Lord Freud, conservative minister for welfare reform, said food banks were "a free good, and by definition there is an almost infinite demand for a free good"; in a statement, the department for work and pensions says that the Trussell Trust is opening new food banks every week, so "it's not surprising more people are using them".
"It is difficult to know," averred Lord Freud, "which came first, the supply or the demand … Food from a food bank – the supply – is a free good, and by definition there is an almost infinite demand for a free good".
Education secretary Michael Gove suggested that food bank users were themselves to blame, guilty of taking decisions that showed they were "not best able to manage their finances", while Lord Freud, Conservative minister for welfare reform, said food banks were "a free good, and by definition there is an almost infinite demand for a free good".
Because Mr. Hollande does not have the necessary three-fifths majority in Parliament, he would face an almost irresistible demand for a public referendum.
In 2013, Lord Freud, the employment minister, sniffed at "an almost infinite demand for a free good", apparently unaware that use of food banks is carefully rationed by vouchers from councils and his own jobcentres.
They must sell a product for which there is almost no demand: an idiosyncratic version of Christianity that teaches that Christ made a post-resurrection visit to the United States, that the Garden of Eden may have been in Missouri and that drinking alcohol is a sin.
And residents of three counties who agreed to a property tax increase to help finance the museum would almost certainly demand a rollback in the future.
We estimated elasticities by applying a Bayesian approach to estimate an almost ideal demand system.
Consumers will almost certainly demand a universal system before they sign on in large numbers.
At the same time, Mr. Sladkus said, while most co-op bylaws provide for voting to be by voice vote, the shareholders almost always demand a vote by written ballot to preserve anonymity.
