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I want thank you cards from rural folks

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Zor Prime said:
Who's going to make it if the world turns upside down, a farmer or (insert hundreds of other professions?) Take a guess who has an irreplaceable commodity.

I'd like to see the notion put into actual practice. Farmers stop selling their shit to anyone or anything to do with a large city and sit back and see what happens. Fun experiment don't you think. You know what would happen, right? It would be such a crisis that the government would intervene, that's how bad it would be.

I don't know about you but I'm so comfortable in knowing what the outcome would be that I would be willing to see it begin before the day is out. I'll be on the last plane out the local airport here tonight in California back to my property in West Virginia and watch the fireworks. I've got a cellar that doubles as a bunker with approx a year of canned goods. Let's do this for about 6, 8 months and comb over the results a year out and see what you have to say afterward.
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Cool, then the banks come and seize your land, your assets, and all the fancy farming equipment designed by big city engineers. Have fun subsistence farming off grid with an Ox and plow, lol.
 
Zor Prime said:
I'd like to see the notion put into actual practice. Farmers stop selling their shit to anyone or anything to do with a large city and sit back and see what happens. Fun experiment don't you think. You know what would happen, right? It would be such a crisis that the government would intervene, that's how bad it would be.
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That's pretty much what happened in post-revolution Russia. Didn't turn out well for anyone. Famine in the cities and massacres and violent seizures of grain in the countryside. Not sure what you think that proves either way, other than civil wars are very unpleasant.

Most rural people aren't essential farm workers, agriculture doesn't require anywhere near as much labour as it used to, that's why most people moved to cities (which is what civilisation literally is - the development of cities because we don't all have to be subsistence farmers any more, so people can do other things and produce more wealth by doing things like inventing better fertilizers and agricultural machinery...even if that move to the cities happened later in the US than in Europe).

Modern "country" attitudes are summed up by a copy of the Daily Telegraph I remember from many years back - one page carrying an article demanding London Transport workers face the discipline of 'market forces' and demanding an end to public transport subsidies, with the Tube being privatized, and the opposite page carrying an article demanding more state handouts for farmers dealing with (IIRC) the foot-and-mouth outbreak (that was started by bad practices by farmers).
 
Let's all stoke this great divide which no one needed.

651241018ea1a3e093bf5d55077e367b.jpg
 
What generates this kind of debate. Self hate naturally. Because of self hate people live in a constant state of competition, what created self hate in the first place, the need to be worthy of love and attention. Once that inferiority feeling in inculcated and the painfulness of that inculcation undergoes autonomic suppression, we are doomed to divide along any and every imaginable difference between ourselves and others we can imagine. The ego is a superiority complex built to keep us from feeling what we really feel.

So here we have this war between citified and rural, without the slightest acknowledgement the luck of the draw as to which camp we fit into mostly dependent on where we were born and raised. And it is on such meaningless distinctions we build our lives all because we were all put down for something or other as children.

That we fell into this insanity unwittingly and could not have done otherwise is a fact, but to continue to buy into this bull shit game as thinking adults may inspire a desire to change. I wish you well in that regard.

Stop painting the insanity monkey with red lips so you can kiss it. A saying that just appeared in my head out of the blue.
 
MrSquished said:
Congratulations on contributing.

But the simple fact is that all studies about this show money goes from more densely populated areas to sustain life in rural areas. Well that is a completely fine concept except it seems a lot of rural folks these days are very ungrateful.

Appreciate your personal situation but it doesn't change the facts and the numbers. No amount of micro anecdotes changes the macro economic picture here. Good luck with that!
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You're the one making that claim, but I have yet to see proof of it. So enlighten with all of these studies please.
 
nOOky said:
You're the one making that claim, but I have yet to see proof of it. So enlighten with all of these studies please.
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Of course. We've had this discussion in here a few times before with links but this should not be just an inside joke. Here are studies from a few states. You can find similar studies for other states.


minnesotareformer.com

Twin Cities metro sends money to rural counties • Minnesota Reformer

A common refrain from Minnesota Republicans goes something like this: Rural communities are overtaxed, underfunded and ignored by legislators. Greater Minnesota sends their tax dollars to the Twin Cities, where metro residents benefit from government programs. At a Nov. 15 event in New Ulm...
minnesotareformer.com minnesotareformer.com


 
pmv said:
Do they, though? Maybe partially but it seems very complicated to me. At least in Europe it is (was, depending on what's happened with the CAP post-Brexit). Some subsidise exports only. Or they are paid _not_ to grow food, to keep prices high.
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Farm to market roads, rural highways, rural electrification and water distribution system all subsidize the cost of food in the US. Also have corp insurance backed by the government. Then you have insanely cheap grazing rights on BLM land, etc.
 
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Tsinni Dave said:
Personally, if I could live the rest of my life without stepping foot inside a city I would be perfectly happy. I have to go work in a city next week for the first time in 13 years so I'll let you all know how much I despise the average human when I get back after being forced to interact with you for the duration.
As an aside, during the pandemic we worked overtime cutting down our trees to make sure people had those N95 masks and toilet paper you were all fighting over.
Our forests say "fuck you ungrateful fucks." Those 300 year old cedars deserved better than wiping your asses.
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I don't think people actual shat more during the pandemic or in cities. The percentage of ass whipping with commercial paper for residential paper massively changed though.
 
Zorba said:
I don't think people actual shat more during the pandemic or in cities. The percentage of ass whipping with commercial paper for residential paper massively changed though.
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Seriously. I could care less where this fellow wants to live, but I still want to know what they wipe their asses with in the boonies, cause he mad at us city dwellers for using toilet paper.
 
MrSquished said:
Of course. We've had this discussion in here a few times before with links but this should not be just an inside joke. Here are studies from a few states. You can find similar studies for other states.


minnesotareformer.com

Twin Cities metro sends money to rural counties • Minnesota Reformer

A common refrain from Minnesota Republicans goes something like this: Rural communities are overtaxed, underfunded and ignored by legislators. Greater Minnesota sends their tax dollars to the Twin Cities, where metro residents benefit from government programs. At a Nov. 15 event in New Ulm...
minnesotareformer.com minnesotareformer.com


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Alright you only posted a couple of state level articles and not a national level ultra super cool link, but I'll concede you may be onto something 😛
 
I'm enraged that people don't show more gratitude. The shits should be thankful to be alive. Not getting thanked for all the wonderful things that I do makes me sick. I being robbed by the system and forced to help them and then 'No thank you'. Nobody cares about me and my big sore toe. Where is my fainting couch?
 
Moonbeam said:
I'm enraged that people don't show more gratitude. The shits should be thankful to be alive. Not getting thanked for all the wonderful things that I do makes me sick. I being robbed by the system and forced to help them and then 'No thank you'. Nobody cares about me and my big sore toe. Where is my fainting couch?
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As mentioned, I think everyone including the OP would settle for them not destroying the system that benefits them so much, or shitting on the people who actually pay for it.

But in order to get there, you need to start high, so you have room to compromise. Negotiation 101.
 
nOOky said:
Alright you only posted a couple of state level articles and not a national level ultra super cool link, but I'll concede you may be onto something 😛
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State level make more sense since each state tax and spend differently.

Here is a study from right wing think tank on my province showing nutty squirrel gets all his provincial taxes back and then some while I pay 17.6k more into taxes than I receive in services. I have no issue with paying it, I just don't like nutty squirrel pretending he doesn't get pampered. and then he has the gall to bitch about taxes that I paid to enable him to buy a piece of off grid land. And this is a study from 2004, which means it is a lot more money now.

Our education tax is collected provincially then distributed to school boards. It's about 14.5k per student.



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nOOky said:
In our situation my wife owns a business in the city, and I guarantee you she pays plenty of federal, state, property, and local taxes. Most rural dwellers have great jobs in the city, but we can only tolerate the mess during our working hours.
I want my card.
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And all those rural folks thank you for your tax contribution to them as federal funds. Or at least they should be thanking you, as this is what the topic is about 😛
 
Zorba said:
Farm to market roads, rural highways, rural electrification and water distribution system all subsidize the cost of food in the US. Also have corp insurance backed by the government. Then you have insanely cheap grazing rights on BLM land, etc.
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Yeah, fair point. On the other hand, though, things like "set aside subsidies" mean farmers are paid _not_ to grow crops, in order to keep prices higher than they would be. And "price supports" do the same thing, at the expense of urban consumers.

I mean, this, for example - not sure who it benefits

U.S. Sugar Program - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

The U.S. Sugar program is the federal commodity support program that maintains a minimum price for sugar, authorized by the 2002 farm bill (P.L. 107–171, Sec. 1401–1403) to cover the 2002-2007 crops of sugar beets and sugarcane.

Originally designed to protect the incomes of the sugar industry-growers of sugarcane and sugar beets, and firms that process each crop into sugar - the program now prevents them from competing with producers of corn syrup sweetener. It supports domestic sugar prices by:

(1) making available nonrecourse loans to processors (not less than 18¢/lb. for raw cane sugar, or 22.9¢/lb. for refined beet sugar);
(2) restricting sugar imports using a tariff rate quota, and
(3) limiting the amount of sugar that processors can sell domestically (under marketing allotments) when imports are below 1.532 million short tons.
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However, that in turn, I suppose, provides stability that in the long-term maybe keeps farms in business, thus increasing food supply in the end. It's all very complicated, it seems to me. And there's a huge economic divide between big 'agribusnessmen' and small tenant farmers who don't own the land they farm.

In the end though, an awful lot of 'farmers' seem to be able send their children to expensive private schools while pleading poverty. And many of them own land worth tens of millions, regardless of whatever ups-and-downs they have with current income.
 
dank69 said:
As mentioned, I think everyone including the OP would settle for them not destroying the system that benefits them so much, or shitting on the people who actually pay for it.

But in order to get there, you need to start high, so you have room to compromise. Negotiation 101.
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As I see it, dank, for s society to function it requires a citizenry that is socialized. To me that means that the society will be established in a way that the process of socialization produce a preponderance of people of good faith, people motivated by an internal compass that guides them to seek first and above all else fairness and equality in consideration of the priorities of individuals.

Children come into the world with a powerful will to satisfy their personal needs and with little thought about sharing which can best develop,I believe, after those needs are met and the psychological rewards of helping others becomes an actual experience.

Nobody wants to play fair with selfish people because selfish people, lacking self respect for others reflect a lack of respect for themselves.

The bottom line for me is that while the aggrieved point fingers at each other and hurl moral contempt, the more that occurs the more society degenerates.

An uncaring society can only mend by the process of relearning to care and caring is love. Aim to love and gratitude will follow. Recriminations arise out of bitterness.

The lover has wealth beyond measure. However high you may start negotiations with such it will appear as a low ball offer. The fewer sore toes the greater the interest in the general welfare.
 
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