A Usenet persona calling itself BCITORGB wrote:

Tovarich Weiser says:
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I'm merely supporting price controls and subsidies
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Which implies central planning insofar as a central government decides
on the allocation of scarce resources, not Adam Smith's "invisible
hand".

True, but limited government planning regarding the allocation of scarce
resources and subsidies to strategic industries is a far cry from socialism.


As to how this is different from welfare to the poor, you have not made
clear.

What's unclear about "Government support of industry is government support
of industry, which produces things that add to the nation's prosperity in
return for the economic protection and support. Welfare is a drain on the
system consisting of money given to people who produce nothing in return."

This is corporate welfare

Buzz-word. "Welfare" is a grant of money to poor individuals with no
expectation of repayment. Subsidies to "corporations" involved in
agriculture are grants of money made with the express purpose of keeping the
agricultural capacity of the US strong, with an expectation that these
businesses will continue to farm and provide agricultural products to the
economy and the GNP. It's sheik to call subsidies "corporate welfare," but
it's also factually incorrect.

which, in the specific case of
agri-business, may well be driving TnT's sugar beet in-laws and other
ma and pa farms out of existence.

What's driving small farmers out of business is the aging farmer population
and the fact that most young people have no interest in being farmers, which
is, and has for a long time, been a hardscrabble, below-poverty-line
existence that's only attractive to some because of the lifestyle, which
requires great sacrifices in terms of comfort and wealth. Fact is that more
than 60% of small farmers must take off-farm jobs to survive at all.

As for large "corporate" farming, it's simply the wave of the future.
Economies of scale dictate that agricultural crop production be done on a
massive scale, which requires a large investment in both land and equipment,
not to mention huge costs of production. Only a corporation that has
significant capital can really afford to farm these days.

Fifty years ago, a corn harvesting machine might cost $2000. Today, a wheat
combine, a corn harvester or even a tractor may cost $100,000 to $250,000 or
more. It's economic suicide for a farmer with a few hundred, or even a few
thousand acres to try to buy new equipment. Only someone with tens to
hundreds of thousands of acres, who can move equipment around efficiently to
cultivate enormous fields and benefit from the economies of scale can afford
to buy modern farm equipment.

That means large corporations. The "family farm" is, by and large, on the
way out, and people interested in farming will end up working for large
corporate farms by necessity.

That's the sad, hard truth.

But that doesn't mean that agriculture, including large corporate
agriculture, does not deserve subsidies and price protections against
low-cost foreign crops to prevent the decline of agriculture overall.


Further, we have yet to establish that orange groves in the desert
serve some sort of national interest. Seems like a bad idea if the the
price of the oranges doesn't reflect the true cost of growing them.
Wouldn't we be better off eating apples?

People like oranges, and I'd certainly rather they come from the US than
from a foreign nation. Whether oranges are worthy of price supports and
protections is, of course, a matter of government policy, and government
policy reflects the will of the people, however remotely. I'm more
interested in supporting production of food staples like wheat, corn, beef
and other "non-luxury" crops. But, if a farmer wants to raise oranges, it's
better to subsidize him and keep his land in production than it is to end up
with him selling out to a developer. Once the land is converted from
agricultural use, it's gone forever.


Ultimately, somebody has to pay the price of the water.

Yes, so what? Everybody has to pay for water, one way or another.

Most likely it
is Henry Homemaker when he pays higher residential water rates.

Why is Henry Homemaker any more entitled to low-cost water than the
agriculturalist? Henry Homemaker has to eat, and the vast majority of the
water he consumes comes directly from the food he eats...water put there by
the farmer.

This
would be tolerable if our agri-business firms operated as non-profits.
As they don't, Henery Homemaker is subsidizing those who hold shares in
agri-business. That sounds like WELFARE to me.

We all subsidize agriculture because we pay taxes that pay subsidies. So
what? It's not welfare because those subsidies are not simply given away,
they are invested in American agriculture, which, as I said, is a strategic
resource that once destroyed, cannot come back.


Welfare to the poor further serves the purpose of reducing the nation's
income disparity.

No, it merely disempowers and enslaves those who take it. They become
dependent on the dole, and they adjust their lifestyles to live on the dole,
and never seek to better themselves or become productive members of society.
Thus, they become permanent, useless drains on the economy. Our system
rewards hard work and innovation, not selfish laziness.

Check your history books for the consequences of
income disparity, Tovarich. You'll then understand why this is of
strategic importance to your government.

I grant you that CEO salaries are out of control in the US, as they are
everywhere, but such salaries comprise a minute fraction of the GDP and
"income disparity" is not resolved or reduced by simply giving people money
from someone else's pocket. It's reduced by putting people to work so they
become producers instead of leeches. That's why welfare-to-work reform in
the US has been so successful.

The real problem is that many welfare leeches simply do not WANT to work,
they prefer to take the dole and spend their lives sitting on the stoop or
dealing drugs to each other.

Contrast this with the hordes of illegal aliens flooding into this country
to work extremely hard at jobs that "Americans won't do." Americans won't do
those jobs because they are a) being paid to be idle, b) they are lazy bums
who don't want to sweat and c) the jobs they could be doing are filled with
illegal aliens. Remove the illegals and there would be plenty of jobs for
Americans...albeit low-paying stoop-labor jobs that aren't much fun at all.
Still, as the illegals know, stoop-labor beats starvation...something that
is almost entirely unknown in this country. (Note: being hungry is not the
same thing as starvation...Please try to find the last time someone in this
country died from starvation because no food was available.)

If we put people in the position of either working or starving, chances are
they will work, if they can. Hunger is a great motivator. Just look at the
Depression. Welfare was started during the Depression not because of "income
disparities," but because, due to the crop failures and drought, combined
with the stock market crash, there simply was no work available because
there was no money to pay workers. That resulted in the CCC and the great
public works projects of the 30s. We could do the same thing today, and
improve our infrastructure (such as the 70% of highway bridges that are
deteriorating and are unsafe) by requiring welfaristas to put in some sweat
equity for their paycheck. There's plenty of things for them to do, and you
can build a road with 20,000 men with shovels as well as you can with
bulldozers, albeit not as efficiently. Still, I'd rather pay a bit more and
be less efficient in order to see the indigent at work than use modern
"labor saving" devices and have to pay for welfaristas to sit around idle.
Idle hands are the devil's playthings...an aphorism that is indisputably
true.

My other theory for welfare reform involves appropriating all the
professional sports arenas in the nation under eminent domain and turning
them into Welfare Training Centers. I believe that if I have to report to
work eight hours a day to receive a paycheck, so should welfaristas. So, in
order to get a check , you are required to report to the stadium at 8 am
each day.

Once you've been logged in, you find a seat and you sit in it, and do
NOTHING, and I mean nothing, including talking with your friends or moving
about, for the next eight hours. If you violate the rules, and are caught
(by one of the legions of TV cameras and security monitors) you are ejected
from the stadium and you don't get paid for that day. Too many violations
and you're out for some extended period, like a month. Repeat offenders can
be dumped permanently.

Your alternative to sitting quietly in your seat (with potty breaks and
lunch...at your expense) all day is to attend educational seminars and
classes to learn a trade, or to go to the recruiting center, where employers
go to find day laborers and permanent employees.

At the end of the day, if you haven't found work, you get a paycheck.

The next morning, the same thing. You go and sit there in stultifying
boredom, educate yourself or go to work.

At least that way, the taxpayers know that some good, or at least no
mischief, is coming from their enforced income redistribution to the
indigent.

The other upside of this idea is that professional sports athletes will also
be unemployed, and their exorbitant salaries can be used to build new
businesses to employ the poor, and taxpayer-funded stadiums will finally be
used for something beneficial to the country.
--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser