Posted on 02/15/2002 2:58:58 PM PST by RJCogburn
Farmers: Get a Job!
It kind of makes me wonder what country I'm living in when I pick up the newspaper and read this from the Associated Press:
"With crop prices mired near record lows, the government says farm earnings will drop 20 percent this year unless Congress enacts a new farm program or approves more emergency payments."
Hello? Is this free enterprise, profit-and-loss America, or have I crossed over into the Twilight Zone: Welcome to Cuba?
Before we dissect this "news," let's step back and appreciate the big picture. For many years the environmental movement has been warning that the out-of-control human race will imminently starve itself to death because of the Malthusian notion that population growth will outstrip food production.
Well, it hasn't quite worked that way. Instead of starving people and wealthy farmers (which is what should have happened if the doomsayers were right), we have fat people (see the recent Surgeon General's report) and farmers bellyaching about low crop prices.
The bad news, then, is good.
Getting back to the AP story: I'm a magazine editor, and I have yet to read in the newspaper that "editors' earnings will drop 20 percent this year unless Congress enacts a new editor program or approves more emergency payments." Do you know what I and my fellow editors have to do if our earnings drop to a level too low to live on? We have to look for higher-paying jobs! I assume that mechanics and real-estate salesman have to do the same.
But not the farmers. They have apparently been bestowed with the Divine Right to Farm. If they can't make enough to live on, they have the legal power to loot the rest of us so they can stay on the farm anyway. This sounds like insanity. Would someone please explain it to me?
Maybe the yeoman farmer, the noble man of the soil, is too busy lobbying for taxpayer subsidies to learn a little economics. But when a line of work won't pay a satisfactory income, it is the market's way of saying we have enough people doing that; go find something else to do. Why should farmers be an exception to a perfectly good rule?
An economist at Texas A&M was quoted saying, "Congress is looking at these numbers and saying, 'We can't live with that.'" Hah! He means that members of Congress won't let us taxpayers live with that, since they aren't planning to subsidize the farmers out of their own pockets. I can live with it, thank you. Besides, I gave last year, and the year before. I'm thinking it's time for the farmers to stand on their own two feet.
Do you realize that 30 percent of the wheat farmers' gross income comes from the government? Thirty percent! The guys that grow other grains and soybeans get 20 percent of their income from Washington. Can you say "socialized agriculture"?
I know how the farmers would respond. They need special treatment because they have to contend with the weather and price fluctuations. Like that's something new. Farmers have been plagued by drought, floods, and pests since biblical times. Uncertain prices are just as old. Guess what: the free market long ago evolved ways for farmers to transfer the risks to people willing to accept them in return for the prospect of high profits. They're called insurance and futures markets. The government has screwed up crop insurance because it thinks it can handle it better than private companies. The futures markets still work. The principle is simple. A farmer doesn't know what the price of his crop will be when he plants it. But there have always been risk-takers who are willing to bet that the price will be even higher than the farmer is happy to accept. So the risk-taker promises to buy the crop from the farmer at an agreed-on price. That gives the farmer a guarantee against a lower price and the risk-taker the chance for a real killing. Everyone is happy.
In other words, farmers don't warrant special treatment. Capitalist technological advances have made it possible to grow more food on less land and with fewer farmers. Why don't we face it already?
Right, near that area.
But we need people like you in California.
Thanks, but we are too far and in between. But we are trying to get the message out! Hopefully we can get rid of Red Davis and get a Rebublican gov.
Can you imagine what CA would be like without any conservative influence? Scary thought.
Right now we are living it.
As for boxer and feinstein, you have my sympathy. We got rid of Carol Mosley-Braun (probably better known here as, Carol Mostly Fraud) so there's hope for CA.
Man I hope so. Pray for March 5th!
Congratulations on your engagement! I hope your leg is healed in time for the wedding.
Can't agree with you there. I'm no ecomnomic expert on agriculture, but farmers as well as everyone else needs to stand up on thier own, but to keep them afloat, some help might be OK. The only reason they need help is probably govmint regulations, Including FDA and EPA, etc.
Wow, I think you are the closest Freeper I've ever responded to. 40 miles!
One of the positive things about this thread is that there's so many of us so-called Socialist Farm supporters here. I'm proud of us. We'll hold fast to our ideas. My thinking is that the throw-the-farmers-out people might be ...developers who want farm land to put up ugly tract homes.
Great town, just lousy politicians!
< I> Sigh, one day....if my sweetheart (the web designer) gets sponsored into a great paying job in the Bay Area...(he's back in the UK working).
Bad timing for valentines day.:(
I've been helping him send out dozens of resumes for web designer, developer, etc. If you hear/know of anything let me know :)
Not my field, but if I hear something...
Take care of the bent pin!(AKA broken leg.)
For future reference, you might want to consider trying to gain a sense of continuity in the threads you copy. It can at times prove invaluable.
I like farmers and appreciate their contribution and posted the article to generate some discussion.
Even here on FR, there are people who come out to defend government intervention, subsidy or whatever for a particular segment of society, and who make some good arguments in favor. So it happens with just about every segment of society....we are all in favor of limited government, the end of welfare subsidies etc. EXCEPT for whatever segment we happen to favor. Until there is some agreement by a lot of people that the concept, the philosophy is wrong, we are inevitably destined to continue our march in the direction of bigger government, more and more involved in our lives.
Too bad.
Until all aspects of farming are removed from the yoke of socialist policy, pulling the IV out of the arm of agriculture will be a near-instant death sentence.
Agriculture is the most rigged game in town. To attack the farmers is to demonstrate the ability to be at once myopic, vindictive, and self-defeating. Say hi to your new chinese and mexican masters, perhaps if you express due deferrence, they'll toss you the scraps you need to survive at a price you can almost afford once American agriculture is no longer able to feed the country.
Right!
EXCEPT for whatever segment we happen to favor.
Wrong!Freedom for all.
What a load of crap. You either know nothing about markets and price mechanisms or you're just blindly parroting the Welfare Farmer line.
Tell you what - let's go for it! I'll bet prices won't skyrocket once the Welfare Farmers get off our backs and off our tits, and I'm willing to take my chances with the free market, because it works.
Are you?
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