I don't know if you've ever eaten government cheese or not. The USDA used to, and may still I don't know, buy up milk fat and have it made into cheese. This was a good deal for dairy farmers as it allowed them to produce and sell more milk and the government would buy up surplus. This kept the retail prices higher and stable for the farmer, allowing him to sell all he could produce without having to worry about a pesky supply and demand curve.
There were some other benefits too. The second group to benefit was the welfare industrial complex. This group consists of all the professional welfare workers, their subcontractors, consultants, warehouse workers, agricultural concerns etc. Free cheese is big business. The farmer gets a cut. The cheese guy gets a cut. The truck driver gets a cut. Then you have all the case workers, cheese distribution specialists and accountants who do the work and demonstrate and document the need for free cheese. Free cheese is big business.
Of course there is one last group that benefits from free cheese, the poor man eating it. Although the program allegedly exists for his benefit, he is only a minor part of the process. As long as he shows up every other week to pick up a bag full of cheese and other government subsidized products they are handing out, all is well in the economy of "free cheese".
America is so good at free cheese that approximately 1/3 of the population gets in on it and makes a sandwich. That doesn't count all those who benefit from jobs and profits form working in the free cheese complex. According to this: there are 86 million workers supporting 148 million takers in a country with a population of about 340 million. That's a lot of free cheese from not a lot of producers.
If tomorrow you were to move, not take, just move the cheese, you'd upset a lot of people. After all, they were counting on that cheese being right there. You moved it. You are a bad person.
For arguments sake lets say that someone saw a piece of cheese that they thought, because nobody else could possibly want that piece of cheese, they could get it for the taking. Again for arguments sake, lets say that a tiny family of mice had been eating on that piece of cheese nobody else wanted for about 140 years.
In order to be the old rat in charge of the pack, you have to be cunning and vicious. It has to look like the cheese just happened to fall into your lap, or the other rats will be jealous. You arrange for consultants to consult, advisors advise, the bureaucrats lick boots, not because you've arranged for the boot licking, that's just what they do, its in their nature. When they see an ass, they want to kiss it. They want to be "change agents". Just tell them "its the law" or call it "policy" and they will blindly do your biding without considering if it is right or just.
Imagine that the rat, having set the wheels of steal into motion, is just about to have his piece of cheese fall into his lap, when a cat stops by to visit the family of mice. Instead of getting the cheese the rat gets his tail stepped on. Now the rat has to go out and get a bigger cat.
If you've grasped my analogy you now understand what is going on with the Bundy Ranch in Nevada. Except the Bundy family has over the years played by the rules and only stopped when it became clear that no matter what they did, someone was going to rustle their cheese.
When I was a kid, I remember one time for maybe 2 months, where dad and mom had to get government assistance. Part of that assistance was a 5lb block of the best cheese you would ever hope to taste.
ReplyDeleteI wish they would pass on their recipe to a private processor so it could be sold on the open market. It was like a high quality Velveeta, except it was actual cheese. I still to this day, 50 years later, remember the flavor of that cheese.
Very good tie-in to the Bundy situation. Have a very good weekend Res, and may the peace of the joy of the day bring you and yours many blessings.
He is Risen!
Thanks Susan. Your comments are always a sunbeam in my day.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a child I had a great uncle that got free cheese. He would ride with us 9 miles to town and get his cheese. He did need it though most of the farmers kept him fed. he was kind of a cripple and old in a child's eyes. It was a block of yellow cheese wrapped in plastic like saran wrap. Thinking back it must have weighed two pounds.
ReplyDeleteI know this has nothing to do with your point, but you made me remember - your fault.
s far as the Bundy thing goes, he never stole a thing, he staked a claim, or his folks did, like miners used to, and now the government wants it back. The funny thing is to settle the West the Government gave away 40 acre plots by staking claim, are they asking for that back?
Here in Texas almost all private ownership of farm land passed down is divisible by 40. But now you have to pay taxes on it to the county and State to keep it.
Want some free land, just find 40 acres that no one has been paying taxes on for years, go pay the back taxes and quit claim it, it's yours.
The state owns your land now, only Texas allows Allodial Title (Land you never have to pay taxes on) but they won't let you have it.
Try to get an MSO on your vehicle, you can't but it exists. If you got the MSO you don't have to register it with the State, unless you aim to drive on public roads. But even if you do register it you can sell it without transfer of certificate of title. Notice you don't have a title, you have a certificate and the State has the MSO (manufacturer's statement of origin).
The settlement rules that Bundy's folks worked under on called for 12 1/2 cents per acre to be purchased in whole sections. Latter the gov changed the rule to 1/2 sections. OR and its a big OR perpetual use via constructive grazing. Also he owns/holds land via his deeded water rights. It's his water. He has paid all taxes owed on the deeded rights. For the BLM to tell him that he can't access his water via public land is outrageous. There were 56 other ranch families operating ranches in this county till the feds run them off. This has only happened in the last 20 years. Bundy's claim goes back 140 years. I suspect that Bundy has some of the better water and access, as well as some deed hay meadows that provide supplemental winter feed. That's why he has been able to hold out this long. 900 cows even getting $900 a head selling a third every year only provides cash flow of $270,000. I doubt he gets $900 most years. Can you imagine how much gas this guy uses to ranch the amount of range he needs just to run those cows? His input costs have to be outrageous. Even so he'd probably pay the $1.35AU/mo if they'd recognize his right to ranch. But if he did that the BLM would only get $7,200 a year off him. I wonder what they are getting for chi-com solar farms.
ReplyDeleteRes Ipsa: "900 cows even getting $900 a head selling a third every year only provides cash flow of $270,000."
ReplyDeleteIf you looked closely at that Google map in the other thread, you'd see that it is also a melon farm. I don't know which produces more revenue, the melons or the cattle, but it would go a ways in explaining why his herd isn't that big...and also why the water rights are so important (melons take a lot of water to grow).
Here's the Google street view with the melon sign.
It doesn't surprise me that he has a side business. I bet with the long summers and mild winters that he can grow lots of melons.
ReplyDeletePeople from the East don't realize just how much the FedGov controls out West. There is so much land controlled by a distant, unresponsive, unaccountable entity. It really causes a lot of problems and distrust, to say the least
ReplyDeleteHere is a good image showing Fed lands
http://images.mises.org/6723/us_public.jpg