Americans are being heavily taxed to subsidise the meat industry. Why is so much money being misallocated? Is the government trying to get Americans to eat more meat? If Americans are not willing to pay for the true price of their meat when they buy it, why should they be indirectly taxed to pay for it? The U.S government indirectly subsidizes the meat industry. The cost of a common hamburger would be $35 and the cost of one pound of beefsteak would be $89 if water was not subsidized by taxpayers. federal and state governments subsidize the meat industry's water consumption at every stage of the process. Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) consume particularly egregious quantities of water. Cornell economists, David Fields and his associate Robin Hur, have studied the fiscal consequences of water subsidies to the meat industry: Reports by the General Accounting Office, the Rand Corporation, and the Water Resources Council have made it clear that irrigation water subsidies to livestock producers are economically counter productive. Every dollar that state governments dole out to livestock producers, in the form of irrigation subsidies, actually costs tax payers over seven dollars in lost wages, higher living costs, and reduced business income." Economists Fields and Hur calculate the overall price of subsidizing the California meat industrys water to be 24 billion dollars. It should also be noted that most of the jobs created by the American meat industry are minimum wage jobs with unpleasant, dangerous, and absolutely dreadful working conditions. These are the types of jobs that employers illegally bring in impoverished Mexicans to do. And most of the profits from the meat industry go to large corporations, and thus to wealthy stockholders, because nearly all of the small family farms have been pushed out of business. Most Americans have little clue how horrific their meat industry actually is. I will refer you to the book "Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect, and Inhumane Treatment Inside the U.S. Meat Industry" by Gail A. Eisnitz, [ame="http://www.amazon.com/Slaughterhouse-Shocking-Inhumane-Treatment-Industry/dp/1591024501/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1279868239&sr=1-1"]Amazon.com: Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect, and Inhumane Treatment Inside the U.S. Meat Industry (9781591024507): Gail A. Eisnitz: Books[/ame] (you may likely find a copy at your local library) I just do not see why taxpayers should actually be subsidising these horrific practices, or why the government is funding exploitative employment for illegal immigrants. One would suspect the meat industry has undue political influence.
The economists were likely factoring in the increased market price of land due to so much land being required for the meat industry. About half of the land in the USA is in use as pasture or agriculture. And most of the agricultural land is to grow grain to be fed to livestock. So a HUGE portion of land is being used by the meat industry, directly and indirectly. These sorts of costs are not direct costs, but rather extraneous market opportunity costs. Another example is immigration. More people will cause overcrowding in the cities were the jobs are, driving up the cost of housing. This becomes like a cost to everyone else who must pay higher rent and mortgages. It is not a direct cost, but is a cost nonetheless. I rather think the costs are even HIGHER than those economists assumed, because someone has to pay for the free education and healthcare for all those poor children of the agricultural and slaughterhouse immigrant workers. What I am saying is that the true cost of meat may like likely be greater the social security and defense combined!
However, I have been stating that even if you think the Mormons are weirdos, the concept of storing one years worth of water and canned food is a good idea. The Federal Reserve and other facets of the USA government have been manipulating the currency and discriminatorily subsidizing various industries for so long that the real value of the USA dollar might be a penny right now. Is the impending economic crash being held at bay by Hollywood, military technology, exported fraud (i.e. a hangover from credit default swaps) or something else?
This proves that the government is sustaining artificially high human populations. Overpopulation is rampant; most fools just don't realize it.
