Posted on 06/28/2014 4:12:12 PM PDT by blueplum
JENSEN, UTAH — It’s easy to find the largest Chinese-owned hay farm in the United States. It sits 189 miles east of Salt Lake City, on a stunningly scenic bend of the Green River. After driving past the only gas station in Jensen, population 400, a visitor crosses the river, turns left and is soon surrounded by a meticulously managed, 22,000-acre ranch, lush with green alfalfa.
Nearly all of it is destined for China. :snip:
Simon Wen Shao, a Chinese-born U.S. citizen who’s a co-owner of the Utah alfalfa farm, acknowledged that locals had acted warily when his company purchased the ranch. Friends of his farm manager, Frank Biggs, immediately chided Biggs for “working for the communists.”
Shao said those concerns had eased as his company had attempted to build ties in the community, buying new farm equipment and modernizing the ranch. One of his first steps was to rename the historic property “Escalante Ranch” after the previous owner had dubbed it “Thunder Ranch.”
“I think local people liked that decision,” he said during a tour of the farm. “It sounds better than Red Dragon Ranch.”
:snip:
Michael J. McKee, a Uintah County commissioner, said that many local growers recognized that foreign demand for alfalfa helped raise the price for their crop, aiding the county’s farm economy. Still, McKee acknowledged he’d heard from a few constituents who want “our land here to be held by American farmers.”
(Excerpt) Read more at fresnobee.com ...
Companies do what is in their best interests, i.e. maximizing the shareholders’ which tactically means maximizing profits.
When companies prosper, the trickle down effect will make everyone better. If you disagreed, you could leave the company, or even open your own.
In the free market, there is no place for whining and blaming others for your own failure.
Submitting to Chinese masters is NOT free trade.
Oh, I got your point perfectly. A 318+ billion trade deficit with China last year alone says it all.
Why can you not see that is not the issue?
A large general upward pressure on price affects the whole country to some extent. The stuff is not a highly perishable commodity.
.
>> “Or maybe his loyalties were elsewhere all along, like most of the presidents since.” <<
.
BING!
If the Chinese ever buy California, they'll have to buy it from Mexico.
No, you’re wrong.
A large general upward pressure on price DOES NOT affect the whole country to some extent.
The upward pressure on price did not extend 2000 miles; the only way he could get rid of it was to give it away.
There’s a point at which the cost of transport of a commodity, cattle feed in this case, exceeds the value of having it at a different place.
Someone could have picked-up the alfalfa in Michigan and transported it to California and fed it to cattle there, and they would have gained weight and been worth more at market.
That increase in value at the market would not, however, have exceeded the cost of transporting the alfalfa.
You really don’t get it.
Local movement of a commodity always expands outward in a ripple effect.
Pushing the old Wickard v. Filburn scam, I see.
By the way, whoever told you local movement of a commodity always expands outward in a ripple effect lied to you.
that’s right, when it comes to Red China, darn right. I don’t particularly cotton to doing much business with countries where these businesses’ not so silent partner is the Chinese goverment, who uses their share of the bounty to exploit and arm themselves against little old me. Doesn’t seem to make much sense.
free trade sounds nice, but it’s based on a utopian theory that noone has ulterior motives and everyone will play nicely in the sandbox - I guess China didn’t get the memo
Thanks very much! I know nothing about tariffs other than it’s a tax. Thanks for pointing out tariffs were one-way so I can stop kicking that can down the road.
I looked up the Tax of Abomination of 1828 - a tariff on imported British goods to protect Northern industrialism, which negatively impacted cotton exports from the South to England.
How was Northern protectionism - of their intent on becoming the industrial capital and policy capital (coming on the heels of wholesale exportation of northern slaves to the South to make way for boatloads of indentured servants) - not just a continuation of putting the South to heel?
The North was basically saying to the South, here, take our slaves off our hands, stay agricultural, but you only sell to the North, and only buy from the North, who will dictate prices, and, by the way, we’ll be the population and policy center for the States because we’ll be encouraging massive immigration so we have more people in our factory cities? Oh, and one more thing, after we export all our slaves to you and dance all the way to the bank with the proceeds of sales, then we’ll declare war on you for having those exact same slaves?
I’m not seeing how the impact on the South was a “neo”-confederate misinterpretation? What did I miss?
Tariff of Abominations was on all imported goods of specific categories, not just on British goods. This law was passed as a protective tariff to protect American manufacturers and workers from cheaper foreign competition. (Oddly enough, a great many people who are still upset about the T of A are all in favor of protective tariffs today to protect American manufacturers and workers from cheaper foreign (Chinese) competition.
Very interestingly, it passed only because southern interests, led by Calhoun, inserted poison pill provisions to cause New England congressmen to vote against it. Much to the southerners' surprise, the bill passed anyway.
http://www.mises.org/etexts/taussig.pdf page 55. This is, BTW, a book that tells you more about tariffs than you will ever want to know. Without having some kind of political agenda to support.
Protective tariffs were not a north vs. south issue, as such, in 1828, because there was no north vs. south split.
There was instead a north vs. south vs. west split. The south generally allied with the west to win elections and control the government. But the west liked protective tariffs, so it allied with the north to pass them. The biggest proponent of such tariffs was not a New Englander, but Henry Clay, a Kentucky slave and plantation owner.
The whole protective tariff issue started during and after the War of 1812, when the country was greatly embarassed in military preparations by inadequate industry. So the idea was to protect "infant industries" so they'd grow to where they'd be viable on their own and available when the next war came around.
Of course, it soon turned into pork.
coming on the heels of wholesale exportation of northern slaves to the South to make way for boatloads of indentured servants
You are quite correct about one of the dirty little secrets of northern ending of slavery. It freed remarkably few slaves, as most were sold south before the laws came into effect.
But you are quite mistaken about indentured servants. The institution was in serious decline in the 19th century
Thanks again! I’ll study your post later since it’s a lot to absorb!!
on the indentured servitude, tho, now you’ve got me confused.
According to
http://public.gettysburg.edu/~tshannon/hist106web/site18/The%20Decline%20of%20Indentured%20Servitude.htm
” By the 1830s, indentured servitude among immigrants had almost entirely ended in mainland North America (Galenson, 14).”
but wiki draws also from Galenson to claim:
“Decline[edit]
Indentured servitude appeared in the Americas in the 1620s and remained in use as late as 1917.[43]”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indentured_servant
[43] Galenson, David (1984). “The Rise and Fall of Indentured Servitude in the Americas: An Economic Analysis”. Journal of Economic History. 1 44: 1–26. doi:10.1017/s002205070003134x.
so which date is correct to use?
I know the 13th Amendment of 1865 abolished indenturedness, but is one cite speaking only to British-origin, indentured and the other cite to all indentured (Germans in 1800’s, Orphan trains after 1865, Chinese to work on railroads in the US and sugar plantation companies in Hawaii, etc)?
from http://www.wcl.american.edu/modernamerican/documents/Trammell.pdf
“Following practices established by previous organizations,
most of these charities provided assistance to children through indentured servitude, generally indenturing boys by the age of 12 and girls by the age of 14. [29] Given the
depressed economic conditions and lack of employment opportunities in the East, charities began to place and indenture affected children in rural areas where child labor was needed and welcomed. [30] This grew into the orphan train movement.
“In 1849, the board of governors of the New York Almshouse
favored placing children in families and sought legislation
allowing children to be indentured outside the State of New
York.[31]
“In 1855, New York State authorized “trustees, directors
or managers of any incorporated orphan asylum, or institute or home for indigent children” to “bind out” any male orphan or indigent child under 21 and any female orphan or indigent child under 18.[32]
:snip:
“A more complicated lawsuit arose from a 1904 Arizona Territory orphan train placement in which the New York
Foundling Hospital sent 40 Caucasian children between the ages of 18 months and 5 years to be indentured to Catholic
families in an Arizona Territory parish...”
wholesale exportation of northern slaves to the South to make way for boatloads of indentured servants
The wholesale exportation (though that might not be exactly the right word) took place, though there were never huge numbers of slaves in the northern states to begin with relative to their number in the South.
But boatloads of indentured servants weren't being imported between the Revolution and 1860. There may have been some in the early years, no idea of the numbers, but after 1800 or so probably very few indeed.
IOW, the ending of slavery in northern states and the shameful selling south of their slaves, and indentured servant importation had nothing at all to do with each other.
Fairly obviously, orphan trains, Chinese imported to build railroads, and other late examples of "indentures" also had nothing at all to do with European peasants imported to "replace" slaves.
Yes! The key to fighting China is to raise the price of our alfalfa, so they feed their cows without enriching American business!!
who uses their share of the bounty to exploit and arm themselves against little old me.
Well........if we sell them alfalfa, they can't use that money to arm themselves. And we'll have more money to arm ourselves.
free trade sounds nice,
Who's talking about free trade? We're examining your idea to strengthen America by pricing our products out of competition.
A little more on “indentured servants.”
Probably something like half of those imported during the colonial period were convicts. Everybody is familiar with convict transportation to Oz, but few are aware that the reason UK turned to OZ was that their previous destination for convicts, the American colonies, had been shut to them by war and then independence. Most of these convicts went to the Middle Colonies. Ben Franklin has a rant online someplace objecting to the practice.
Voluntary immigration via a shipowner selling off an indenture to pay for passage pretty much disappeared after the mid-18th century, with the primary reason being greatly reduced prices for passage relative to income of potential passengers. In the 16th and 17th century, passage cost something along the lines of 50% to 75% of the annual income of a British laborer.
Trading 4 to 7 years of your life for passage makes considerable sense under those conditions. With passage cheaper, not so much.
Found a good overview of indentured servant history.
http://immigrationinamerica.org/605-indentured-servitude.html
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