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High beef prices and the destruction of independent cattle ranching

mattstoller.substack.com

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Re: High beef prices and the destruction of independent cattle ranching

#51
post #30

This is happening to every industry. There is an obvious consolidation and massive wealth transfer still ongoing. Sickening

Easy enough to solve: tax wealth and redistribute it with a UBI.

> Easy enough to solve: tax wealth and redistribute it with a UBI.

These are extremely independent problems.

The problem with concentration isn't taxes, it's a regulatory environment that promotes concentration. You take money from Bezos, it doesn't change the size of Amazon.

A UBI would help some by making it easier to start a small business, but unless you address the underlying regulatory problems that give every advantage to consolidated megacorps, that's not enough.

One of the big problems is taxes though, specifically the taxation of dividends that get reinvested. Under the existing system, if you're Apple and you make iPhones and pay dividends to shareholders who invest them in a separate company that makes microprocessors, they pay more tax than if Apple keeps the money and makes its own microprocessors. And it works that way for everything, so corporations grow without bound and the tax system encourages that.

The easy fix is to make investment a tax deduction but sale of an investment fully taxable instead of only on the gain. We already try to do this in a hundred places, 401k and Roth IRAs and not taxing gains until they're realized, because it's obviously a good idea and promotes investment. But because we specifically don't do it in the case where you take profits from one company and invest them into an independent one, we've been promoting indefinite corporate expansion for decades.

Re: High beef prices and the destruction of independent cattle ranching

#52
post #37

This is happening to every industry. There is an obvious consolidation and massive wealth transfer still ongoing. Sickening

This process is intrinsic to capitalism, though. Every company has to get bigger by swallowing others, or instead be swallowed by another company that does it. The board game "Monopoly" is a pretty good simplified simulation of the system's structures and operation. Fun for all in the early stages, not so much in the end game.

I feel like most governments speed up this process, ie by giving tax cuts to huge businesses to set up operations in their jurisdiction. Which in practice means actively punishing smaller businesses.

Re: High beef prices and the destruction of independent cattle ranching

#53
post #19

Breaking Points recently did a segment on this, if you're into this format of presentation: - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3v7G9EDovQ

I can't take Breaking Points seriously. It's basically a mainstream media dunkfest that rides the line of being right-wing full blown crazy - which I suspect is a good chuck of their audience.

Re: High beef prices and the destruction of independent cattle ranching

#54

As a small farmer, I can tell you: independent small-scale farming is not profitable in any meaningful manner. Government is actively killing it, by giving away every possible concession to Big Ag. The food in stores is pretty much all garbage compared to food raised on small farms. It sickens me to see things go this way, but this is the reality that we have created.

Having been all over the country it’s amazing to me how different Wyoming and say Tennessee are. The people in Tennessee already had to deal with the federal government implementing policies destroying the domestic tobacco industry. Btw this just means foreign farmers reap the profits. The federal government made the input costs to tobacco prohibitively expensive through taxes and regulations. They then converted mos…

> All the farmers complain around me about “getting good help”.

I assume this is due to the low pay to quality of life ratio offered by farming jobs.

Re: High beef prices and the destruction of independent cattle ranching

#55

As a small farmer, I can tell you: independent small-scale farming is not profitable in any meaningful manner. Government is actively killing it, by giving away every possible concession to Big Ag. The food in stores is pretty much all garbage compared to food raised on small farms. It sickens me to see things go this way, but this is the reality that we have created.

fellow small farmer(live stock only) with a day gig. The only benefit to having a small farm these days is it provides a tax shelter, and an enjoyable(yet difficult) hobby.

Even if you outright own the land, by the time you figure in maintenance and equipment on any cattle farm under 500-1000 head of cattle you simply can't turn a profit in a meaningful way. What you CAN do is use it as a tax shelter where you sorta break even if you squint and hope.

Re: High beef prices and the destruction of independent cattle ranching

#56
post #37

This is happening to every industry. There is an obvious consolidation and massive wealth transfer still ongoing. Sickening

This process is intrinsic to capitalism, though. Every company has to get bigger by swallowing others, or instead be swallowed by another company that does it. The board game "Monopoly" is a pretty good simplified simulation of the system's structures and operation. Fun for all in the early stages, not so much in the end game.

I have gripes with capitalism, but this isn't one. Capitalism essentially allocates resources to where they are most efficient (although IMHO not as purely as most Austrian economists would argue, because people aren't all that rational and information asymmetry makes rationality impossible in many other cases). Sometimes (ok often) that goes to huge megacorps due to economies of scale, but in return you take on massive bureaucracy that makes you less efficient, opening the door for disruption. Disruption happens all the time to big players that don't continue doing the best for the least[1]. Now that said, as barriers of entry continue to accrete due to regulatory capture and deep tech, I do worry that the ability for startups and small business to compete may decline.

Monopoly is a vastly over simplified model that doesn't consider much of modern economics. Interestingly, it was actually invented to demonstrate to people how evil capitalism is[2].

[1]: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/creativedestruction.asp

[2]: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20170728-monopoly-was-i...

Re: High beef prices and the destruction of independent cattle ranching

#57
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am someone who usually gets their beef from costco, small middle eastern markets and sometimes when its on sale at the neighborhood grocery store (Publix). Would you mind sharing in what ways what I'm consuming is trash compared to what comes from small farms?

I buy grass-fed beef from my neighbor. There's no difference as far as I can see. I like to support my neighbor, but there's no magic, no difference cooking, no startling color-change tricks as reported elsewhere in this thread.

Maybe it’s not grass-fed.

Kidding. Really though if it was you could taste it. In some cases I prefer grain fed cows cause they just taste better. However the fat ratio of healthy to unhealthy fat, omega 3 to omega 6, is a major reason to go grass-fed.

Re: High beef prices and the destruction of independent cattle ranching

#58
I love raising my own meat, and look forward to being 100% self-sustainable for all meat consumption across hunting, fishing, and livestock for a family of 5. Meat processing and butchery is very rewarding.

Turning a whole pig into a mix of charcuterie, roasts, and sausage doesn't take a lot of time and is completely worth it.

This is the opposite of cheap, and is not a 'profitable' endeavor by any means. Buying from the store would be a lot cheaper and a lot less work. But the difference is incomparable.

Re: High beef prices and the destruction of independent cattle ranching

#59
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This process is intrinsic to capitalism, though. Every company has to get bigger by swallowing others, or instead be swallowed by another company that does it. The board game "Monopoly" is a pretty good simplified simulation of the system's structures and operation. Fun for all in the early stages, not so much in the end game.

I feel like most governments speed up this process, ie by giving tax cuts to huge businesses to set up operations in their jurisdiction. Which in practice means actively punishing smaller businesses.

Technology speeds up the process.

Re: High beef prices and the destruction of independent cattle ranching

#60
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easy enough to solve: tax wealth and redistribute it with a UBI.

> Easy enough to solve: tax wealth and redistribute it with a UBI. These are extremely independent problems. The problem with concentration isn't taxes, it's a regulatory environment that promotes concentration. You take money from Bezos, it doesn't change the size of Amazon. A UBI would help some by making it easier to start a small business, but unless you address the underlying regulatory problems that give every…

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