amusement parks, where you need to pay an admission price, and then make any trip "for free." In addition, in the absence of tolls, access to roads is also determined in order of priority.
Authorities that introduce rationing and pricing often have to deal with goods that are illegally sold on the black market.
Civilian distribution
In wartime, such rationing was introduced for ordinary people, which made it possible to provide the army with the necessary food, while not forgetting about the population.
For example, coupons were provided to each person, allowing him to purchase a certain amount of provisions every month. Rationing often includes food and other necessities for which there is a shortage, including materials intended for military operations. This, for example, such as rubber tires, leather shoes, clothing and fuel.
Rationing principles
Food and water rationing may also become necessary during an emergency, such as a natural disaster or terrorist attack. The Federal Agency has developed rationing recommendations for food and water supplies when there are no replacements. According to standards, each person should have at least 1 liter of fluid per day or more for children, nursing mothers and patients.
Origin
Military sieges often led to a shortage of food and other basic supplies. In such circumstances, the diets allocated to a person are often determined by age, gender, race or social status. During the siege of Lucknow (part of the Indian uprising of 1857), a woman received three quarters of the diet that the man acquired, and only half were satisfied with the children. During the siege of Ladysmith in the early stages of the Boer War in 1900, white adults took the same food rations as soldiers, while children only half. There was much less food for Indians and blacks.
The first modern budgeting systems were introduced during the First World War. In Germany, suffering from the effects of the British blockade, the system was introduced in 1914 and subsequently expanded steadily as the situation worsened. Although Great Britain did not suffer from food shortages, since the sea lanes remained open for import, panic purchases towards the end of the war caused the calculation of rationing first for sugar and then meat. They say that for the most part it was good for the health of the country, through "equalizing the consumption of basic foodstuffs."
In the Russian Empire, the war demanded a centralized food supply of the 15 millionth army and a number of provinces. In August 1915, a year after the outbreak of war, the empire government was forced to take a number of non-market measures - a “Special Food Conference” was established with the authority to establish, at first, marginal and then firm purchase prices, to requisition food.
Since the spring of 1916, a number of provinces introduced a card system for food (for sugar, since sugar producing plants in Poland were in the zone of occupation and military operations).
1929–1935
In 1929, the liquidation of the limited market economy that existed in the USSR between 1921 and 1929 led to a shortage of food and the spontaneous introduction of technical rationing in most Soviet industrial centers. In 1931, the Politburo introduced a unified system for the distribution of basic goods.
Rationing was applied only to people employed in state enterprises and to members of their families. Social categories such as people without political rights were deprived of a diet. The rationing system was divided into four rates, which differed in the size of the grocery basket, and lower levels did not allow to receive such basic products as meat and fish. The standard existed until 1935.
The Second World War
During this period, diet stamps and coupons were often used. These were redeemable coupons, and each family was given a certain amount depending on the number of people, the age of the children, and income. The Ministry of Food improved the rationing process in the early 1940s so that the population would not go hungry when imports were strictly limited and local production suffered because of the large number of men participating in the war.
At this time, the research work of Elsie Widdowson and Robert McCans was founded at the Department of Experimental Medicine at the University of Cambridge. They worked on the chemical composition of the human body and the nutritional value of various types of flour used to make bread. Widdowson also studied the effects of baby food on human growth. They recognized the effects of a lack of salt and water, and compiled the first tables to compare various nutritional values of foods before and after cooking. Their book, McCance and Widdowson, became known as the Bible of a nutritionist and formed the basis of modern thinking about food.
The first controlled product in the United States was gasoline. On January 8, 1940, bacon, butter, and sugar were normalized. This was followed by ration schemes for meat, tea, jam, biscuits, breakfast cereals, cheese, eggs, lard, milk, canned and dried fruits. The rules of rationing also befell the USSR. From 1941 to 1947, the country could not recover after the war, so the card structure was preserved. Many people grew their own vegetables, inspired by the highly successful motivation of the government.
Restructuring
The last, 12th five-year plan, which fell for this period, ended in uncontrolled economic degradation, which partly led to different methods of rationing in all Union republics.
Limit money
Perestroika produced a unique type of rationing. In 1990, the “Consumer Card” was introduced in Belarus, which is a sheet of paper divided into tear-off coupons with various assigned monetary values: 20, 75, 100, 200 and 300 rubles. These coupons were necessary in addition to real money when purchasing certain categories of consumer goods. Coupons had virtually no protection and could be easily faked on modern color copiers. There were few of them in the Soviet Union, and they were under the strict control of the KGB, which to some extent limited, but did not eliminate, fakes. Coupons were distributed at workplaces with a salary and should have a seal of bookkeeping and signatures. It was an attempt to protect against speculation, especially from resale abroad.
XXI Century
Today, labor also refers to the concept of rationing. It, in turn, is divided into several different types:
- Norms of time.
- Production.
- Services.
- Numbers.
- Manageability.
- Normalized tasks.
Of particular importance, in production, is the first kind. The formula for calculating the time norm:
N BP = T p.z + T op + T r.p.m + T r.l + T p.t
where H BP is what needs to be found.
T pz - the time of preparatory and final work.
T op - operational production.
T o.r.m - time for maintenance of the workplace.
T from. L - rest breaks and personal needs.
T pt - rest time provided for by the technology.
Third meaning
Technical rationing sets the standard time. That is, the hours that will be required to execute the established procedure in specific production circumstances.
According to the norm of time, the procedure calculates the costs of the entire program for the production of elements, determines the required number of workers, machine tools, the number of electricity, determines the need for grinding wheels, etc.
In accordance with the norms, an industrial design of the site, workshop, plant as a whole is drawn up. Depending on the time spent, wages of workers are also paid. Hours spent on work characterize productivity. The less time is spent on one operation, the more details will be processed in an hour or shift, i.e. the higher this indicator.
The hours of processing a batch of parts in serial production are determined by the formula
T part = T pcs n + T PZ ,
where T part is the norm of time per batch, in minutes.
T pc - piece production in the same unit.
n is the number of parts in a batch, in pieces.
T PZ - preparatory-final time, in minutes.
From this formula, you can determine the clock for the manufacture of one part, if you divide the right and left parts by the number of units in the party.
Diary of Tanya Savicheva
A girl of 11 years old made notes about the starvation of her sister, then grandmother, brother, uncle and mother. In the last three notes it is written “Savichevs died”, “Everyone died” and “Only Tanya remained”. She died of progressive dystrophy shortly after the siege.
In the Soviet Union, food was normalized from 1941 to 1947. In particular, the daily bread ration in besieged Leningrad was initially set at 800 grams. By the end of 1941, these figures were reduced to 250 for workers and 125 for everyone else, which led to an increase in mortality from starvation. Since 1942, the daily bread ration has been increased to 350 grams for workers and 200 for everyone else. One of the documents of that period is the diary of Tanya Savicheva, who recorded the death of each member of her family during the siege.