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The suicide rate for farmers in the U.S. is more than double that of veterans

theguardian.com

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Re: The suicide rate for farmers in the U.S. is more than double that of veterans

#241

Post by cat199 »

evgen wrote: post #175
yock wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aside from military protection, that is a list of things largely irrelevant to people who live in rural areas. It's money to be confiscated from them and used to prop up societies to which they have little to no connection.

Given the fact that most farmers (or at least the ones we are talking about here) are living off the welfare gravy train known as agricultural subsidies it is hard to have any pity for those who think that their taxes are confiscation. They would have been forced off their inefficient enterprise generations ago if it were not for those "societies to which they have little to no connection" propping them up.

> inefficient enterprise

only when competing against imports from defacto slaves in other countries..

Re: The suicide rate for farmers in the U.S. is more than double that of veterans

#242

Post by cat199 »

adrr wrote: post #224
doomcaster1 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many rural areas in the US are heavily neglected; There are roads that haven't seen any upkeep in a decade and have police response times that are over an hour long. A lot of farmers feel that they pay into the system but get only a minuscule fraction back.

Those road cost $100k per mile to repave. They get beaten to hell with heavy equipment rolling over them all the time so their life is reduced. I doubt farmers even pay enough taxes to cover just the roads.

unlike the 'real products' us software developer types produce far exceeding the value of the houses, cars, food, etc. that we consume..

Re: The suicide rate for farmers in the U.S. is more than double that of veterans

#243

Post by yock »

CydeWeys wrote: post #231
yock wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Modern society works by having everyone contribute for the greater good. Whose definition of "good" are we using? Clearly not mine, as my definition of "good" demands consent.

Stop using the Internet for starters, then. Billions of dollars of tax money went into developing it.

That's just foolish. I'm not going to forsake the benefit of something I'm forced to pay for. I can, however, still advocate for changes to that system. That isn't hypocrisy.

Re: The suicide rate for farmers in the U.S. is more than double that of veterans

#245

Post by yock »

evgen wrote: post #175
yock wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aside from military protection, that is a list of things largely irrelevant to people who live in rural areas. It's money to be confiscated from them and used to prop up societies to which they have little to no connection.

Given the fact that most farmers (or at least the ones we are talking about here) are living off the welfare gravy train known as agricultural subsidies it is hard to have any pity for those who think that their taxes are confiscation. They would have been forced off their inefficient enterprise generations ago if it were not for those "societies to which they have little to no connection" propping them up.

You'd get no resistance from me to eliminate agriculture subsidies. It would be mighty nice to see an organized movement to produce crops free of subsidies. I think people would be shocked to see just how cheap their food really is.

Re: The suicide rate for farmers in the U.S. is more than double that of veterans

#246

Post by zeveb »

tomjen3 wrote: post #99
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #7

Local farm services guy had this to say: "Used to buy truckloads of fertilizer, then the coop would buy train car loads and undercut us. So we bought a train car - they bought a train. We bought a train - they bought a barge. The margins are disappearing entirely" Almost everybody is being squeezed out by 'economies of scale'. And its going to get worse, when we start making simple foodstuffs electrically (starch, su…

Sounds like they could use the model that made Danish farmers rich in the 19th century: you get everybody together and buy seeds, etc through one company, then you divide any profit and loss on that company equally among everybody (so the company effective does not make any profit). The same thing can be done for a dairy processing system, meat plant or anywhere else that a large number of people need to buy and sell…

How does that handle a 'farmer' who just does a desultory job of farming? I.e., he doesn't outright not farm, but he barely seeds, harvests badly and thus produces very little.

Re: The suicide rate for farmers in the U.S. is more than double that of veterans

#247

Post by nradov »

froindt wrote: post #53
gonzoflip wrote: post #9

I have family that farms in Iowa and I also worked in the agriculture industry there for a while after leaving the military. One thing that increases the stress on the farmers is the way they avoid income taxes at all costs so they rarely save any of the profits from good years to help them float during the bad years. This is all anecdotal but I have personally talked with several farmers that would rather buy new eq…

>One thing that increases the stress on the farmers is the way they avoid income taxes at all costs so they rarely save any of the profits from good years to help them float during the bad years. I'm from Iowa and a family member does lots of farm bankruptcies here. This is definitely a thing. Farmers buy new pickup trucks in lieu of showing a profit. Pair that in with land purchases at 7k+/acre and the saying "the n…

The concept of farmland being "for sale" at all seems bizarre. This isn't someone's home. Raw land is effectively always for sale, just contact the owner and make an unsolicited offer.

Is this just a psychological issue of people being attached to certain parcels or is there some other factor?

Re: The suicide rate for farmers in the U.S. is more than double that of veterans

#248

Post by tresil »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #71

I'll guess: depression, isolation, uncertainty, one paycheck a year (when the harvest comes in), physical danger and health risks.

Yeah, I'm curious if isolation isn't a key here. As technological advancements have enabled farmers to manage more and more land, they are getting more and more spread out. Social isolation has psychological and real physiological impacts on wellbeing.

Re: The suicide rate for farmers in the U.S. is more than double that of veterans

#249

Post by Zaak »

hux_ wrote: post #164
ambicapter wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you could just pay your goddamn taxes and have savings in the bank just like everybody else?

Savings!?!...pfft this is America. If you are not in debt how can you buy a house, send your kids to college, take care of the families medical expenses and buy everyone new iPhones for Christmas? Savings he says! What madness!

"Someone trying to live well would seem eccentrically abstemious in most of the US. That phenomenon is only going to become more pronounced. You can probably take it as a rule of thumb from now on that if people don't think you're weird, you're living badly."

Paul Graham, The Acceleration of Addictiveness

Re: The suicide rate for farmers in the U.S. is more than double that of veterans

#250

Post by CydeWeys »

yock wrote: post #243
CydeWeys wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop using the Internet for starters, then. Billions of dollars of tax money went into developing it.

That's just foolish. I'm not going to forsake the benefit of something I'm forced to pay for. I can, however, still advocate for changes to that system. That isn't hypocrisy.

The system is what allowed the existence of the medium you're using to argue against it. It is hypocritical to argue against the downsides of civilization while taking advantages of all of its benefits.
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