march for the alternative, anti-cuts protest

[MrJonno]

Food prices are supported by government distortion of the market, that is a subsidy you simply don't have the option to not take them. There were reasons in the past to have them when food production technology was primitive and feeding nations was a difficult task. Now its just an excuse for wealth distribution taking poorer people's money and giving it to the rich who claim to hate socialism

[Seth]

Food prices are supported by government distortion of the market, that is a subsidy you simply don't have the option to not take them. There were reasons in the past to have them when food production technology was primitive and feeding nations was a difficult task. Now its just an excuse for wealth distribution taking poorer people's money and giving it to the rich who claim to hate socialism

So, explain to me how it is that while you pay $4.00+ a pound for steak at the market, I get less than one dollar ($82/hundredweight) per pound at the cattle sale last week? Where's that subsidy, exactly? Where's the "government distortion of the market" for slaughter cows, pray tell? I didn't see any USDA bureaucrats setting cattle prices at the auction. Where were they, exactly?

Or are you talking out your ass again, as usual?

[JOZeldenrust]

Food prices are supported by government distortion of the market, that is a subsidy you simply don't have the option to not take them. There were reasons in the past to have them when food production technology was primitive and feeding nations was a difficult task. Now its just an excuse for wealth distribution taking poorer people's money and giving it to the rich who claim to hate socialism

So, explain to me how it is that while you pay $4.00+ a pound for steak at the market, I get less than one dollar ($82/hundredweight) per pound at the cattle sale last week? Where's that subsidy, exactly? Where's the "government distortion of the market" for slaughter cows, pray tell? I didn't see any USDA bureaucrats setting cattle prices at the auction. Where were they, exactly?

Or are you talking out your ass again, as usual?

Because if international producers actually had access to American (or European, for that matter) markets, you wouldn't even be able to get that much for your beef.

Guaranteed food prices, tarifs and farm subsidies keep food expensive and poor farmers in non-industrialized countries destitute.

[MrJonno]

The subsidies are often a safety net to ensure farmers don't go broke during bad times, this isnt automatically a bad thing but what it certainly isnt is free market capitalism. The state basically takes a large % of the risk

The usual comparison in the UK is coal mining where coal mines have similar problems with fluctuating prices but unlike farmers are more likely to vote for more left wing parties so were basically left to rot in the 80's

[egbert]

There's plenty of farm subsidies to go around, that much is true, but they are literally all the product of Progressive politicians pandering for votes. Hell, there's a subsidy out there for black (and only black) "farmers" who have so much as "tried" to farm. They can get $50,000 in government cash merely for trying and failing to successfully farm. Guess who set that little gravy train up? Clue: It wasn't the Republicans.

Have you switched your source from Glen Beck to the KKK?

Washington, DC, July 25 - Black farmers receive between one-third to one-sixth of the benefits under major federal crop subsidy programs that other farmers receive, and the “subsidy gap” has widened over the past decade. The gap will become more inequitable if a bill reported by the House Agriculture Committee passes the House later this week, researchers said.

The farm subsidy gap is documented in a study to be released in a telephone news conference at 2 p.m. ET today (July 25) by the National Black Farmers Association (NBFA) and the Environmental Working Group. Their report is based on USDA subsidy payment records for individual farm subsidy recipients and farm businesses that previously have not been available to outside researchers. The two organizations collaborated on a 2003 analysis, Obstruction of Justice, that reignited the debate over the injustices tens of thousands of black farmers have experienced in the settlement of the Pigford vs. USDA case involving discrimination in government farm lending.

Analysis of payments to individual farmers and farm businesses shows that a subsidy gap between black farmers and all others has expanded dramatically in the past decade from $2,225 per recipient in 1995 to nearly $10,000 per recipient in 2005. The analysis compares black recipients with all other recipients, including individual subsidy recipients who are predominantly white, and farm businesses, which are predominantly white-owned.

http://www.ewg.org/release/widening-far ... her-behind

[Seth]

Food prices are supported by government distortion of the market, that is a subsidy you simply don't have the option to not take them. There were reasons in the past to have them when food production technology was primitive and feeding nations was a difficult task. Now its just an excuse for wealth distribution taking poorer people's money and giving it to the rich who claim to hate socialism

So, explain to me how it is that while you pay $4.00+ a pound for steak at the market, I get less than one dollar ($82/hundredweight) per pound at the cattle sale last week? Where's that subsidy, exactly? Where's the "government distortion of the market" for slaughter cows, pray tell? I didn't see any USDA bureaucrats setting cattle prices at the auction. Where were they, exactly?

Or are you talking out your ass again, as usual?

Because if international producers actually had access to American (or European, for that matter) markets, you wouldn't even be able to get that much for your beef.

Guaranteed food prices, tarifs and farm subsidies keep food expensive and poor farmers in non-industrialized countries destitute.

So? That's their problem. Farmers in non-industrialized countries have no inherent right to access American markets. We have every right to impose tariffs that favor American farmers, because they are Americans, and seeing to their well-being, rather than seeing to the well-being of every other farmer on the planet is the duty and function of our government.

Every nation on earth imposes tariffs on foreign goods, and have done so for millennia. And tariffs are not subsidies.

[Seth]

The subsidies are often a safety net to ensure farmers don't go broke during bad times, this isnt automatically a bad thing but what it certainly isnt is free market capitalism. The state basically takes a large % of the risk

Yup. And that's both reasonable and prudent, given the fact that food production is a strategic military resource, without which the nation quickly begins to starve and becomes weakened and less able to defend itself. Destroying food production capacity is one of the classic "scorched earth" policies of military leaders throughout history. It is in the best interests of all nations to ensure and support domestic food production precisely so that they are not left at the mercy of hostile, or even potentially hostile foreign governments who use food as a weapon of war, like the warlords of Somalia who left massive amounts of foreign food aid on the docks of Mogadishu to rot so that they could starve their political and tribal opponents into submission. That practice is what lead to the US deploying military troops in Mogadishu, which lead to the "Blackhawk Down" events, which lead to that fucking coward Bill Clinton abandoning Mogadishu to the warlords.

[Seth]

There's plenty of farm subsidies to go around, that much is true, but they are literally all the product of Progressive politicians pandering for votes. Hell, there's a subsidy out there for black (and only black) "farmers" who have so much as "tried" to farm. They can get $50,000 in government cash merely for trying and failing to successfully farm. Guess who set that little gravy train up? Clue: It wasn't the Republicans.

Have you switched your source from Glen Beck to the KKK?

Have you stopped fucking your mother?

Washington, DC, July 25 - Black farmers receive between one-third to one-sixth of the benefits under major federal crop subsidy programs that other farmers receive, and the “subsidy gap” has widened over the past decade. The gap will become more inequitable if a bill reported by the House Agriculture Committee passes the House later this week, researchers said.

The farm subsidy gap is documented in a study to be released in a telephone news conference at 2 p.m. ET today (July 25) by the National Black Farmers Association (NBFA) and the Environmental Working Group. Their report is based on USDA subsidy payment records for individual farm subsidy recipients and farm businesses that previously have not been available to outside researchers. The two organizations collaborated on a 2003 analysis, Obstruction of Justice, that reignited the debate over the injustices tens of thousands of black farmers have experienced in the settlement of the Pigford vs. USDA case involving discrimination in government farm lending.

Analysis of payments to individual farmers and farm businesses shows that a subsidy gap between black farmers and all others has expanded dramatically in the past decade from $2,225 per recipient in 1995 to nearly $10,000 per recipient in 2005. The analysis compares black recipients with all other recipients, including individual subsidy recipients who are predominantly white, and farm businesses, which are predominantly white-owned.

http://www.ewg.org/release/widening-far ... her-behind

[/quote]

Posting four year old liberal whining about "disparities" in crop subsidies is hardly persuasive.

[.Morticia.]

egbert isn't a liberal

he's a socialist

you make yourself look like an idiot when you confuse these most basic of economic principles

[Seth]

egbert isn't a liberal

he's a socialist

you make yourself look like an idiot when you confuse these most basic of economic principles

You make yourself look like an idiot when you fail to read the fucking post and properly attribute the comment, which was directed at his link, not his argument.

[egbert]

I'm just waiting for Seth to forget himself and blurt out that we are all Godless Commies ..... Have we or have we not ever been a member of the communist party ? ... Do we know any one who is ? I s'pose if Seth is as senile as some of his posts recently then we should just ignore his opinions like non- white nurses do to the old racists in Care homes .

I have no idea of you're a "Godless Commie" or not, nor do I care. Your ad homs are noted.

But the facts are clear, socialist systems always and inevitably fail on loose fiscal policy, as Tytler predicted. It's an economic fact that socialist societies devolve into authoritarian regimes as the OPM runs out. They can do nothing else.

They promise government largess to the non-productive dependent class, and depend on the productive class to support the dependent class. Eventually, once all the excess capital in the system has been used up after being taxed away from the capital investors, and once all the natural resources which can be sold on the capitalist free market have been exhausted, the burden on the productive class becomes unbearable, and they give up trying to generate wealth because they are tired of supporting an ever-growing dependent class who see the labor and property of the productive class as an entitlement that can be seized for the use of the dependent class at will.

Once the productive class gives up and decides to become members of the dependent class, as well they should, the society quickly begins to fail as the available sources of revenue to provide the promised entitlements dries up.

The dependent class quickly becomes angry at the perceived betrayal of the government, which promised to take care of them in perpetuity, and social unrest becomes worse. The government resorts to ever-more authoritarian practices, and propaganda becomes the tool by which government tries to sway public opinion. But nobody's producing any taxable wealth, and food and other basic necessities are in short supply as workers rightfully decide that they are not about to labor endlessly and fruitlessly for others while getting nothing for themselves.

Factories close, strikes become endemic, riots and murder run rampant, and people begin to starve. The government becomes more and more totalitarian as it tries to maintain power and control, and it begins shooting rioters and looters and executing "counterrevolutionaries" and traitors to the increasingly strident and absolutist Marxist vision for society.

Those who refuse to work are taken to the killing fields and are executed, their bodies left to rot as an example to others. But none of this changes the determination of the people to reject such totalitarian efforts to enslave them and steal the fruits of their own labor. As society collapses, free markets begin to emerge in the form of barter and trade among individuals, and participants evade government scrutiny and taxation in order to survive.

The government then either collapses because there's no one left to run it, or it becomes a brutal communist dictatorship that kills millions with impunity, like Stalin and Mao, in order to cow the rest of the population into proletarian servitude.

That's the inevitable course of all socialist societies that disrespect individual rights and private property. It's simple economic fact that all the delusional political propaganda in the world won't change. It's a function of human nature that rhetoric cannot change. Always has been, always will be.

[egbert]

You assume that the productive class is the class that OWNS things

Yes, that's a valid presumption. The productive class actually...well...PRODUCES things, and those things belong to them.

Take the British Royal Family, for instance. They produce?.....

[egbert]

You assume that the productive class is the class that OWNS things

Yes, that's a valid presumption. The productive class actually...well...PRODUCES things, and those things belong to them.

The dependent class produces nothing, it just consumes.

you assume that managers,ceos , bankers, stock brokers and futures traders, tax consultants etc PRODUCE rather than parasitize .

Yes, that's a valid presumption. They fill a free market demand for services, and therefore they are producing wealth. Without bankers, stock brokers, future traders

Ah, yes - ENRON springs to mind....

[egbert]

When nitwits like you get all flustered when your sacred cows are slaughtered before your eyes and you have to resort to OT ad homs rather than reason and intelligent debate.

That would be a function of your lack of cognitive abilities, not a reflection on my rhetorical skills.

Oh, the Irony! Oh, the Hypocrisy!

[MrJonno]

Yup. And that's both reasonable and prudent, given the fact that food production is a strategic military resource

So you accept that your 'business' survives by taking money of taxpayers, there isnt anything wrong with that its only hypocracy when you start going on about the evils of socialism and government. There is no difference between that and being a postman, a teacher or a soldier all public employees most of whom do a good job