Posted on 11/05/2013 9:02:04 PM PST by djwright
UPDATE, 8:20 p.m.: With 20 counties reporting– including King, Pierce, Spokane and Thurston — the initiative that would label genetically engineered food was trailing 47 percent to 53 percent. More results are coming.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.seattletimes.com ...
“To a business, there’s no difference between subsidy and income? Never heard that before, unless businesses are suddenly doing some creative accounting.”
No, there is no difference at all. A subsidy is simply another form of income. What else would it be? There are only 4 categories on the balance sheet in standard accounting: income, expense, liabilities, or assets. Where do you think subsidies should be placed, if not under income?
“Any business that accepts subsidy for doing something is not making money and admittedly cannot sustain itself in whatever pattern they are maintaining if they had to under a purely capitalist system.”
No, this is simply not true at all. You could say that you THINK a business that is making a profit SHOULDN’T get a subsidy, but that is not how it works in reality. Many businesses that make plenty of profits receive subsidies from the government every single day. I work for one myself, and if you consider tax credits a subsidy, I’d wager nearly every poster on this board, including yourself, probably do as well.
“Just because we’ve adopted a communistic method of farming without completely abolishing private business doesn’t make it less communistic or more capitalistic, nor does it mean that the origins are in capitalism.”
There’s nothing communistic about factory farming. You haven’t demonstrated that, and just saying it over and over won’t make it true.
“The forerunner of factory farms is the sovkhoz. These were state-owned, but they were organized like industries.”
Their organization was really nothing like factory farms, and simply being a different type of organization does not make them factory farms. I guess you can get away with saying they are a “forerunner”, in that they came before factory farms, and represented a break from traditional family owned farms, but that’s about as far as the similarities go. The most distinctive features of factory farms are automation and highly efficient organization, which were both distinctly lacking in the Soviet farms you are trying to equate them with.
All I’m really getting from this conversation is that you really don’t like factory farms, which is fine. Why not just say that, instead of trying to make some really weak comparison to Communism that is only going to fool a couple rubes?
This all sounds like the Democratic pro-Obamacare arguments, where they all yell “private sector involvement, look, we got that idea from the conservatives in the GOP”.
Subsidized health insurance is not capitalism any more than subsidized farming is, and trying to make any such thing seem like capitalism is being an apologist for the left. The phrase “state capital” also comes from the Communist Manifesto, BTW.
“This all sounds like the Democratic pro-Obamacare arguments, where they all yell “private sector involvement, look, we got that idea from the conservatives in the GOP”.”
I’m afraid you just don’t get what I am saying then, if that is your response. I haven’t said one word defending subsidies for businesses, I have just been pointing out the blatantly false statements that you are making about them. You obviously just don’t know much about business accounting or subsidies, or you would know what I said is very basic stuff that nobody with any actual knowledge of the subject would question.
You can make these sweeping generalizations all day long that ignore the percent of our income we spend to feed ourselves and at the same time produce high quality grain to export.
Subsidies keep businesses going that would fail otherwise. But running a business is tough and human nature is to take advantage of what’s available.
Why would farming fail without subsidies? Something is wrong with that statement. Farming didn’t require subsidy prior to its being industrialized (or communized) and taken out of the hands of family farms. The volume of farm output is due to the nature of the USA’s farmland rather than embracing the communistic methods of industrialization (take note that I’m not going against mechanization here). The USA’s wealth has been built on agricultural exports going back to its beginnings (including mechanization rather than factory-farm collectivization), and that’s going way back before the Communist Manifesto was even written.
The statement “Subsidies keep businesses going that would fail otherwise” is a sweeping generalization. It cannot be accepted in US capitalism, and to continue down the socialist-influenced path we are treading is what is the danger.
Yes, we live in liberal land of OZ. Partial birth abortion is no different than premeditated murder. Gay marriage is following in the footsteps of Sodom & Gomorrah. It is the beginning of the end as a super power and shining light for the world. Euthanasia should be allowed only when multiple doctors certify that death with horrible pain is imminent, and not based on judgement of only one doctor like Kevorkian.
What really affects our lives is taxes and regulations. It takes away our freedom to work hard and prosper. Then it affects us where we can afford to live, how much house can we afford, where we can send our kids to college, right down to what foods we can eat.
“The statement “Subsidies keep businesses going that would fail otherwise” is a sweeping generalization.”
But it also is a correct one that has specific examples one can point to. I did not say farming would fail but rather businesses. One is general, the other individual.
“The volume of farm output is due to the nature of the USA’s farmland rather than embracing the communistic methods of industrialization (take note that I’m not going against mechanization here).”
OK, point to one farm in the U.S. and how it has “embraced the communistic methods of industrialization”.
Subsidies = taking away from those who have worked hard, produced something people want to buy, and paid taxes on their profit. Why should we punish hard work? What is the point in keeping price of items such as milk ARTIFICIALLY low with subsidies? Instead allow people to expand businesses and create more jobs for people who can then afford to buy milk or whatever for the true cost of production.
Subsidies is the opposite of free market capitalism (FMC). Nothing is perfect and all pluses, but FMC has reduced more poverty than any other method everywhere one looks.
I did not say subsidies were necessarily good or bad but rather their existence is not evidence of U.S. farming being under the thrall of Marx.
“confused why you would not want to know whats in your food”
Funny thing, you think you are smart enough to understand anything about such a subject as food yet you’ll throw your dishes and utensils into a dishwasher and load it up with chemicals you know nothing about but not ask for labeling.
“Because the whole GMO scare is bogus. It’s more liberal fear and hatred of anything that smacks of progress. Liberals would like to see half the world’s population starve to death so the world could return to some mythical pristine state.”
Dittos! It is about the Luddites wanting to end the age of machinery and progress. Irony: Progressives aren’t!
“Because the whole GMO scare is bogus. It’s more liberal fear and hatred of anything that smacks of progress. Liberals would like to see half the world’s population starve to death so the world could return to some mythical pristine state.”
Dittos! It is about the Luddites wanting to end the age of machinery and progress. Irony: Progressives aren’t!
No sweeping generalizations are correct; they are automatically logical fallacies.
Farm subsidy is a very highly controversial matter. How can any conservative be for it? The colonies and USA did without farm subsidy for a number of centuries, and then subsidization started slowly, going back to 1922, rising to the level they are at today.
The Communist Manifesto is specific when it states “(c)ombining agriculture with industrial production”. This has not been the case for most farming practices in the USA until the end of WWII, and the subsidized industrialization thereof has come in with the shift to the left of US politics in general. Thanks to this, food prices are permanently distorted and dependence on both subsidy and industrialization have made farming very precarious.
Can you or can you not point to even one farm in the U.S. and how it has “embraced the communistic methods of industrialization”?
If you cannot cite a single example for examination then what in the world are you talking about?
One, eh? Smithfield’s hog farms in North Carolina.
OK, what next?
What about them? Do they have to operate under the same U.S. laws and practices as other pork producers? And it was the shareholders that made the decision to sell the company.
I doubt the hogs know who owns them.
Personally, I want to know if genetically modified stuff is part of my family’s food. I support local growers who plant and tend their crops, not huge corporations like Monsanto that finance elections to preserve their market share over consumers right to know.
Great, but does that give you the right to raise everybody’s food bill?
Go to PCC (big supporter of the initiative) and demand they label everything in their store and then shop there.
By anyway, have you noticed that there is already a listing of ingredients and all sorts of other info on labels? This proposal would add only GMO information and would be a miniscule cost.
Or would you propose not have anything on labels including ingredients or whether it is made in, say, China? Those dog treats that have killed over 600 pets is an indicator as to labeling and FDA failure to protect consumers. But then again, maybe you think the FDA isn’t needed either...
Local growers use GMO seeds.
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