A recent report came out saying that 40% of US farmers are essentially “welfare recipients”, as that is the percent of their income that comes from government subsidy and government-backed crop insurance.
The Agriculture Department projects that farm incomes will reach $88 billion in 2019 but nearly 40% of that — $33 billion — will come from trade aid, disaster assistance, the farm bill and insurance indemnities, according to a new report by the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF).
Why it matters: Farmers — a critical constituency for President Trump in the 2020 presidential election — are feeling the squeeze from China’s retaliatory tariffs, extreme weather and record-high farm debt that’s driving farm bankruptcies.
By the numbers: In a 12-month period ending in September 2019, Chapter 12 farm or fishery bankruptcies totaled 580 filings, up 24% from a year earlier and the most since 2011, when 676 chapter 12 bankruptcies were filed.
Wisconsin experienced the highest Chapter 12 bankruptcy filings at 48 filings, followed by 37 filings in Georgia, Nebraska and Kansas.
Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Wisconsin and West Virginia reported Chapter 12 bankruptcy filings on par with or above 10-year highs (source)
I have heard some people say that because of this, US farmers are “welfare junkies”, since they become very upset when this is taken away, and that many rely on this.
As such, this is a good time to present the perspective of the farmer, and why the American farmer finds himself in the same situation as the “illegal” from central America.
There is no problem at all with illegal immigration in the US. This is not to say that illegal crossings to do not exist, for the US-Mexican border is the most crossed and the most illegally crossed border in the world. The US has all of the tools that she needs to enforce strict border controls if she wants to, and as Shoebat.com has noted, monitors everything even within people’s homes using super technologies and AI for all places within ten miles of the US-Mexican border. It truly is a “constitution-free” surveillance zone where everything is monitored most likely, if one knew the full extent of surveillance (which is not publicly disclosed), would probably be more intense than what is taking place right now in Xijiang Province in China.
The US knows the situation, and while a person or two may escape, the massive numbers of people that cross illegally each year is not an accident or natural, nor is it an invasion, and if it was truly this, there would be a bloodbath on the border because many American soldiers and “soldier wannabes” would gladly take any opportunity to shoot people for fun in the name of “patriotism,” and without regard to race.
The US allows and encourages people to cross illegally because border policy is an extension of US agricultural policy, and the Ag policy is a major cornerstone of foreign policy because the US produces an abundance of food at below-market value in order to sell to nations at below production cost or just outright give to other nations in exchange for political control. This is as far as foreign exports are concerned. Domestically, she produces food at or below market value in order to give Americans a constant supply of cheap (comparatively speaking, of course) tasty foods to keep them fat, happy, and as a result, unwilling to rebel, for hungry people tend to rise up, but the fat and happy are both content and physically unable to get up to fight.
In the case of construction or manufacturing, of which there is a certain body of illegals working in, the reason is in order to drive down labor prices to keep the consumer happy as well as to fill in positions that Americans will not fill in usually because the jobs are abusive and do not pay enough money to live on. I do not say this to attack American people, but to note that if a man trades his time for labor, which is what most employment is, then in order to live in the US and pay one’s bills- even under a suffocating pile of debt taken out of necessity and not vanity -one has to earn a certain level of income. That level has continued to rise not because there is “more money” in society, but because the value of the currency and labor is being destroyed to nothing, so that one is having to pay more and work harder for fewer things. It is an insidious form of “legalized” robbery.
In 2000, if you were earning $10 per hour, you would need to make at least $14.91 today in order to have the same purchasing power. By comparison, a person who earns $10 today is equivalent to earning $6.91 in 2000, which would be barely over the then-federal minimum wage of 5.15 which equals for 2000 $7.68, and if compared with today’s federal minimum wage of 7.25 again 2000, is equal to $4.86.
In other words, if this was 2000, the current (2019) rate of $10/hour puts you earning $7.23 more per hour in your pocket versus minimum wage. However, since wages have stagnated, many people consider $10/hour a good wage, and yet even with this considered, that rate ($10/hour) when accounting for the difference between the value of $10 minum minimum wages of what it is today versus minimum wage in 2000, then a person today only earns $2.05 more today than minimum.
That is a loss of $5.18 in the value of your money on a per-hour basis just in two decades.
This is the reason why millennials cannot buy houses, why credit cards are exploding with debt, why people are experiencing work burnout at record rates, and why people are just angry.
For most people, it’s not an issue of racism or hatred, even though that is what some propagandists want people to think, and make no mistake, those elements are actively there and these things have increased. The main issue that is taking place is that the common man has been systematically robbed of his wealth, the value of his time, his physical and mental health, and forced to be more productive that ever with declining returns by a parasitic wealthy class in finance and industry that is disproportionately administered by criminals who openly declare themselves as being Jewish by religion, having Jewish extraction, holding ties to Israel, or all three.
It is a form of contemporary slavery but without physical chains, only the chain of debt, and the law are continually changing to make it harder to break that debt chain.
From the migrant perspective, the US minimum wage for a week of labor is far more than what most would earn in months of labor in their native lands. In fairness to them, why would they not come if an opportunity is being extended to them to earn a year or more of labor in a month for their land?
Likewise, if these people choose to stay, they have something which the average “American” does not, which is a debt-free balance sheet. Since the parasites in finance and industry make money by exploiting people with debt, and they have already indebted the average American to the point of complete financial slavery, these people represent a new and easily exploitable market to lay up with more debt. These people in these companies are NOT looking to help them, nor do they care about them, but just that they are a fresh land to destroy because they have destroyed all of the other people in their pursuit of legalized robbery and exploitation.
As I have mentioned before, even well-meaning people are getting to a point where they cannot function without debt because the costs of living are too high. People cannot go on paying for basic bills (water, electricity, gas, etc.) on credit because this is not sustainable.
This is part of the reason why I say that people today NEED to work harder, and I do NOT mean that to insult the average man, who is already overworked. What I am saying is that the financial system is collapsing and the wealthy parasites who largely formulated and worsened this mess are trying to suck every dollar from the common man that they can before running away and leaving the people to suffer. It is every man for himself, and while one must not be immoral, one must realize that no help is coming, and to work as hard as possible, even with suffering, to prepare for a future worse financial state of the nation.
The American farmer has also suffered. Just like the migrant and the American worker, the farmer is at a point that without government subsidy and with all of the taxes he has to pay, he barely can pay his bills. Many farmers have been losing their family farms held for generations because of financialization and the hyperindustrialization of the US at the expense of their ability to grow food. The government steps in to help them because they need the food to keep the people alive and in a state of non-rebellion.
Everybody is suffering, and nobody- illegal, worker, or farmer -should be denied his legitimate grievances because they are all being abused by the financial and industrial classes for their gain at the loss of the many.
God has perfect justice, and those who seek to oppress the poor, widow, and orphan, and who deprive those workers of their just wages- two of the sins that cry out to heaven for vengeance with the sodomies and the willful murderers of the innocent -will suffer the eternal punishment too that was doled out to sodom. In the meantime, it is important to realize that the common man shares more in common with his other men suffering in the “trenches” of society today, and that while there are differences, we must help each other as we are able to do so, because there is more in common with the migrant, the laborer, and the farmer than those who rule over them in the current system in so far as it concerns their grievances, and fighting between them has been encouraged in order to keep them divided from each other.