Winners only.

[SlugButter]

You think human rights and the COTUS are political?

Giving people 450,000$ to buy their votes is what’s political. You should get your dick out of the chicken before it crosses the road.

 

[RobGMN Premium Member]

Giving people 450,000$ to buy their votes is what’s political. You should get your dick out of the chicken before it crosses the road.

Ohhhh, I see. So giving farmers subsidies because they can't turn a profit is a purchase of their vote?
I get it now why all the heartland votes Republican.

 

[SlugButter]

Ohhhh, I see. So giving farmers subsidies because they can't turn a profit is a purchase of their vote?
I get it now why all the heartland votes Republican.

Farmers get subsidies because they get the same money today for a bushel of wheat that they received in 1980. It’s a controlled market. Don’t talk about shit you know nothing about.

 

[SlugButter]

Bill Gates is the largest owner of farm land in America. He must be a great farmer…….

 

[RobGMN Premium Member]

Farmers get subsidies because they get the same money today for a bushel of wheat that they received in 1980. It’s a controlled market. Don’t talk about shit you know nothing about.

So, they can't sell wheat for as much as they used to (disregarding that cost of labor in farming has dropped dramatically with mechanized farming). Are you saying it's OK to subsidize a business that cannot remain competitive?

And, please explain your "controlled market" theory. I am genuinely interested in what you mean by the term.

As for Bill Gates: He owns 3/100% of the farmland in America. What does he receive in subsidies for farming the land that is actually crops or feed range for livestock?

 

[SlugButter]

So, they can't sell wheat for as much as they used to (disregarding that cost of labor in farming has dropped dramatically with mechanized farming). Are you saying it's OK to subsidize a business that cannot remain competitive?

And, please explain your "controlled market" theory. I am genuinely interested in what you mean by the term.

As for Bill Gates: He owns 3/100% of the farmland in America. What does he receive in subsidies for farming the land that is actually crops or feed range for livestock?

A controlled market is subsidies Rob. That’s how it’s controlled. And no, they can’t just “sell wheat” as if it’s a free market. Bread companies do not buy wheat to make bread directly from farmers. The price a farmer gets for a bushel of wheat is set by the government, and that price has risen yearly at far below inflationary levels, so they subsidize the industry to control prices yet keep farmers in business…..or we would all starve. My family owns a farm in Kansas, and almost every farmhouse that used to be small farmers are vacant rotting homes. His closest neighbor is 8 miles away now. Its now mostly corporate owned land with a farmer who has been hired to tend the land. Land ownership for the little guy is almost dead. Farming is corrupt just like every other large American industry.

 

[SlugButter]

They’ve basically made the farmers reliant on government subsidies to survive. Things they pay for they control. Pretty simple way to take over any industry that way.

 

[RobGMN Premium Member]

A controlled market is subsidies Rob. That’s how it’s controlled. And no, they can’t just “sell wheat” as if it’s a free market. Bread companies do not buy wheat to make bread directly from farmers. The price a farmer gets for a bushel of wheat is set by the government, and that price has risen yearly at far below inflationary levels, so they subsidize the industry to control prices yet keep farmers in business…..or we would all starve. My family owns a farm in Kansas, and almost every farmhouse that used to be small farmers are vacant rotting homes. His closest neighbor is 8 miles away now. Its now mostly corporate owned land with a farmer who has been hired to tend the land. Land ownership for the little guy is almost dead. Farming is corrupt just like every other large American industry.

You're saying the government sets the price of wheat, and not things like supply and demand, and commodities market trading?
Can you offer any links or any info that explains how this price fixing/regulation works in conjunction with futures markets like CBOT, KCMT. MGEX, etc (keeping in mind that futures trading involves ownership of actual physical wheat, unlike a stock than you can't trade for ownership of an actual piece of the Apple headquarters, etc.).

If the government sets the prices that wheat gets sold for, why are food producers buying their wheat through commodities exchanges, and why is it that I can affect the price of wheat by buying an selling futures contracts? it seems contrary to the reality you describe.
And yes, it IS possible for me to get stuck with ownership of thousands of bushels of wheat, our ounces or pounds of gold, or barrels of crude, etc. That's part of the commodities trading game and risk.

 

[SlugButter]

You're saying the government sets the price of wheat, and not things like supply and demand, and commodities market trading?
Can you offer any links or any info that explains how this price fixing/regulation works in conjunction with futures markets like CBOT, KCMT. MGEX, etc (keeping in mind that futures trading involves ownership of actual physical wheat, unlike a stock than you can't trade for ownership of an actual piece of the Apple headquarters, etc.).

If the government sets the prices that wheat gets sold for, why are food producers buying their wheat through commodities exchanges, and why is it that I can affect the price of wheat by buying an selling futures contracts? it seems contrary to the reality you describe.
And yes, it IS possible for me to get stuck with ownership of thousands of bushels of wheat, our ounces or pounds of gold, or barrels of crude, etc. That's part of the commodities trading game and risk.

You can go to the USDA and spend the time to figure it out if you wish. No way will it all fit into a post on a car audio forum, nor do I wish to spend the time typing it. I wouldn’t say the USDA directly just set the price. That’s not how our system works. The price is manipulated fairly easily though free market regulation. For a lot of small farmers, growing crops is a tax write off and feed for their cattle (where the real money is). It hasn’t been profitable to grow crops for years unless you own hundreds and hundreds of acres of land and hire labor to help tend it. The profits/acre have been squeezed so much that without subsidies no one would be a farmer and we would have serious food shortages.

 

[SlugButter]

A combine to cut wheat costs around 1 million dollars also. Just getting into farming is now a rich mans game.

 

[Buck 5,000+ posts]

I don't think it matters. This will take it's course. There's too many people not paying attention to very important details. There's just too many parts of our society's workings that are not functional. It's like we're going to keep speeding up until we all go the way of the dodo bird lol.

 

[RobGMN Premium Member]

You can go to the USDA and spend the time to figure it out if you wish. No way will it all fit into a post on a car audio forum, nor do I wish to spend the time typing it. I wouldn’t say the USDA directly just set the price. That’s not how our system works. The price is manipulated fairly easily though free market regulation. For a lot of small farmers, growing crops is a tax write off and feed for their cattle (where the real money is). It hasn’t been profitable to grow crops for years unless you own hundreds and hundreds of acres of land and hire labor to help tend it. The profits/acre have been squeezed so much that without subsidies no one would be a farmer and we would have serious food shortages.

OK. That seems to go on a fully different tangent from what you said about the government directly setting prices on wheat.
Almost comically, if you Google it, the first result is from the USDA. The first few words of an 8-page paper on wheat and corn price determination factors: "Prices are determined by the interaction of the supply and demand functions, "

No doubt about volume versus profitability, but that's what happens with a population of 330,000,000. Go to General Foods with a few acres of wheat and they will laugh at you. 120 lbs of flour can be made with an acre of wheat. Unless you have THOUSANDS of acres to offer, I'm sure no mfgr is interested when the flour consumption in the US was 2.7 pounds per person PER DAY in 2017. Even a BIG small farm would have little value as a source when their annual output might last less than a week or even a few days for production. They're stuck wholesaling it at lower price, or not selling at all.

Big population = big business to serve that population. Really no way around it.

Any car audio fan is probably familiar with Top Gear and Grand Tour. One of many "spin-offs" is "Clarkson's Farm". It provides a very interesting insight of what a startup farmer can face just to get up and running, and what career farmers can deal with in a year. Well worth the watch if you can stand the guy (there seems to be no "middle" with him").

 

[SlugButter]

OK. That seems to go on a fully different tangent from what you said about the government directly setting prices on wheat.
Almost comically, if you Google it, the first result is from the USDA. The first few words of an 8-page paper on wheat and corn price determination factors: "Prices are determined by the interaction of the supply and demand functions, "

No doubt about volume versus profitability, but that's what happens with a population of 330,000,000. Go to General Foods with a few acres of wheat and they will laugh at you. 120 lbs of flour can be made with an acre of wheat. Unless you have THOUSANDS of acres to offer, I'm sure no mfgr is interested when the flour consumption in the US was 2.7 pounds per person PER DAY in 2017. Even a BIG small farm would have little value as a source when their annual output might last less than a week or even a few days for production. They're stuck wholesaling it at lower price, or not selling at all.

Big population = big business to serve that population. Really no way around it.

Any car audio fan is probably familiar with Top Gear and Grand Tour. One of many "spin-offs" is "Clarkson's Farm". It provides a very interesting insight of what a startup farmer can face just to get up and running, and what career farmers can deal with in a year. Well worth the watch if you can stand the guy (there seems to be no "middle" with him").

I get that Rob, but you’re acting like the free market and supply and demand are dictating prices and that’s just not true. “Prices are determined” by supply and demand. That’s a trick of words. The USDA looks at market data and sets prices based on a algorithm with metadata in a software program. It’s still a price able to be manipulated artificially. You seem to think that farmers inherently have money, but that’s backwards. Only people with a lot of money can be farmers now, so a lot of farmers are rich. It’s corporate farming. The prices have been purposely squeezed based on simple math of production/acre to set the economic conditions to force the need of a ton of land and bulk farming to make money, squeezing out family farms. Every dumb farm hick in Kansas figured this out years ago, but why listen to a dumb farm hick?,,,,

 

[SlugButter]

I guess my overall point is that the subsidies help the rich farmers more than the small farmers, and have for decades. I get why, but when every socialist style economic solution only helps the richest people, I question our politicians, not socialism. The economic regulations could have been set up to help the individual over the corporation years ago, which is where I believe socialism style approaches could thrive, produce and help more people make a good living, rather than help a few dozen people get filthy rich. Our corrupt rotted government could fvck up a wet dream.

 

[SlugButter]

And make no mistake, we are almost socialist now. Look up the definition and tell me we aren’t. Socialism doesn’t mean no free market exists. I don’t get why we are so ignorant as to what socialism is and live right in the middle of socialism as we speak.