"open Fields" Program Cut

[3wt]

Whoa Tim. Didn't mean to get ya all riled up.

Holding onto capital is no way of making money. It's a protectionist measure that you don't do unless you are worried about the future. You have to understand the distinction between capital and overhead expense - overhead you spend because you have to (paying the bills, employees, etc.) capital you spend because it pays you back (in general). Now if there was money to be made, and no real chance that the economy could get significantly worse, even the worst of the worst righty rich guys would be putting out capital. The reality is that even if Company A's taxes won't go up or may even go down, the chance of a tax hike and the market and economy reacts. Traders start selling on group think and things shut down. Now company A's capital investment won't make money because people are loosing their jobs and not buying the product that the investment supported; they go out of business even though they didn't pay more in taxes. So they HOLD ONTO MONEY. Doesn't matter what you or I think of it, they will hold it until they feel safe in spending it. Doesn't matter what color the president is, but the consensus seems to be that the current presidents policies are hostile to small businesses...so maybe it does have to do whith his ideals, but not his skin.

I like spending on conservation. I don't think there are too many viable private options for it. But we're talking about balancing a budget when there's not much to go around. Nothing in budgets is permanent. We get a new bill on this discretionary spending every year. I am concerned that this thing will last long enough see permanent damage if we cut conservation too far. But if we don't cut it will definitely last even longer. It's a bad situation but spending and taxing our way out of it just won't work.

[Justin Spencer]

I blame the media to an extent for making us protectionists. Our business continues to grow but over the last two years we have made fewer improvements, built less, bought fewer boats than I would have normally done. This was not due to business being down but came directly from listening to how bad things are on the news everyday. It worried me and made me want to hold onto money in case things eventually reached us. It is tough for businesses to want to expand when they are doing fine, for fear that customers will disappear and you'll be stuck with idle equipment and no capital. Between the media and the gridlock in Washington there is not much confidence right now in the economy, but for many of us it comes from what we think might happen, not from what has happened. There is plenty of money to be made out there for many businesses, but I think many companies are holding back because FOX news tells us the sky is falling.

[3wt]

I blame the media to an extent for making us protectionists. Our business continues to grow but over the last two years we have made fewer improvements, built less, bought fewer boats than I would have normally done. This was not due to business being down but came directly from listening to how bad things are on the news everyday. It worried me and made me want to hold onto money in case things eventually reached us. It is tough for businesses to want to expand when they are doing fine, for fear that customers will disappear and you'll be stuck with idle equipment and no capital. Between the media and the gridlock in Washington there is not much confidence right now in the economy, but for many of us it comes from what we think might happen, not from what has happened. There is plenty of money to be made out there for many businesses, but I think many companies are holding back because FOX news tells us the sky is falling.

Exactly. Regardless of why there is uncertainty or who you want to vote for, uncertainty of what's happening causes you to protect what you have. Not some partisan conspiracy.

But hey, since somebody else could call you gutless I guess you should stop being so afraid to invest because the economy's really fine...

[FishinCricket]

The parable of the hot dog vendor comes to mind:

A Man lived by the side of the road...and sold hot dogs.

He was hard of hearing, so he had no radio. He had trouble with his eyes, so he had no newspaper. But he sold good hot dogs.

He put up a sign on the highway, telling how good they were. He stood by the side of the road and cried, "Buy a hot dog, mister!" And People bought.

He increased his meat and bun order, and he bought a bigger stove to take care of his trade. He got his son home from college to help him. But then something happened. His son said, "Father, haven't you been listening to the radio? There's a big Depression on. The international situation is terrible, and the domestic situation is even worse."

Whereupon the father thought, "Well, my son has gone to college. He listens to the radio and reads the newspaper, so he ought to know." So, the father cut down on the bun order, took down his advertising sign, and no longer bothered to stand on the highway to sell hot dogs.

His hot dog sales fell almost overnight. "You were right, son", the father said to the boy. "We are certainly in the middle of a Great Depression."

Moral of the story --

Stop reading the newspaper, turn off the news on the radio and television, and KEEP ON KEEPING ON

[Mitch f]

The parable of the hot dog vendor comes to mind:

I have to agree with that!

[Tim Smith]

Whoa Tim. Didn't mean to get ya all riled up.

Holding onto capital is no way of making money. It's a protectionist measure that you don't do unless you are worried about the future. You have to understand the distinction between capital and overhead expense - overhead you spend because you have to (paying the bills, employees, etc.) capital you spend because it pays you back (in general). Now if there was money to be made, and no real chance that the economy could get significantly worse, even the worst of the worst righty rich guys would be putting out capital. The reality is that even if Company A's taxes won't go up or may even go down, the chance of a tax hike and the market and economy reacts. Traders start selling on group think and things shut down. Now company A's capital investment won't make money because people are loosing their jobs and not buying the product that the investment supported; they go out of business even though they didn't pay more in taxes. So they HOLD ONTO MONEY. Doesn't matter what you or I think of it, they will hold it until they feel safe in spending it. Doesn't matter what color the president is, but the consensus seems to be that the current presidents policies are hostile to small businesses...so maybe it does have to do whith his ideals, but not his skin.

I like spending on conservation. I don't think there are too many viable private options for it. But we're talking about balancing a budget when there's not much to go around. Nothing in budgets is permanent. We get a new bill on this discretionary spending every year. I am concerned that this thing will last long enough see permanent damage if we cut conservation too far. But if we don't cut it will definitely last even longer. It's a bad situation but spending and taxing our way out of it just won't work.

I think we're pretty clear on how these things work, thanks, 3wt.

Cricket's hotdog fable, and your own text, pretty well make the point. There's fear out there because people are telling us to be afraid. Economies grow on confidence...

..and the shade of color shaking the righties of isn't brown. It's pink. Despite middle of the road policies (and I own a small business and I can tell you that NOTHING the president has done so far has adversely affected that). there's a wild eyed hysteria out there that we're suddenly going to become socialists. Pick your own adjective for the people who believe it (and see how closely it correlates to people who think Obama is a Muslim...lots of overlap there).

Once you do that, pick a few choice words for the people who want to dismantle the EPA. I should send you the water quality data for Illinois that predates the Clean Water Act and the EPA. Things that get people upset these days were commonplace then.

Sure let's keep the tax burden as low as possible...

...but there are taxes and then there are taxes. You want saving from what we might spend on conservation? Reach in your pocket and pull out the loose change. There's what you'll save on a per person basis from cutting conservation. Maybe that handful of change matters enough to somebody that they'll sit on their money, but that seems rather far fetched.

[Chief Grey Bear]

Corn prices are much higher now than they have been in the last 30 years. I would guess that $1 bag of corn is much smaller than it used to be (neat little trick the food industry uses to make it seem like prices stay the same).

I am pretty sure if you research the 30 year average price of corn, it hovered pretty close to $3. Of course though there will be peaks and valleys. But it did take a big spike in the last, say 4 years???, mainly due to ethanol.

And my price comparison to frozen corn is completly off base. Corn for ethanol is not the same as the corn for human consumption.

[Al Agnew]

During fiscal year 2010, the federal government spent $3.46 trillion.

Conservation programs are found in the Agriculture, Interior, and EPA departments.

The TOTAL expenditures of those three departments are as follows:

Agriculture--$28 billion.

Interior--$12 billion.

EPA--$10 billion.

So...do the math. The total budget of those three departments equals somewhere around 1.5% of federal spending. That's the total budget. Not the budget for conservation and environmental programs. Agriculture includes the entire National Forest System, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Reclamation (a lot of big dams), as well as conservation programs like the one in the original post and CRP, and of course it also includes all farm subsidies. Interior includes all the National Parks, Monuments, Wildlife Refuges, etc. You know what the EPA includes.

So say you're looking for ways to cut federal spending. Say you drastically cut the budgets of these three departments by a third. Congratulations, you've just cut the federal budget by one half of one percent. Wow. But what do you think cutting these three departments by a third will do to all their programs? Disaster.

Don't kid yourself. The politicians don't have the guts to admit it, but they know you can't balance the budget by this kind of nibbling around the edges. All you do is wreck a lot of stuff without making a dent in the real problem. This kind of cutting isn't about balancing the budget, it's about dumping programs some politicians don't like under the guise of LOOKING like they're doing something.

[Quillback]

Yep the real cuts in spending will have to come out of the big programs, SS, Medicare, and defence. But any cuts to those programs and people freak out. Or we could raise taxes (again people freaking). We seem to be locked into a long slow death march that nobody wants to be in but we just keep marching along. Very frustrating to me.

[Justin Spencer]

Get rid of the $75 billion postal service which is losing over 8 billion per year. Replace these jobs with infrastructure jobs that will help our country as opposed to just delivering a bunch of junk mail and catalogues. If the mail must run, let it run through ups, fed ex, or a new private company that can make money.

People want cuts instead of taxes which is great, but don't fool yourselves into thinking these cuts will come without costing both public and private sector jobs.

If our society will not allow people to live in tent cities and have slums like you see in Haiti then we are going to have to raise taxes. If we don't want everyone to be covered in some sort of healthcare system then we have to refuse healthcare to those who refuse to buy healthcare coverage when they can afford it. If you have cable tv, a cellphone, waders, a flyrod, and say you can't afford healthcare then start thinking about what is important. Our society has allowed us to put our health way down on the list and then we all pay for it when someone can't afford to pay their own way.

In order to have low taxes for everyone and no universal healthcare our society is going to have to get used to seeing people dying on the streets or living way below the poverty level. Maybe this is what we need to make everyone decide working hard isn't so bad. I bet then Americans would decide to pick tomatoes and oranges instead of sitting in their tent. I don't really agree with this philosophy, but we can't have it both ways. We've been trying to have our cake and eat it too for way too long in this country, it's time to decide how to move forward and do it before the country as a whole continues to go downhill.