Unfortunately they were warned, they knew this was coming, and many of them voted for him anyway. I suspect that they are anticipating a handsome farm subsidy package.
They voted for Trump because they were angry that they had to compete with black people for jobs, they were angry because the boss might turn out to be a woman. They were angry because a teeny, tiny number of people wanted to be transexual and they weren't allowed to stone them. Also they hated large groups of brown foreigners coming into country and getting their jobs because they get paid less. So far they're happy with Trump getting rid of DEI and throwing brown people in concentration camps.
Let them go bankrupt. They voted to put us all thru this bullshit. Why do we all have to continually fix/bailout Republicans and the problems they create? Iraq, the financial crises, Trump, tariffs, itтАЩs never ending with those people. They never grow up.
That's not going to happen. Trump is going to bail them out. It will come out of our taxes. Anyone who protests will be told they are not patriotic, they are unAmerican, and they want Americans to starve. So we need to start marshalling arguments. I personally like playing dumb. "I don't understand. Tariffs make us rich, Trump said so. The farmers should be raking in the bucks if they have tariffs. They should be richer than ever. Are you saying tariffs don't work?!"
Yes, they will absolutely get bailed out. Like I said in another post, we're Saddam-era Iraq now. We all live to support the Baathist/MAGA minority. And, they never have to grow up. Kind of like a petro state in a way. They can be stupid, evil and awful, and they dip into our reserves to keep feeding their hate machine when the funds get low.
But, we should absolutely fight any way we can against those bailouts. I'm tired of watching Republicans get bailed out of their self-inflicted misery.
As a Democrat living in Iowa, I share your outrage and consternation about the farmers who seem perpetually determined to fall for every Fox News lie and vote GOP against their own interests.
But I canтАЩt look on upcoming tRump-induced calamity for Midwestern farmers with schadenfreude. I foresee that those who are the most capable stewards of the land may lose their property to the billionaire agribusinesses тАФ who will, in turn, continue to spend great wealth electing de-regulation, тАЬno-tax on billionairesтАЭ politicians.
IтАЩm frustrated, but F**k the farmers has bad consequences. I would like to see тАЬfarmersтАЭ defined as people who live on the farm at least 9 months a year. Agricultural tax breaks and bail-outs might be made available to farmers in some situations. Those who own land as a business investment will not qualify for the same tax-payer funded largesse as actual farmers who reside on their farms тАФ the agribusinesses will have to rely on the usual loopholes and their tax lawyers in case of a bad year (or lunatic executive branch).
Uh, this is more than a little misleading. Farming is a capital-intensive business. What's the ROIC? What kind of incomes are they generating with that investment? These aren't liquid assets; these are the means of their livelihood. If you're going to be part of the debate, please do so on honest terms.
Farming is capital-intensive. Buying a new farm is next to impossible. We can accurately say that todays farmers are a protected, hereditary class of people.
We support agricultural prices through crop insurance schemes. This guarantees a minimum return even in years of crop failure.
Here in California, we keep property taxes low through the Williamson Act.
When you inherit the family farm, the current estate tax only kicks in if the farm is worth more than $14 million. If not, it just passes to the next generation with no cost.
You can sell a farm for a profit, run a 1031 exchange, and buy another farm for more money without paying any taxes on the capital gains. In this way we allow capital gains to be deferred indefinitely even if I sell a farm. When I die, if the value is below the estate tax cutoff, my kids inherit the farm at the new, increased value.
Many of the programs the Trump administration cut, like USAID, directly purchased agricultural commodities, thus supporting American farmers.
We pay farmers to NOT plant marginal areas through the Conservation Reserve Program.
Does ROIC even mean anything to a farmer who inherited a farm, gets privileged rates, is functionally allowed to avoid capital gains, and has a federal backstop on their income?
Further, farms are increasingly owned not by guys with pickups, but private equity groups.
So again, should we really be bailing out a bunch of millionaire farmers who voted for this?
Should we be bailing out a bunch of private equity groups?
Are there other categories of people who have assets worth $1.7 million dollars who we should also bail out?
I fail to see why we should bail out a category of people who voted for their own destruction.
Yes, ROIC means a great deal to a working family farm operation. If you merely inherit the farm and work what you've inherited, you aren't going to last long. I'm not a Californian. I'm a Midwesterner and the first generation, after 4 who preceded me, that didn't run a dairy farm--though I also bought a farm, out of pocket, to enjoy the solitude, let the land to a dairying neighbor, and enjoy the run-up in land values.
I'm not suggesting a bail out--though it seems entirely foreseeable, if not inevitable, just as it was in Trump 1.0. Indeed, to be clear, I oppose a bail out; if you voted for this chucklefuck, you earned your economic hardship. What rankles is the notion that farmers are particularly deserving because they're fat and happy sitting on $1.7mm assets--by which I assume you actually mean net worth. That's sloppy. The median family farm income is, by the best data I can find, less than $90,000. These are folks doing hard and vital jobs that don't make a helluva lot more than a seasoned public school teacher or a long-haul trucker. And they bear vastly greater risk in the process. So, they earned their ticket not because they're fat cats or elites but because, like plenty of other blue-collar Americans, they are lazy, inattentive, naive, cowardly, or just starved for the entertainment that comes from the circus. That's deeply disappointing, but here we are.
Incidentally, corporate farms don't vote, so what's the point of hectoring about them? The harangue here was against farmers. That means family-owned and family-operated farms. A corporate farm is just another aggregation of capital, no more or less relevant to this discussion of "you bought the ticket, you take the ride" than a manufacturing concern, a real estate developer, or a bank.
We can debate who is a real farmer all we want, but the fact remains that farms are valuable.
"Farmers" are going to be the object of scorn because, as a class, they voted for Trump AND are already squawking for a bailout.
Most of the bailout is, by definition, going to go to corporate farmers. They have most of the land. If you want to define them out of farmer category, then we should go ahead and do that.
Anyhow, what is a corporate farmer? Is a farmer who owns 1000 acres and contracts to farm another 5000 a corporate farmer? They are presumably incorporated. I can think of a rice farmer who operates on that model off the top of my head.
I can think of three family-run, small-scale vineyards/wineries off the top of my head. Wine is going to be really hard hit by tariffs. They probably also lost money last year, as the wine market is down. The probably have a more ethical claim as grapes are not federally subsidized.
These farms are also owned by people who made tens to hundreds of millions of dollars in other areas before buying land and literally building farms from scratch.
A friend tells a story about going on a date with the heiress of the largest owner/processor of prunes in the state of California. This is literally a family operation. She was disappointed that he didn't own a jet!
What is the limit? Where do we draw the line?
I understand the farm nostalgia. I lived in Vermont and the Midwest. There is an attraction to the idea of a small farm outside of town. I live in a county on the California coast where small farms produce artisanal, organic milk and eggs from barns overlooking the ocean. It's really pretty to bike through.
I also know that California is the biggest agricultural state in the country. Small farms are endangered because they cannot compete with factory operations. I can see the aggregation of land and environmental devastation as we get more efficient.
Towns that used to hum with activity are now dying because we keep getting more efficient and need fewer people for the same amount of farming. Pheasant and duck seasons are impacted because more efficient farming leaves less habitat. This impacts tourism during the farming off-season.
We should not bail out people who vote against their own interests.
Congress must take back control of tariffs before all the farmers in the Midwest go bankrupt.
Unfortunately they were warned, they knew this was coming, and many of them voted for him anyway. I suspect that they are anticipating a handsome farm subsidy package.
The farmers in the Midwest voted for this. Let rhem go bankrupt.
Hmmm ... there's something I read about leopards ... now what was it?
Trump will throw them a bone when it serves his purpose. Remember, he'll be flush with tariff money to throw around and buy votes.
Why? They are the ones who put him back in office, or at least a good proportion of them. Suckers deserve to suffer, too.
They voted for Trump because they were angry that they had to compete with black people for jobs, they were angry because the boss might turn out to be a woman. They were angry because a teeny, tiny number of people wanted to be transexual and they weren't allowed to stone them. Also they hated large groups of brown foreigners coming into country and getting their jobs because they get paid less. So far they're happy with Trump getting rid of DEI and throwing brown people in concentration camps.
All of which support my conclusion.
Yes.
And, to rebuild the world's trust in our markets.
Or, we do as taxpayers paying their subsidies, doubling the harm to taxpaying consumers with higher food prices still added on.
Subsidies? That sounds like Socialism to me. We don't go in for that socialism BS here in farm country. (sarcasm voice)
Congress? Fight?? Against Executive assumption of its authority???
DonтАЩt be silly. Much easier to devise another kajillion-dollar bailout, funded by those nasty, lunatic blue states.
(Replace тАЬauthorityтАЭ above with тАЬresponsibilityтАЭ, to better grasp the reality of the situation)
I don't know what it will take for the GOP to grow a spine, but farmers going bankrupt? Nah.
I can't see it ever happening, even if a few do speak out. They cave. Every. Single. Time.
Because POS-POTUS gifts them w subsidies.
Let them go bankrupt. They voted to put us all thru this bullshit. Why do we all have to continually fix/bailout Republicans and the problems they create? Iraq, the financial crises, Trump, tariffs, itтАЩs never ending with those people. They never grow up.
That's not going to happen. Trump is going to bail them out. It will come out of our taxes. Anyone who protests will be told they are not patriotic, they are unAmerican, and they want Americans to starve. So we need to start marshalling arguments. I personally like playing dumb. "I don't understand. Tariffs make us rich, Trump said so. The farmers should be raking in the bucks if they have tariffs. They should be richer than ever. Are you saying tariffs don't work?!"
Yes, they will absolutely get bailed out. Like I said in another post, we're Saddam-era Iraq now. We all live to support the Baathist/MAGA minority. And, they never have to grow up. Kind of like a petro state in a way. They can be stupid, evil and awful, and they dip into our reserves to keep feeding their hate machine when the funds get low.
But, we should absolutely fight any way we can against those bailouts. I'm tired of watching Republicans get bailed out of their self-inflicted misery.
As a Democrat living in Iowa, I share your outrage and consternation about the farmers who seem perpetually determined to fall for every Fox News lie and vote GOP against their own interests.
But I canтАЩt look on upcoming tRump-induced calamity for Midwestern farmers with schadenfreude. I foresee that those who are the most capable stewards of the land may lose their property to the billionaire agribusinesses тАФ who will, in turn, continue to spend great wealth electing de-regulation, тАЬno-tax on billionairesтАЭ politicians.
IтАЩm frustrated, but F**k the farmers has bad consequences. I would like to see тАЬfarmersтАЭ defined as people who live on the farm at least 9 months a year. Agricultural tax breaks and bail-outs might be made available to farmers in some situations. Those who own land as a business investment will not qualify for the same tax-payer funded largesse as actual farmers who reside on their farms тАФ the agribusinesses will have to rely on the usual loopholes and their tax lawyers in case of a bad year (or lunatic executive branch).
I completely agree. We should not be bailing out rich investors.
I know a family that is one of the largest recipients of federal farm aid in California.
They live happily in the middle of San Francisco.
Exactly.
The average farmer is worth $1.7 million dollars.
Why are we bailing out millionaires?
Uh, this is more than a little misleading. Farming is a capital-intensive business. What's the ROIC? What kind of incomes are they generating with that investment? These aren't liquid assets; these are the means of their livelihood. If you're going to be part of the debate, please do so on honest terms.
Fortunately, my family used to own a farm.
Farming is capital-intensive. Buying a new farm is next to impossible. We can accurately say that todays farmers are a protected, hereditary class of people.
We support agricultural prices through crop insurance schemes. This guarantees a minimum return even in years of crop failure.
Here in California, we keep property taxes low through the Williamson Act.
When you inherit the family farm, the current estate tax only kicks in if the farm is worth more than $14 million. If not, it just passes to the next generation with no cost.
You can sell a farm for a profit, run a 1031 exchange, and buy another farm for more money without paying any taxes on the capital gains. In this way we allow capital gains to be deferred indefinitely even if I sell a farm. When I die, if the value is below the estate tax cutoff, my kids inherit the farm at the new, increased value.
Many of the programs the Trump administration cut, like USAID, directly purchased agricultural commodities, thus supporting American farmers.
We pay farmers to NOT plant marginal areas through the Conservation Reserve Program.
Does ROIC even mean anything to a farmer who inherited a farm, gets privileged rates, is functionally allowed to avoid capital gains, and has a federal backstop on their income?
Further, farms are increasingly owned not by guys with pickups, but private equity groups.
So again, should we really be bailing out a bunch of millionaire farmers who voted for this?
Should we be bailing out a bunch of private equity groups?
Are there other categories of people who have assets worth $1.7 million dollars who we should also bail out?
I fail to see why we should bail out a category of people who voted for their own destruction.
Yes, ROIC means a great deal to a working family farm operation. If you merely inherit the farm and work what you've inherited, you aren't going to last long. I'm not a Californian. I'm a Midwesterner and the first generation, after 4 who preceded me, that didn't run a dairy farm--though I also bought a farm, out of pocket, to enjoy the solitude, let the land to a dairying neighbor, and enjoy the run-up in land values.
I'm not suggesting a bail out--though it seems entirely foreseeable, if not inevitable, just as it was in Trump 1.0. Indeed, to be clear, I oppose a bail out; if you voted for this chucklefuck, you earned your economic hardship. What rankles is the notion that farmers are particularly deserving because they're fat and happy sitting on $1.7mm assets--by which I assume you actually mean net worth. That's sloppy. The median family farm income is, by the best data I can find, less than $90,000. These are folks doing hard and vital jobs that don't make a helluva lot more than a seasoned public school teacher or a long-haul trucker. And they bear vastly greater risk in the process. So, they earned their ticket not because they're fat cats or elites but because, like plenty of other blue-collar Americans, they are lazy, inattentive, naive, cowardly, or just starved for the entertainment that comes from the circus. That's deeply disappointing, but here we are.
Incidentally, corporate farms don't vote, so what's the point of hectoring about them? The harangue here was against farmers. That means family-owned and family-operated farms. A corporate farm is just another aggregation of capital, no more or less relevant to this discussion of "you bought the ticket, you take the ride" than a manufacturing concern, a real estate developer, or a bank.
We can debate who is a real farmer all we want, but the fact remains that farms are valuable.
"Farmers" are going to be the object of scorn because, as a class, they voted for Trump AND are already squawking for a bailout.
Most of the bailout is, by definition, going to go to corporate farmers. They have most of the land. If you want to define them out of farmer category, then we should go ahead and do that.
Anyhow, what is a corporate farmer? Is a farmer who owns 1000 acres and contracts to farm another 5000 a corporate farmer? They are presumably incorporated. I can think of a rice farmer who operates on that model off the top of my head.
I can think of three family-run, small-scale vineyards/wineries off the top of my head. Wine is going to be really hard hit by tariffs. They probably also lost money last year, as the wine market is down. The probably have a more ethical claim as grapes are not federally subsidized.
These farms are also owned by people who made tens to hundreds of millions of dollars in other areas before buying land and literally building farms from scratch.
A friend tells a story about going on a date with the heiress of the largest owner/processor of prunes in the state of California. This is literally a family operation. She was disappointed that he didn't own a jet!
What is the limit? Where do we draw the line?
I understand the farm nostalgia. I lived in Vermont and the Midwest. There is an attraction to the idea of a small farm outside of town. I live in a county on the California coast where small farms produce artisanal, organic milk and eggs from barns overlooking the ocean. It's really pretty to bike through.
I also know that California is the biggest agricultural state in the country. Small farms are endangered because they cannot compete with factory operations. I can see the aggregation of land and environmental devastation as we get more efficient.
Towns that used to hum with activity are now dying because we keep getting more efficient and need fewer people for the same amount of farming. Pheasant and duck seasons are impacted because more efficient farming leaves less habitat. This impacts tourism during the farming off-season.
We should not bail out people who vote against their own interests.
Because they vote for (at least self-proclaimed) billionaires. Next question.
Yup. These folks need to pay the price for their votes and need to touch the hot stove themselves. Buy the ticket, take the ride.
My thoughts exactly. They overwhelmingly voted for Trump, they deserve to punch the ticket and take the ride.