Tests for the Tea Party - Part 1: Crop Subsidies

[sickdsm]

................... I'm sorry if you're in the industry and you need them, but that doesn't mean I have to support them.

Why should I bother to respond if your're obviously not reading any of my posts?

[RandomGuy]

I also doubt any Tea Party member would vote to end a subsidy that benefits his or her district.

Shocker.

It's funny that even the hero of the Paul s backpeddled on the issue.

Senator-elect Rand Paul of Kentucky - whose state received nearly $1.8 billion in Big Five subsidies between 1995 and 2009 - indulged in a bit of dancing during the election campaign. At first, he said he does not favor "giving welfare to business." Later, however, he backpedaled, claiming to be a moderate on farm subsidies and offering the consolation prize of pledging to root out waste and abuse in the program.

Ahem....

Whoopsies.

[lazerelmo]

This is a pretty good graphical representation of the Federal Budget.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2...us/budget.html

It may help answer the OP's delima. See if you can find Agricultural spending. It may shed some light on why anybody (Tea Party or otherwise) would choose not to battle over farm subsidies.

(Just ignore the big block that says Net Interest. That's just for pretend.

[MannyIsGod]

This is a pretty good graphical representation of the Federal Budget.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2...us/budget.html

It may help answer the OP's delima. See if you can find Agricultural spending. It may shed some light on why anybody (Tea Party or otherwise) would choose not to battle over farm subsidies.

(Just ignore the big block that says Net Interest. That's just for pretend.

So what you're saying is that the Tea Party is going to go to bat against large defense spending?

Or are you saying that bad spending is ok as long as its not a large portion of the budget?

[xrayzebra]

I would remind some of you. Farmers were at one time
the original "capitalist" of this nation. And many still are.
I have no problem with them being provided with
insurance. Outright gifts of money, no. The farmers of
today are not necessarily the farmers of yesteryear.

[boutons_deux]

Farmers were capitalists only when the made enough profits, like selling the main cash crop of the Colonies, HEMP. Ever heard of "dirt poor"

Do you mean farmers as "entrepreneurs"? Do you know what you mean at all?

Most of the super rich independent farmers, esp cotton farmers, got that with with $Ms of subsidies. At one time, the AVERAGE subsidy for a cotton farmer was $1M/year, which helped them export cotton and destroy subsistence farmers in Africa and India, much the way USA corn subsidies helped destroy 1000s of subsistence corn farmers in MX.

Corporations have pretty much destroyed independent farmers in USA, along with destroying the land, water, and air with pesticides,herbicides, and intensive mono-culture.

[RandomGuy]

This is a pretty good graphical representation of the Federal Budget.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2...us/budget.html

It may help answer the OP's delima. See if you can find Agricultural spending. It may shed some light on why anybody (Tea Party or otherwise) would choose not to battle over farm subsidies.

(Just ignore the big block that says Net Interest. That's just for pretend.

Best point made yet. It is a fairly small portion of the budget.

It also makes a really really good point about how efficient Medicare is as an insurance program.

Cost of Medicare: $500Bn

Cost of administration of program: $5.5Bn, or about 1.5%

Private HMO's or insurers are good if they get their administrative costs down to 18%, and still have to make a profit for shareholders of about 20% on top of THAT, so about 40% of your private insurance premium goes to overhead and profit.

I wonder what might get "off books" of Medicare like employee retierment costs, that is in another section of the budget, but still, it seems to counter the "inefficient government" bit to me.

[coyotes_geek]

Private HMO's or insurers are good if they get their administrative costs down to 18%, and still have to make a profit for shareholders of about 20% on top of THAT, so about 40% of your private insurance premium goes to overhead and profit.

That's bull. Find me an HMO that's returning a 20% profit margin to shareholders.

If you can, I'm going to invest in it.

[TeyshaBlue]

Best point made yet. It is a fairly small portion of the budget.

It also makes a really really good point about how efficient Medicare is as an insurance program.

Cost of Medicare: $500Bn

Cost of administration of program: $5.5Bn, or about 1.5%

Private HMO's or insurers are good if they get their administrative costs down to 18%, and still have to make a profit for shareholders of about 20% on top of THAT, so about 40% of your private insurance premium goes to overhead and profit.

I wonder what might get "off books" of Medicare like employee retierment costs, that is in another section of the budget, but still, it seems to counter the "inefficient government" bit to me.

Aside from the ludicrous 20% margin, it's apples and oranges when you compare administration of Medicare to a typical Insurance comapny.
There are costs that are simply not part of medicare's budget because they are ins utionalized in other areas of the Fed..ie record keeping.
Also, the methods for calculating admin costs are different for each model, because, the models are different as are the populations they serve.
I'm not refuting the idea that Medicare can be cost effective, but it's not exactly smoking private insurance in that respect.
And again, cost is a stupid metric to measure success. We need to start looking at effectiveness. Efficiency and effectiveness are not always mutual.

[lazerelmo]

So what you're saying is that the Tea Party is going to go to bat against large defense spending?

Or are you saying that bad spending is ok as long as its not a large portion of the budget?

I'm saying there are larger areas of discretionary spending to target if one wanted to make deep cuts in the budget. I don't think most Tea Party types consider defense discretionary.

I am also not saying that farm subsidies are necessarily bad spending.

GO MEAT!

[MannyIsGod]

Defense is not discretionary but the health of our citizens is. In other words, the tea party can just arbitrarily label whatever they want as non discretionary to sidestep it if it violates their - and i use the word loosely - principles.

There's pretty much no defense for supporting subsidies of these sort while claiming to be for a free market system. I don't know why you're trying so hard to find one.

[Kori Ellis]

I tend to exaggerate some. Apparently duff exaggerated on the downside. Regardless doesn't that number seem awfully high? Thing I took away from that thread is the guy got static for being in the military and even Kori told him to get the freebies.

I think I just made a joke that he should reconsider taking it because of the cost of baby formula.

[RandomGuy]

I think I just made a joke that he should reconsider taking it because of the cost of baby formula.

Not an inconsiderable expense.

Your half-serious suggestion was part of why it was kind of hard to actually tally the opinions in the for/against columns.

[RandomGuy]

Aside from the ludicrous 20% margin, it's apples and oranges when you compare administration of Medicare to a typical Insurance comapny.
There are costs that are simply not part of medicare's budget because they are ins utionalized in other areas of the Fed..ie record keeping.
Also, the methods for calculating admin costs are different for each model, because, the models are different as are the populations they serve.
I'm not refuting the idea that Medicare can be cost effective, but it's not exactly smoking private insurance in that respect.
And again, cost is a stupid metric to measure success. We need to start looking at effectiveness. Efficiency and effectiveness are not always mutual.

Yeah, it is hard to make a direct comparison, as I noted.

Profit margin of 20% is fairly arbitrary, but seems to be about what they shoot for, based on my readings of insurance company financials. Generally they get something less.

The thing about insurance though, is that the larger your pool of people, the easier it is to predict outcomes.

I suspect that Medicare simply because of the sheer size gets some substantial cost savings.

It also gets to piggy-back off the efforts of the IRS in collecting premiums. The IRS would be doing that anyways, so that is a "gimmie" cost that would not be fairly attributed to the program. In comparing cost/benefits of things, those are two things that CMS has in its favor.

Large bureaucracy and ponderousness are two distinct things against, in the interests of being intellectually honest.

If one steps back and looks at the system of private insurance, you have a lot of systemic inefficiency. Every company has to have it's own HR department, payroll, etc. There is also the problem of different standards when it comes to claim forms, who pays at what level, what will be covered, etc.

Navigating all of this consumes a LOT of resources on the part of providers.

While I would be hard-pressed to quantify all of this, my gut says that the private system is not quite as efficient as its proponents suppose, nor is Medicare quite as inefficient as its opponents want to make it out to be.

Is it optimal? Hardly.

But then neither is private insurance.

[boutons_deux]

RSC is specifically targeting organic farmers, sugar growers, and an export promotion program that benefits fruit and vegetable growers. One program in specific helps subsidize farmers who are trying to obtain organic certification, which costs at most $56 million a year.

Not only is this a drop in the bucket compared to many other programs, but the program is already on the verge of completely running out of funds by the time the new fiscal year begins in Fall 2011.

Meanwhile, RSC did not at all address the $5 billion in direct payments made every single year to industrial growers of cotton, soy, corn, rice, and wheat. Such payments are, by far, the bulk of government agricultural spending, and they are responsible for the artificially low cost of commodity crops used to produce cheap, unhealthy processed foods.

http://www.naturalnews.com/031154_or...#ixzz1CZMn5515