This is just immoral...:angry:

[Tuberski]

Originally posted by Whaleboy


American farmers can retrain. It's not like they'll starve. Sure it'll cause hardships for some people, but nothing like the hardship suffered by + ten times that number in the third world. Financial inconvenience suffered by tens of thousands, or life/death struggle faced by hundreds of thousands? Tough one, especially considering that the humane option is also the cheaper one .

Before you get on this anti-US bit:

European farm sibsudies are greater per year than American.

Currently, economic studies place the average farmer subsidy at US$17,000/year for European farmers, and US$16,000/year for U.S. farmers. The subsidies are mainly in the form of tax reductions and very low prices on the water needed to grow plants.

ACK!

[Provost Harrison]

Mrmitchell speaks sense, a lot of those subsidies going to the large farms go straight into the pockets of those who own them. It happens the world over, you pay taxes to subsidise the rich, and they do it at every level, whether it be attacks on the working class in the form of cuts in the welfare state, or handouts to industry to please those who count to the government, who pay their parties funding. Whether this is what mrmitchell meant I am not entirely sure, but the point is more than certainly implied.

[Whaleboy]

Originally posted by Tuberski


Before you get on this anti-US bit:

European farm sibsudies are greater per year than American.

Currently, economic studies place the average farmer subsidy at US$17,000/year for European farmers, and US$16,000/year for U.S. farmers. The subsidies are mainly in the form of tax reductions and very low prices on the water needed to grow plants.

ACK!

No you're completely right, the EU is more guilty than the US of this, but I think this is a problem with the first world. For example, something like half of the EU's budget goes on French farmers!

[Provost Harrison]

And no doubt about that Mr Tuberski, the US and EU are massively protectionist and hand out subsidies from taxpayers money like there is no tomorrow. It's a disgrace quite frankly when the money of the working class is being used to subsidise the rich capitalist and keep profits high...

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Whaleboy
For example, something like half of the EU's budget goes on French farmers!

And Soanish ones, Italian, Polish etc. ones.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Whaleboy


American farmers can retrain. It's not like they'll starve. Sure it'll cause hardships for some people, but nothing like the hardship suffered by + ten times that number in the third world. Financial inconvenience suffered by tens of thousands, or life/death struggle faced by hundreds of thousands? Tough one, especially considering that the humane option is also the cheaper one .

Beyond that -- and maybe this has been said already -- what makes farmers so freakin special? Over the last two or three decades, we've basically turned over our entire shoe manufacturing industry to the Third World. Did anyone, aside from shoemakers, whine and fret about it? Did John Cougar Mellencamp and Wille Nelson organize Cobbler's Aid? No. Why? Because Americans aren't raised with romantic myths of the Family Shoe Business. But the Family Farm, for whatever reason, looms ridiculously large in our collective imagination -- even for Americans like me, whose families fled the horrors of serfdom in Eastern Europe, landed safely in New York City, and never, ever even thought about going back to the land. The myth is so huge that we can't have sensible policy discussions about it. And bastards like the good people at ADM play that for everything its worth -- and its worth billions.

[Odin]

People here don't care if thier subsidies hurt 3rd world countries, they think everyone in the US will starve if US farms arn't subsidized and they have this outdated Jeffersonian view that that the virtuous farmer is the backbone of America (yes, the hicks are THAT ignorant about how the modern world and the new global economy works).

[Mrs. Tuberski]

Ya know being from texas I know of alot of mexican pregnant women walking the border to have their kids on the us side of the border. these women go back and still recieve benfits form the us cause most of the kids are born in the us and are us citizens.

[Tuberski]

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly


Beyond that -- and maybe this has been said already -- what makes farmers so freakin special? Over the last two or three decades, we've basically turned over our entire shoe manufacturing industry to the Third World. Did anyone, aside from shoemakers, whine and fret about it? Did John Cougar Mellencamp and Wille Nelson organize Cobbler's Aid? No. Why? Because Americans aren't raised with romantic myths of the Family Shoe Business. But the Family Farm, for whatever reason, looms ridiculously large in our collective imagination -- even for Americans like me, whose families fled the horrors of serfdom in Eastern Europe, landed safely in New York City, and never, ever even thought about going back to the land. The myth is so huge that we can't have sensible policy discussions about it. And bastards like the good people at ADM play that for everything its worth -- and its worth billions.

Sure the shoes are made in other vountries, but those shops are still owned by Americans.

ACK!

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Tuberski


Sure the shoes are made in other vountries, but those shops are still owned by Americans.

ACK!

Do you thing that if food production goes Third World, it won't still be owned by Americans?

Check out the history of the United Fruit Company or Domino Sugar sometime...

[Whaleboy]

Odin: Ditto in the UK . Farmers are seen as being quintessentially British, everything that's good about the countryside (whereas in reality they're busy eutrophicating it with NPK ) and all that crap. They seem to have this inordinate amount of political power and this irritatingly loud collective voice .

[Mrs. Tuberski]

Originally posted by Odin
People here don't care if thier subsidies hurt 3rd world countries, they think everyone in the US will starve if US farms arn't subsidized and they have this outdated Jeffersonian view that that the virtuous farmer is the backbone of America (yes, the hicks are THAT ignorant about how the modern world and the new global economy works).

Thats Bull s*** and i dont care if you know it. Starvation has nothing to do with farmers. There are alot of things be sent out of the country to be done clothes etc where do you draw the line.

[Tuberski]

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly


Do you thing that if food production goes Third World, it won't still be owned by Americans?

Check out the history of the United Fruit Company or Domino Sugar sometime...

The difference is that nobody wants to make shoes here. Some people want to be farmers.

I have no problem if subsidies end, however.

ACK!

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Tuberski


The difference is that nobody wants to make shoes here. Some people want to be farmers.

I have no problem if subsidies end, however.

ACK!

You want to live dangerously? Go up to Maine and declaim loudly, in a public place, that no one there wants to make shoes...

Maine was devastated by the loss of a home-grown shoe industry. It didn't leave because no one wanted to make shoes; it left because no one wanted to make shoes for $2/day -- unlike people in Indonesia, who were happy to do so. If the shoe industry had received teh same kind of corporate welfare as farmers do, it would still be around.

[Whaleboy]

Thats Bull s*** and i dont care if you know it. Starvation has nothing to do with farmers. There are alot of things be sent out of the country to be done clothes etc where do you draw the line.

Well I think protectionism is all well and good for winning elections, but capitalism and trade is an equalising force between interacting economies, and it's not the like the US farming sector would be eradicated, just as there will be a market for speciality foods... for example in the UK, a small farm produces the greatest invention of all time, Wendsleydale cheese .