Environment Groups Against Cuomo’s Dairy Plans

cnynews.com ^ | January 25, 2013 | Ted Muehl

[BroJoeK]

FredZarguna: "Please don't respond with your emotions and feeeeeeeeelings and empty opinions again; I've heard your nonsense hundreds of times over the last 50+ years. Come back with actual, documented facts, or don't bother."

Sorry FRiend, but first you continue to miss my points, and now you're flying off the handle for no reason.

I don't dispute any of your facts, just your interpretations of them.
And if you can cite some cases of rural farming counties which vote solid Democrats, then I'll concede those really are just a bunch of socialist takers.
But the reality is that most of the conservative vote in this country comes from rural counties, which has to mean your average farmer is not a liberal Democrat.
And that's the only point I'm making, and indeed, you seem to concede it, despite all your huffing and puffing.

FredZarguna: "We need about half the people now farming to go out of business because they're terrible businessmen and terrible farmers who have NO CLUE as to what they're doing so that half that remain can finally make some money in a free market where the price of food is determined by market conditions and not where government interference sets prices to be."

You probably already know that the number of farmers has been shrinking by half every couple of decades for well over 100 years.
And this despite all the government programs intended to keep small farmers farming.
Every year there are fewer and fewer, larger and larger farms.

• At the time of the Revolutionary War, over 80% of Americans were farmers.

• By the Civil War, farmers still accounted for over half the population.

• By World War II, barely 25% were farm families.

• Today it's a couple of percent, at most, and that includes part-time small farmers.

So your wish to see the numbers of farmers reduced by half has already been granted, many times, and continues to be partially granted every year.
Point is, all those socialistic government programs have done nothing but maybe slow the process of reducing the numbers of farms and growing the average farm size.

Indeed, as I pointed out in post #13 above, the top 10% of all farms received 80% of government subsidies.
So those programs are not even about saving small farmers.

But the bottom line is still this: despite your inexplicable desire to portray small farmers in the worst possible light -- as a bunch of ignorant Democrat socialist takers -- the fact is: farmers are among the most reliably conservative voters we have.

FredZarguna: "Second, your claim that farmers receive less in benefits than they pay in taxes if false."

Which you claim without presenting any data to support it.
I was not able to find more recent data, but numbers from the 1990s suggests that larger farmers pay over $100 billion per year in taxes, and that agriculture related businesses pay additional hundreds of billions.
So the relatively small amounts paid as welfare to small farmers, or price supports for larger farms, seems to me a rather pitiful return on successful farmers' tax "investment" in Federal and other government services.

FredZarguna: "Farmers vote against socialist programs in the rest of the economy, but they vote in favor of them when they perceive their own interests are in play."

As I've explained before, if you offered your average successful farmer a 50% reduction in total taxes, in exchange for privatizing various government farm-welfare programs, I think you'd find they will take that offer as a good deal.
But as long as they are forced into paying ever higher taxes, I don't think it's surprising that farmers would want something of value back, in the form of government services.

So again, my main point here is simply to plea for some understanding and sympathy for smaller farmers.
If history is a guide, they are doomed to economic extinction anyway, government programs only delay the inevitable for many, and in the mean time, they really are your proto-typical small businessman, the heart and soul of a conservative Republican party.

So don't trash talk them, FRiend. ;-)