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Farmers: Get a Job!
Future of Freedom Foundation ^
| February 2002
| Sheldon Richman
Posted on 02/15/2002 2:58:58 PM PST by RJCogburn
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To: cynicom
You dont see sarcasm when you see it?????? Sorry, The way things have been going I thought you were serious.
To: Vladiator
Why exactly are you opposed to the "mega farms"? Is there a rational reason?
82
posted on
02/15/2002 6:12:10 PM PST
by
Cleburne
To: Hank Rearden
If you think you've got it so damn tough, try making a living in high tech, where your latest product goes obsolete in 9 months, the price you can charge goes down 20-30% every year and you can't stick excess inventory in some silo until things improve, because it'll be worthless this time next year. Cry me a river...
Yep, High tech it very competitive, and no doubt you have to work hard to stay on top. It's called competition. Not everyone has to have the latest piece of software or computer chip, but everyone still has to eat, Hank.
And Yes I did read Altas Shrugged, One of my favorite books.
To: Dan from Michigan
The Country backs republicans. The city backs democraps. That simple. Like Tom Daschle?
To: Rebelbase
The price of cereal is a damn shame. Brand name stuff for $4.00+ box is ridiculous. Next to popcorn at the movies, cereal is probably the highest profit grain product out there..... How much does it cost in other countries? Any idea?
wait, beer has to be in there somewhere also.
I hear you, too many TAXES on beer!
To: Don Joe
That's what we need to do within reason. There's no point planting in a river.
86
posted on
02/15/2002 6:25:04 PM PST
by
#3Fan
Comment #87 Removed by Moderator
To: DainBramage
Maybe you can explain why government assistance is so much more efficient for farmers than in other markets; Or do you just have a general trust in the ability of Government to make everything better?
To: jrherreid
Absolutely!
"Get a job"? This sob should take a job on a farm. The direction he is headed in is to have all farms controlled by some corporation. Or, some four corporations.
Farming, as a business isn't pretty. I know one guy who broke his back doing it. There are plenty of lost fingers and hands. It isn't easy work to work the land.
"Get a job." What a statement! The guy obviously never bailed hay.
The government program pays off the big land holders, people like Sam Donaldson and Ted Turner to the tunes of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Meanwhile it barely keeps the small farm owner above subsistance.
"Get a job". Too many fat people.
I don't think there is anything wrong with having too much food. We export it in large quantities. The rest of the world, the 5.75 billion or so that don't reside here, survive on it.
Even so, it comes down to this: The reason that we have farm subsidies is that we, as a nation, must be able to produce our own food. We must be able to attain it, regardless of the cost, even in some catastrophic situation.
There is no reason to come down on the farmers like this man has. Almost all of them think they are "doing their jobs."
They might not be very informed, like a "city person" would be, but they face hazards and find ways to deal with them.
This guy, the one who wrote the diatribe above should go be a farmer for a week. Then he might have a better perspective.
89
posted on
02/15/2002 6:33:49 PM PST
by
mjf
To: mjf
Another sane Brain on this thread.
To: FreedomPoster
Or Bush.
City - Waxman, Conyors, Lowey, Feinswine, Kennedy, etc.
Country - Hostettler, Paul, Bob Barr, etc.
To: doosee
The subsidies have nothing to do with ensuring enough to eat. They are all about guaranteeing an income to farmers whether they have a good or bad crop. You are right but it goes farther than that. When Trotsky, and Lennin took over Russia they had major problems with the farmers, because they were an independant lot, they resisted. Stalin had seen this so he designed a way around it, he shared his plan with FDR, he liked it, so it got implemented. Farm subsidies=created dependancy. After 65 years it is going to be nearly impossible to root out.
Like many other things it is about control.
92
posted on
02/15/2002 6:58:32 PM PST
by
c-b 1
To: Doomonyou
Cry me a river... You posted this to the wrong person, I believe.
Hank
To: Doomonyou
I totally agree with you! (Post 80) As the daughter of a farmer, I saw first hand how hard my dad and all the neighbors worked. From dawn to late at night. (And none of them were fat.) Unfortunately, my dad couldn't make a living at farming so he got a job as a mail carrier. I resent the title of this thread. Farming is a job. A very tough job.
94
posted on
02/15/2002 7:04:16 PM PST
by
lara
To: RJCogburn
To: xm177e2
But if the government subsidizes farmers (at taxpayer expense), then to some measure the government controls farmers. A government-controlled food supply is not exactly a comforting thought. Peace Lapcat
96
posted on
02/15/2002 7:08:39 PM PST
by
XenaLee
To: Doomonyou
Farmers that actually grow crops are great. But how can anyone justify thousands of hard-earned tax-payers' dollars paid to farmers so they ""won't"" grow crops??? I don't get it.... Peace Lapcat
97
posted on
02/15/2002 7:14:58 PM PST
by
XenaLee
To: Don Joe
Don, whose policies have allowed this outrage to evolve? It sure does not sound like conservativism. Total government control over our food supply (farmers)....we need to change this...but where to start??? Peace Lapcat
98
posted on
02/15/2002 7:25:07 PM PST
by
XenaLee
To: XenaLee
For the last 30 years, we've been told by one expert or another that we were on the cusp of the Golden Age of Agriculture, that exports were going to be our goose that laid the golden egg. Now, we're in the age of globalization , and we've seen cotton below 30 cents. "The average tariff that we sell into overseas is 62 percent. The average tariff on cotton products coming into the U.S. is 11 percent. Throw into that one-sided equation the strength of the dollar, and it makes for an almost impossible situation for our commodity. But, the government tells us to stop our bellyaching, that 'Something you're doing is causing you not to be profitable.' "We've done a better job of management and improving production than we have in influencing what is going on in Washington. If the farmer has a hailstorm or drought and his crop is a disaster, he says, 'My tractor cost $150,000 and I don't know how I'm going to make it.' The guy in town , he and his wife both working and barely managing to pay the bills, can't relate to the farmer's $150,000 tractor when they can go to the grocery store and find every kind of food imaginable, in plentiful supply. "The public sees the 'welfare payments to rich corporate farmers' stories from the Environmental Working Group and other anti-farm organizations and they don't understand that government payments to farmers are not welfare policy - they're cheap food policy. "If the cost of farm programs is averaged across the population, it comes to $77 a year. To me, $77 a year isn't too much to pay for having the cheapest, safest, most abundant supply of food in the entire world. "But the farmer is no longer seen as an honest, hard- working keeper of the land: Now, we're portrayed as the people who poison the land, who pollute the water, and fleece the taxpayers with government handouts. The environmentalists are now seen as the keepers of the land. "We've got the best agricultural system on earth - in all of history - and we're in danger of giving it up, simply because most people have no comprehension of what makes it all work."
99
posted on
02/15/2002 7:25:32 PM PST
by
slag
To: Hank Kerchief
You posted this to the wrong person, I believe. Hank Rearden
Dont think so.
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