31–40 of 284 posts
Forget China. The greatest threat to American freedom and global power is robber baron billionaires. We live in a full-on kleptocracy. It's about time we add some new amendments to the constitution to relevel the balance of powers.
America just lives under capitalism.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the price of food goes up, the public revolts. Not without a good reason honestly. I think you could definitely move the subsidies around, but subsidizing food is a basic good idea for any state really.
The US government also has a program of subsidizing/mandating biofuels that raise prices of both food and fuel for supposed environmental and energy security reasons that mostly don't pass a sniff test.
Farming is somehow still regarded as being some mom-and-pop heartland thing rather than the highly optimized manufacturing operation it has been for decades. Direct farm employment is now just 1.2% of the population. It was 40% in 1900. The special treatments farms and farmers get is an outdated relic kept alive by the electoral college.
Of course, the irony is that now we romanticize industry too.
Most farms are not owned by farmers, most housing is not owned by tenants, most airplanes are not owned by airlines, etc., etc.. Vertical integration can have benefits, but it isn't necessary and has drawbacks. Even when vertically integrated, regulations are often written under the assumption that everything is leased, not owned, so compliance is easier if you own a company that owns an asset, instead of owning that…
I'm sure you're right about the compliance thing in general, but I don't get your example.
How about the US government stop subsidizing farmers? Let them fend for themselves like any other business.
Europe also does some very heavy subsidies. Without subsidies, a lot of farming just goes away due to the uncompetitiveness in labor vs the southern hemisphere. The Amazon would be replaced completely with farms for rich countries. It's not surprising that countries just don't want so much of the country basically depopulating.
Need more legal immigration, and paying Brazil, etc. not to farm there. Better to do that than subsidize farmers.
I would also push back on the notion that owner-operators are in a better position. It's more accurate to say that farmers who have assets of any kind are better off than those who don't have assets. As an example, generations back in my family we owned a lot of farmland. There were some bad investments made in the farming operation and we almost lost it all. This was in the early 1980s for those who are familiar.
If my grandfather had sold all of his land and equipment in the late 1970s and invested it in the recently-started Vanguard group, rather than re-investing in the farming operation, then my family would be wealthy. Now expecting a farmer to know about index investing and to bet on it when it was just starting is unreasonable. But it's a good lesson in diversification.
When people lionize farming owner-operators, they discount the risk that owner is taking by having so many assets concentrated in one operation. Now farmers do know about investing and diversification, and some do make the rational decision to cash out. Many also don't, for various reasons.
But it's not totally fair to expect farmers to behave differently than other asset owners because farming is seen romantically or in terms of national security.
This is a different argument than one which would decry the position of tenant farmers. Obviously being a tenant farmer owning nothing but equipment is harder than being a farmer who has $5 million invested somewhere else and rents the land he farms.
How about the US government stop subsidizing farmers? Let them fend for themselves like any other business.
Europe also does some very heavy subsidies. Without subsidies, a lot of farming just goes away due to the uncompetitiveness in labor vs the southern hemisphere. The Amazon would be replaced completely with farms for rich countries. It's not surprising that countries just don't want so much of the country basically depopulating.
How about the US government stop subsidizing farmers? Let them fend for themselves like any other business.
Farm subsidies are both the single most important national security policy a nation can have, and an incredibly inexpensive yet extremely effective insurance policy.
> Eight states in the Corn Belt — Iowa, Indiana, Nebraska, Minnesota, Missouri, Kansas, South Dakota and Wisconsin — restrict the size, structure and purpose of corporations that can own farmland to limit ownership by large investment funds. > More than 22% of the farmland in 12 Illinois counties with the highest rents is owned by a business entity, defined as an operation with an LLC, Inc, LTD, Co., Corp, LP or LLP…
We sold it to some outside group. Apparently the best way to sell land today is an online action. You announce it ahead of time, there is a minimal amount to start bidding, and then like an ad auction, there is a minimal increment to go up by, fixed time limit of like a week to bid.
I was really sad that it left the family. The sale price of the midwest farm land ended up about $10k an acre for cropland. The amount of money that renting brought in didn't seem like it would be enough for any young person to actually buy land at current prices. I am sure they'd have a lot of tax deductions but can they get a million dollar loan? I expect there will be houses put on the land eventually. I had an idea for how to keep it suitable for future farmland, which was to put solar power on it with a 20 year contract with a local power company (with everything removed after).