Posted on 12/31/2012 9:57:53 AM PST by impimp
The leaders in both parties on the House and Senate Agriculture committees have agreed to a one-year extension of the 2008 farm bill that expired in October, a move that could head off a possible doubling of milk prices next month. But House leaders have yet to say whether they will allow a vote on it.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Maybe there is more demand in Tampa for flank steak or less supply.
With respect to prices, let’s also count state and federal gasoline and diesel tax for vehicles in the food distribution system, then there’s the business tax on profits, the employee taxes, SSI, and OSDI, and health care, liscences and fees, inspections, etc. Taxes are the biggest slice of the pie. If you want to cut prices, cut gov’t out of the picture.
What you seem to be arguing (and please correct me if I am wrong)is that we have to artificially support producers in order to prevent there being massive layoffs. Then we have to artificially support consumers, in order to prevent starvation. Yet if we do this, (and we total up all the costs involved) we end up paying far more for food than we would have if we would have just left the whole system alone. I know that tough decisions are tough (duh). But the government NEVER makes a given situation better, over the long run.
Just let it die. The market will be in turmoil for awhile. When they start pouring milk out on the ground prices will stabilize.
Well, yes, although...
Either government interference in the intertwined markets for grain and meat lowers the price of those products or it doesn’t. Given the low prices Americans pay for food (compared to the rest of the world), the evidence suggests American government interference lowers consumer prices *for those products*.
That doesn’t mean a net benefit. Just the opposite. It just means that true cost is obscured by laundering some of it through Washington.
As long as we have Liberal Free Traders in politics and media (and even a few of them here on FR), there will always be price supports and farm subsidies
As long as we let the Communist Chinese dump ag products on the US with little or no tariff....there will be subsidies for US Ag so they remain competitive domestically and internationally. In fact, most price supports on Ag are done so US producers can sell their product overseas below cost
Put tariffs on foreign Ag products...and you will no longer need subsidies
It’s time to dump the Liberal Free Trade Globalist policies. We can no longer afford the high taxes and government subsidies to keep our domestic producers competitive. Tariffs work, contrary to what Liberal free Traders push
I have no problem with foreign nations subsidizing the food their farmers sell to us. Think about what you are complaining about. It is like complaining about someone giving you money.
I say free trade AND no subsidies. Things will work out.
We happen to have sufficient resources in and on public lands to not need to ever repudiate our debt or our money. In fact, we have the hardest currency in the world over the long haul ~ a fact long noted by every rich guy on the planet. They deposit money here even if they don’t get paid interest to do so.
No.It.Won't.
A lot of small family farms will collapse, but the industry will not. Now, I have a fondness for small family farms -- don't get me wrong. I live in an upstate New York farming village that would see some serious repercussions to the ending of government subsidies.
But it ain't right and it doesn't make economic sense to subsidize small, inefficient operations with the hard-earned dollars of American workers.
No I’m saying the market has been artificially supported, directed, controlled and so forth for generations. To suddenly pull all of that out would create chaos with severe consequences.
As I’ve already posted numerous times the supports need to be pulled out but gradually to allow the markets and people time to adjust.
Kinda like jumping from an airplane with or without a parachute.
oh shut up you simpleton
“But it ain’t right and it doesn’t make economic sense to subsidize small, inefficient operations with the hard-earned dollars of American workers. “
Ah so you’d prefer to use the govt to hand the market to big business.
Yeah thats American.
I think you underestimate the flexibility and the dynamism of the marketplace. I am tired of this ‘gradual’ crap. I have no doubt that we would survive without all the subsidies. End them. And end them quickly.
These people we've elected for oh-so-many years and especially lately actually want chaos and are doing everything they can do to generate it.
I say let it happen.
The second that lower and middle-class folks are priced out of the grocery store and gas station, these subversives our fellow citizens put in power will be happy.
They can just eat each other, as far as I'm concerned.
Which is why people like you never win elections.
Actually, without subsidies and price supports, it won’t be the smaller farms that collapse.
It will be the largest ones that are operating with significant leverage and debt load.
If you look at who actually receives subsidies from the US government, over two-thirds of the subsidies are taken in by the largest farmers in the country. They have a staff, just as a corporation does, to navigate the paperwork.
Small farms and farmers don’t have the time required to capitalize on all these various programs.
Now, specifically to the dairy and milk questions here, since I know a little bit about his industry because I used to sell alfalfa hay to California/Nevada/Idaho dairies:
The largest dairies in the country are typically highly leveraged. They exist purely on a principle of huge cash flows and flipping over their inventory, reducing in-house capabilities to nearly nothing so that they can expense everything that has been out-sourced (like their hay production, their replacement heifers, their vet services, their nutrition consultants, etc) immediately and not have to depreciate anything.
If you removed the various milk marketing orders and milk marketing areas, co-mingled all the milk markets into one large market and then reduced the various price supports for fluid milk and cheese... my bet would be that the big guys go under first and fastest.
And having seen a couple of large dairies go under, lemme tell you how this happens: Fast. So fast that the companies that have outstanding product yet to be paid for don’t get paid. I never had a load (or load*S*) of hay out at dairies that went belly-up, by I had neighbors who did and they never got paid on nearly $30K of hay. The dairy just took delivery, fed the hay all in one week and the next week, they shipped their cows to the slaughterhouse, closed down the dairy and stopped answering their phones. Because these huge “Dutch model” dairies operate with so little in the way of capital assets, there’s not much to grab in BK court.
As a result of a couple of large “Dutch model” dairies going under in a region (say, CA, ID or SD), you’d suddenly see the banks that extend operating loans or equipment loans/leases to these outfits getting very nervous, and denying renewal of operating lines or revolvers... and then a bunch more of these large dairies go down in flames.
Which might not be a bad thing, in the long run...
Win? I would never be allowed on the ballot.
Actually, farm subsidies are used by the BTO’s (as small farmers call the Big Time Operators) to out-bid the smaller farmers on land, equipment, rents, you name it.
The common myth is that small farms are pulling down the subsidies. Wrong. The majority of farm subsidies are received by the biggest farming operations - and then, the bulk of the farm subsidies are taken down by big farms in something like only six states.
The vast majority of people filing Schedule F’s on their tax returns don’t get subsidies - at all. Not even CRP payments.
If we ended farm subsidies tomorrow, it would be one of the most beneficial things to happen to smaller farmers since Herbert Hoover started subsidizing farmers in 1928/29.
Yes, that’s right. The farm subsidy system started not under FDR, but under Hoover. The crash in ag commodity prices started two years before the 1929 crash of Wall Street.
Yeah thats American.
How "American" is it to use tax dollars to support the market for anyone? Come on, man. Think about what you're writing. Crony capitalism exists in agriculture, too.
It will be the largest ones that are operating with significant leverage and debt load.
Nothing in your post justifies agriculture subsidies. They are no different from subsidies to wind power or electric-car-makers. The fact that you approve of food production and, thus, approve of subsidies to it makes no difference.
The government must not use dollars confiscated from its citizens to provide favored treatment to a particular business or industry.
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