Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: American Spirit who wrote (288020)	5/15/2006 5:33:21 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1571886

Re: Socialism can be a very good thing. Johnny Cash grew up on a socialist commune farm and loved it. Socialism saved the US after the Great Depression and WWII. Our most successful government programs are socialist, Social Security and Medicare... ...and farm subsidies: How Farm Subsidies Became America's Largest Corporate Welfare Program by Brian Riedl Backgrounder #1520 February 25, 2002 With the House and Senate close to agreeing on a new $171 billion farm bill, the time is right to take a fresh look at farm policy to ensure that taxpayers are getting their money's worth. Although farm subsidies are justified as helping struggling family farmers make ends meet, the bulk of subsidy payments goes to the largest high-income farms. In fact, current farm policy allocates two out of every three farm subsidy dollars to the top 10 percent of subsidy recipients while completely shutting 60 percent of farmers out of subsidy programs. The ceilings that are in place on most farm subsidy programs are rarely enforced by Congress or the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and contain loopholes that allow the largest farms and agribusinesses to bypass these limits. As a result, taxpayers are paying billions of dollars to subsidize prosperous farms. Making matters worse, many of the large farms that receive subsidies have used these funds to buy out small farms and consolidate the agriculture industry. Far from remedying this problem, the House's Farm Security Act of 2001 (H.R. 2646) and the Senate's Agriculture Conservation and Rural Enhancement Act (S. 1731) both increase subsidies and continue tilting them to large farms and agribusinesses.1 Subsidy Programs Designed for Agribusinesses Farm subsidies are traditionally defended as--in the words of Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee Chairman Tom Harkin (D-IA)--a "safety net" supplementing the incomes of poor farmers.2 One would expect farm safety-net programs to target poor farmers, just as other safety-net programs such as food stamps and Medicaid limit eligibility to low-income families. In reality, however, the opposite is true: Farm subsidies are distributed not on the basis of need, but with regard to two other criteria: (1) the type of crop grown, with 90 percent of all farm subsidies awarded to farms that produce wheat, corn, cotton, rice and soybeans,3 and (2) the amount of crops grown, with farmers who grow more crops receiving higher subsidies. Therefore, large farms and agribusinesses--which, as a result of economies of scale, are also the most profitable farms--are eligible for massive subsidies as long as they grow the crops the government wants them to grow. Meanwhile, small lower-income farms growing the same five crops receive only a fraction of what large farms receive; and farmers planting the 400 other crops, regardless of their need, are completely excluded from most farm subsidies. In sum, although farm subsidies are promoted as being necessary to provide income maintenance for poor farmers, they are designed to function as the largest corporate welfare program maintained by the federal government. [...] heritage.org

To: American Spirit who wrote (288020)	5/15/2006 12:45:05 PM
From: Tenchusatsu	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1571886

AS, So don't use the word "socialism" as if it's an evil. There's nothing wrong with believing in a socialism, AS. If you think we ought to err on the side of socialism, you are free to vote that way. I just have a problem when some like to revise history and say that the Founding Fathers believed in one. The truth goes more along the lines of what you just said: Modern-day socialism was born in the early 1900's with the birth of industrialism, unionization, and the New Deal. Tenchusatsu