Some Perspective on the Utter Foolishness of the Economic Aspects of "Make America Great Again" (1 Viewer)

[Steve Tasker]

Independent farm earnings have been horrible for years, with a short uptick a couple years ago.  It's one of the reasons they hire undocumented immigrants - it's all they can afford and keep the lights on. 

I'd heard an interesting piece on my local NPR station from one of the NY-specific shows they air regularly.  They interviewed a farmer, from a rural part of the state, who owns a family farm but is also a member and spokesman of a NY farmers trade group.  The state government was pushing minimum wage reform statewide, which included a minimum wage bump to $15/hour for all workers, no carve-outs.

What I found to be particularly eye-opening was this guy's commentary on his own farm.  He talked about how his margins are so razor-thin and his profit is so minimal that he simply cannot afford to pay $15/hour.  He talked about how he pays his employees, all legal (so he claimed), in the $9-10/hour range for their work (though I think the minimum wage is higher now).  But if you do the math on his hours worked compared to his total profit for the year, he himself earns only approx $11/hour.  If the minimum wage were to go to $15/hour, he - the business owner - would be making well less than his employees if he wanted to keep the business going.  He talked about possibly selling the farm and just finding a job somewhere else if he'd be guaranteed $15/hour rather than the $11/hour he was netting now.  It was pretty depressing, to be honest.  This is where our food comes from and this guy can barely afford to pay his staff.

 

[RedmondLonghorn]

I thought this was going to be about cows.

Don't ever change, GB.

 

[Henry Ford]

I am not a Republican, exactly, but I celebrate cruciferous vegetables in all their forms.

Well, maybe not kale.

Kale = also mustard.

 

[Henry Ford]

I'd heard an interesting piece on my local NPR station from one of the NY-specific shows they air regularly.  They interviewed a farmer, from a rural part of the state, who owns a family farm but is also a member and spokesman of a NY farmers trade group.  The state government was pushing minimum wage reform statewide, which included a minimum wage bump to $15/hour for all workers, no carve-outs.

What I found to be particularly eye-opening was this guy's commentary on his own farm.  He talked about how his margins are so razor-thin and his profit is so minimal that he simply cannot afford to pay $15/hour.  He talked about how he pays his employees, all legal (so he claimed), in the $9-10/hour range for their work (though I think the minimum wage is higher now).  But if you do the math on his hours worked compared to his total profit for the year, he himself earns only approx $11/hour.  If the minimum wage were to go to $15/hour, he - the business owner - would be making well less than his employees if he wanted to keep the business going.  He talked about possibly selling the farm and just finding a job somewhere else if he'd be guaranteed $15/hour rather than the $11/hour he was netting now.  It was pretty depressing, to be honest.  This is where our food comes from and this guy can barely afford to pay his staff.

Precisely. 

 

[modogg]

You just need to look at Japan to see what an aging labor workforce does to the economy.  It does not take rocket science to realize we need able bodies willing to do work if we want to grow our economy.  But the immigration process needs to be structured and documented where people are screened and not the illegal stuff going on today where you get some undesirable elements.  Once sufficient numbers are allowed to get in legally, that will make it much easier to deport the undocumented ones which then will be mostly the undesirable ones/crooks. 

is there actual data to back this up? i live in a large sanctuary city, with plenty of illegal immigrants, and without a doubt  this has zero correlation to crime where i live. 

 

[RedmondLonghorn]

I'd heard an interesting piece on my local NPR station from one of the NY-specific shows they air regularly.  They interviewed a farmer, from a rural part of the state, who owns a family farm but is also a member and spokesman of a NY farmers trade group.  The state government was pushing minimum wage reform statewide, which included a minimum wage bump to $15/hour for all workers, no carve-outs.

What I found to be particularly eye-opening was this guy's commentary on his own farm.  He talked about how his margins are so razor-thin and his profit is so minimal that he simply cannot afford to pay $15/hour.  He talked about how he pays his employees, all legal (so he claimed), in the $9-10/hour range for their work (though I think the minimum wage is higher now).  But if you do the math on his hours worked compared to his total profit for the year, he himself earns only approx $11/hour.  If the minimum wage were to go to $15/hour, he - the business owner - would be making well less than his employees if he wanted to keep the business going.  He talked about possibly selling the farm and just finding a job somewhere else if he'd be guaranteed $15/hour rather than the $11/hour he was netting now.  It was pretty depressing, to be honest.  This is where our food comes from and this guy can barely afford to pay his staff.

I wonder why people who have small farms aren't growing herbs and niche vegetables. That stuff sells for a small fortune on a per pound basis. I am sure they are harder to raise and harvest, but they also have to be more profitable than bulk crops, I'd think.

 

[tommyGunZ]

California pays a ton of money to wealthy farmers/ landowners to not develop or farm large swaths of land.  The idea that we would pay people to not develop land in areas that need infrastructure and housing development seems absurd to me.

Do you know why we do that?

 

[RedmondLonghorn]

Do you know why we do that?

Does it have something to do with water?

 

[Slapdash]

Kale > Broccoli

 

[Gr00vus]

Wheat in particular caused scientists to start looking.  There are a huge number of people with Celiac these days, and growing numbers of just unclassified sensitivity to wheat products. They started wondering what's different. Turns out we've gone from massive biodiversity to something like 40% of all farms growing only Monsanto crops. Even more with just wheat.

Corn also. We've got a huge corn problem in this country, and a lot of it traces to our subsidy program. It impacts all kinds of agricultural products, corn fed beef doesn't compare to grass fed both in nutritional content and taste. Same problem with farm raised fish - they feed those fish grain rather than their natural food sources, which results in basically leaching a ton of the nutritive value from the fish (salmon is a great example of this). These monocultures due to factory farming by gigantic agricultural corporations are really screwing up our food chain and our environment. Our governmental food/agriculture policies are not working for us, except to make "food" extremely cheap. Great, we get $1 burgers, but there's not much food in them.

The omnivore's dilemma is an interesting read on this for those interested.

 

[Long Ball Larry]

That and climate change are the overriding themes of Paolo Bacigalupi's "The Wind Up Girl" - Excellent near future Sci-Fi IMHO

I think that Taleb talks about a fair bit in his most recent book.

 

[rockaction]

Christopher Caldwell over at the Weekly Standard (the magazine being no friend of Trump's) has some great articles and lectures around about the dynamics of immigration, the globalization of free trade, and other things have led to movements towards autarky in developed Western countries. His book foresaw the European/Muslim immigration problem before even the French riots in the suburbs, I believe, and he's done great work on Trump, even if he is a little pro-Trump. I'd check him out. He seems honest and forthright and identifies some of the factors besides racism and ignorance that haven driven autarky to the fore again. 

https://www.google.com/#q=christopher+caldwell,+youtube

Oh, I see he's getting play again. I hadn't looked him up in months.  

 

[rockaction]

I've also tried to start threads about the depopulation of our society and the separation of our cognitive elites from other. less intelligent people before. These aren't my own theories, but I think they're huge issues that we're not having kids anymore, not raising them in the institutions that we used to, and therefore, bring sort of a different demographic to the table than we once did. 

As for the depopulation and declining birth rates, it becomes an issue, because, like RedmondLeghorn pointed out in the OP, you have to replace workers in order to produce things. If you do not do it with willing domestic ones, you must import them. Important and broad cultural changes come with this, namely, religious ones (as Caldwell points out). Yes, we can talk about assimilation, but assimilation has always taken generations, and along the way, society inevitably changes through democratic processes. 

So people can ask themselves rationally whether or not these changes are worth it. This election answered "no." 

 

[Sand]

I'd heard an interesting piece on my local NPR station from one of the NY-specific shows they air regularly.  They interviewed a farmer, from a rural part of the state, who owns a family farm but is also a member and spokesman of a NY farmers trade group.  The state government was pushing minimum wage reform statewide, which included a minimum wage bump to $15/hour for all workers, no carve-outs.

I wonder what his tax load is compared to other more reasonable states.

 

[Steve Tasker]

I wonder what his tax load is compared to other more reasonable states.

Probably awful....New York is usually voted one of the least tax-friendly states in the US....

 

[Mister CIA]

No, but that's why Monsanto is so heavily used.  It's the best genetically modified seed available.  The modifications are patented so these trends towards one particular seed are going to happen.

Perhaps I'm not seeing what this has to do with publicly funding independent farmers.

Edit:  Maybe you are referring to independently funded research? That would make sense.

Check out my FFA worst contrarians rankings. You won't believe who is #1.

 

[Henry Ford]

I wonder what his tax load is compared to other more reasonable states.

I know Louisiana (at least other than sales tax) is one of the better states for taxes, and our farmers are hurting.

 

[msommer]

I know Louisiana (at least other than sales tax) is one of the better states for taxes, and our their farmers are hurting.

Fixed that up for ya, GB

 

[Yankee23Fan]

What the #### is with Republicans and broccoli? Find a better preparation technique. Broccoli is good. 

No it's a demon weed and destroys every dish it is a part of. Every. Time.

 

[Sammy3469]

I wonder what his tax load is compared to other more reasonable states.

In NY for a farmer not making any money, it's probably not bad.  Most locales outside of NYC proper have low property tax loads and there are bunch of carve outs in the state tax code for farmers.  Seriously taxes aren't the problem.

Here's some antidotes from 2.5 hours north of the city where there are a bunch of farms.  

On the bad side, you have the family dairy farm that is having a tough go at it.  The reason....they aren't certified "organic" so have to sell their milk into the "buying collective" at prices set at an earlier part of the year for everyone that sells to them (I believe this is national, but don't quote me on that).  Low milk prices for kids means these farmers are getting killed. 

The various local farms that either sell locally upstate, make the trek to NYC to sell into the city, or setup CSAs (some do 2 or 3 of these) are all doing fine.  All these local farms now have some way to distribute their product directly cutting out the middle man and have managed to make a go of it.  This may be unique to Hudson Valley though since there are a lot of people that are willing to pay up for good product (for instance, locally grown apples at the farmer's market are 50 cents more expensive a pound that at the grocery store).  

More than anything those operations that have figured out how to reach the customer directly are making a go of it, those that don't/can't are having trouble.  My guess is any commodity producer is having a hard time.

 

[msommer]

Being a commodity sucks

 

[culdeus]

Anecdotal, but there are some small farms around here that sell into co ops. They ####### rake in cash and immigrants kill to work on them. I think its going to be about access. A Kansas farm doesnt have that type of access. 

 

[Henry Ford]

Being a commodity sucks

That's why Cruciferousaurus is sad.

 

[rockaction]

That's why Cruciferousaurus is sad.

I thought he was sad because his girlfriend Patricianasaraus left him because he wasn't good enough for her family, especially her father, right?

 

[Henry Ford]

I thought he was sad because his girlfriend Patricianasaraus left him because he wasn't good enough for her family, especially her father, right?

Looks like she eloped.

 

[rockaction]

Looks like she eloped.

Always happy endings under bigger skies.

What's farming like in MT, I wonder?

 

[Henry Ford]

News came out today that vomitoxin is being found in Midwest corn, and it included discussion of Gibberella ear rot - which is the same fungus that causes a wheat rot.  Some strains are resistant, some are less so.  So which crops are usable is going to be a seed-by-seed issue with the corn, and whether it spreads to this year's wheat crop will be based on the wheat strain in the same way.  

Crazy to think in 30-40 years down the path we're on, it would be all or nothing for whether there's any corn or wheat coming out of the Midwest for a year.