@Cliff-Mashburn saidGet competent farmers on that land and increase food production. Apparently the current owners are not managing their farms efficiently.
Or they could just let them fail and watch food prices go through the roof.
Genius thinking.
@Cliff-Mashburn saidWow! That is awesome! I hadn't seen anything like that in my morning trawl of Drudge Report and the Yahoo News aggregator.
New Inhertance Tax, if you inherit the family farm you gotta pay so much to keep it it, you have to sell it? Is that what the idiot politicians want?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqqOmaEQoOE
What a clear example of people who do nothing but wear suits and talk all day versus people who actually do some work that creates some necessary value for society.
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https://genius.com/John-steinbeck-chapter-5-the-grapes-of-wrath-annotated
Grapes of Wrath Chapter 5 by John Steinbeck
THE OWNERS OF THE land came onto the land, or more often a spokesman for the owners came. They came in closed cars, and they felt the dry earth with their fingers, and sometimes they drove big earth augers into the ground for soil tests. The tenants, from their sun-beaten dooryards, watched uneasily when the closed cars drove along the fields. And at last the owner men drove into the dooryards and sat in their cars to talk out of the windows. The tenant men stood beside the cars for a while ,and then squatted on their hams and found sticks with which to mark the dust.
...
The owner men went on leading to their point: You know the land’s getting poorer. You know what cotton does to the land; robs it, sucks all the blood out of it.
The squatters nodded—they knew, God knew. If they could only rotate the crops they might pump blood back into the land.
Well, it’s too late. And the owner men explained the workings and the thinkings of the monster that was stronger than they were. A man can hold land if he can just eat and pay taxes; he can do that.
Yes, he can do that until his crops fail one day and he has to borrow money from the bank. But—you see, a bank or a company can’t do that, because those creatures don’t breathe air, don’t eat side-meat. They breathe profits; they eat the interest on money. If they don’t get it, they die the way you die without air, without side-meat. It is a sad thing, but it is so. It is just so.
The squatting men raised their eyes to understand. Can’t we just hang on? Maybe the next year will be a good year. God knows how much cotton next year. And with all the wars—God knows what price cotton will bring. Don’t they make explosives out of cotton? And uniforms? Get enough wars and cotton’ll hit the ceiling. Next year, maybe. They looked up questioningly.
We can’t depend on it. The bank—the monster has to have profits all the time. It can’t wait. It’ll die. No, taxes go on. When the monster stops growing, it dies. It can’t stay one size.
...
The squatting men looked down again. What do you want us to do? We can’t take less share of the crop—we’re half starved now. The kids are hungry all the time. We got no clothes, torn an’ ragged. If all the neighbors weren’t the same, we’d be ashamed to go to meeting.
And at last the owner men came to the point. The tenant system won’t work any more. One man on a tractor can take the place of twelve or fourteen families. Pay him a wage and take all the crop. We have to do it.
...
The tenant men looked up alarmed. But what’ll happen to us? How’ll we eat?
You’ll have to get off the land. The plows’ll go through the dooryard.
And now the squatting men stood up angrily. Grampa took up the land, and he had to kill the Indians and drive them away. And Pa was born here, and he killed weeds and snakes. Then a bad year came and he had to borrow a little money. An’ we was born here. There in the door our children born here. And Pa had to borrow money. The bank owned the land then, but we stayed and we got a little bit of what we raised.
We know that—all that. It’s not us, it’s the bank . A bank isn’t like a man. Or an owner with fifty thousand acres, he isn’t like a man either. That’s the monster.
Sure, cried the tenant men, but it’s our land. We measured it and broke it up. We were born on it, and we got killed on it, died on it. Even if it’s no good, it’s still ours. That’s what makes it ours—being born on it, working it, dying on it. That makes ownership, not a paper with numbers on it.
We’re sorry. It’s not us. It’s the monster. The bank isn’t like a man.
Yes, but the bank is only made of men.
No, you’re wrong there—quite wrong there. The bank is something else than men. It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It’s the monster. Men made it, but they can’t control it.
The tenants cried, Grampa killed Indians, Pa killed snakes for the land. Maybe we can kill banks—they’re worse than Indians and snakes. Maybe we got to fight to keep our land, like Pa and Grampa did.
And now the owner men grew angry. You’ll have to go. But it’s ours, the tenant men cried.
No. The bank, the monster owns it. You’ll have to go. We’ll get our guns, like Grampa when the Indians came. What then? Well—first the sheriff, and then the troops. You’ll be stealing if you try to stay, you’ll be murderers if you kill to stay. The monster isn’t men, but it can make men do what it wants. But if we go, where’ll we go? How’ll we go? We got no money. We’re sorry, said the owner men. The bank, the fifty-thousand-acre owner can’t be responsible. You’re on land that isn’t yours. Once over the line maybe you can pick cotton in the fall. Maybe you can go on relief. Why don’t you go on west to California? There’s work there, and it never gets cold. Why, you can reach out anywhere and pick an orange. Why, there’s always some kind of crop to work in. Why don’t you go there? And the owner men started their cars and rolled away.
@Paul-Martin saidHad no idea you were a farmer.
@Cliff-Mashburn
Whether inheritance tax is a good thing or not is another debate.
Surely this thread is about farmers' paying inheritance tax.
Would you think it a good thing if plumbers didn't pay income tax?
Or if butchers didn't pay VAT?
Shouldn't a man as smart as you book a flight to London to solve this tout de suite?
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I'm not in favor of confiscatory taxation of personal property i.e. taking peoples' homes and the farms the work on because they can't pay taxes on them. This violates the right to personal property, the Lockean Proviso as well as Adam Smith's postulate about money and capitalism - that money can be hoarded or taxed without hurting people because it is not needed for life unlike food and homes.
Those people whose kids milk the cows and gather up loose grain are not millionaire landowners with 50 thousand acres and tractors as described in the above selection from Grapes of Wrath. This seems to be another case of "Joe Workingman" pretending to be red blooded blue collar workers instead of the idle robber barons they really are.
@Cliff-Mashburn saidOh yeah I see white kids of the landowners helping the Mexicans on the farms ALL the time
Yes, it's typical for farm kids to continue to work on the farm until their parents die and they inherit, not just helping around when they are 10 years old.
Working on a farm seems like a real job to me, ever been on a farm/ranch?
Why is it unfair for an inheritance to be taxed?
If you have to ask, then you are hopeless.
@AThousandYoung saidMaybe something about golf courses, posh resorts, and upscale residential developments?
Apparently they're not doing a very good job farming the land and feeding the country. If the land doesn't make money why is it worth so much?
Heaven knows such people either eat like birds or are breatharians.
@Cliff-Mashburn saidWhere do you live and what is your standing to comment on this issue?
New Inhertance Tax, if you inherit the family farm you gotta pay so much to keep it it, you have to sell it? Is that what the idiot politicians want?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqqOmaEQoOE
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@AThousandYoung saidI've been on farms in Ohio, Iowa, Wisconsin, because I had family there that were farmers. Never saw any Mexicans.
Oh yeah I see white kids of the landowners helping the Mexicans on the farms ALL the time
And you tell me where in England you expect to see any.
Just can't help yourself, can you? Gotta make out like white people don't do anything but sit back and let the brown people do all the work.
@Cliff-Mashburn saidYou're not allowed to call me a dummy until you put on the wicker suit.
We are talking about the new law in England dummy.
The right things in the right order.
@Cliff-Mashburn saidAha! So you yourself were never a farmer, let alone an English or British farmer.
I've been on farms in Ohio, Iowa, Wisconsin, because I had family there that were farmers.
@Cliff-Mashburn saidPerhaps those states are just not attractive to Mexicans (or Central or South Americans) or maybe it was just a matter of timing?
I've been on farms in Ohio, Iowa, Wisconsin, because I had family there that were farmers. Never saw any Mexicans.
Each of us is only given so many dots to connect.
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@Cliff-Mashburn saidWho has time to drive a tractor across the country to protest a tax on millionaires - the white tenant farm worker described in the Grapes of Wrath excerpt I posted above - or the owner with the tractor and 50,000 acres?
I've been on farms in Ohio, Iowa, Wisconsin, because I had family there that were farmers. Never saw any Mexicans.
And you tell me where in England you expect to see any.
Just can't help yourself, can you? Gotta make out like white people don't do anything but sit back and let the brown people do all the work.
If I had to guess these English farms are being harvested by ethnic Indians. That's always been England's go-to work force ever since their Imperial period.