People tired of having to pay handouts, now trying to do something about it.

If I remember correctly, when Mao took over in China, he took all of the drug addicts and dealers, lined them up on shot them. This of course happened systematically throughout the country by his decree. Since that time, Drug trade has been a very non-issue in China.

Now, of course I'm not advocating that we do the same. Not at all as a matter of fact. But I'm just saying, it does have its deleterious effects.

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Originally Posted by Goofball

You're trying to make the tail wag the dog here.

The Democrats of old weren't supporting slavery because they were Democrats, they were supporting slavery because they were southerners.
TH already summed up the shifts along the varying political axes that the Dems and Reps have gone through.

The Democrats were previously pro slavery and anti civil rights because their power base was in the south, and that was what their constituency demanded. Now, their power base is in the north, so for the most part the Dems hold themselves out as the party of liberal social policy and civil rights, because that is what their current constituency demands.

Just as the Republicans were previously anti slavery and pro civil rights, because their power base was in the north and that is what their constituency demanded. Now, their power base is in the South and rural America, so they hold themselves out as the party of guns and Jesus, because that is what their current constituency demands.

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That is only a surface analysis. It promotes a prejudiced point of view. Single facts seldom reveal the truth.

Slavery as I am sure you know was a subsidiary issue in the Civil War, one to which the newly formed Republican quickly grasped upon for popular support.

The primary issue was economic and the north's efforts to force the south into not exporting cotton to Europe but to sell it dirt cheap to northern industrialists.

The Democrats of the time were as a general rule the party of the small farmer and working class. These people were not slave holders. Slaves were expensive and fewer than 10% of southerners owned slaves. Only around 3% of the population owned more than one slave.

The primary reason that slavery was not practiced in the north was that slaves were too expensive to be employed in factory and mining work. Cheap immigrant labour was much more cost effective and you didn't have to buy a new one when one died from the poor conditions.

Formerly most of the big planters had been Whigs but the Republican stance on slavery drove them to the Democrats as there was very little other choice. Meanwhile the slavery issue was enough of a hot button to gain a substantial crossover vote in the north.

There were around 4,000,000 slaves in the U.S. at the time, 800,000 in the free northern states and the remainder in the southern slave states. The ones in Free states at the outbreak of the war were basically confiscated by the Government and pressed into Government Service….still as slaves.

There were huge draft riots in the south which made the ones in New York seem tame by comparison. Men didn't want to go and fight a rich man's war.

The attitude toward blacks in the meantime was much more hostile in the north than in the south and remained so into the 1960s.

The real problems in the south began during Reconstruction, but that is a completely different issue.

Suffice it to say that both Political Parties were quite cynical in their stance toward Black Americans at the very best…something which continues to this day.

We all run the risk of being wrong when painting with a broad brush.

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Originally Posted by Fisherking

That is only a surface analysis. It promotes a prejudiced point of view. Single facts seldom reveal the truth.

Slavery as I am sure you know was a subsidiary issue in the Civil War, one to which the newly formed Republican quickly grasped upon for popular support.

The primary issue was economic and the north's efforts to force the south into not exporting cotton to Europe but to sell it dirt cheap to northern industrialists.

The Democrats of the time were as a general rule the party of the small farmer and working class. These people were not slave holders. Slaves were expensive and fewer than 10% of southerners owned slaves. Only around 3% of the population owned more than one slave.

The primary reason that slavery was not practiced in the north was that slaves were too expensive to be employed in factory and mining work. Cheap immigrant labour was much more cost effective and you didn't have to buy a new one when one died from the poor conditions.

Formerly most of the big planters had been Whigs but the Republican stance on slavery drove them to the Democrats as there was very little other choice. Meanwhile the slavery issue was enough of a hot button to gain a substantial crossover vote in the north.

There were around 4,000,000 slaves in the U.S. at the time, 800,000 in the free northern states and the remainder in the southern slave states. The ones in Free states at the outbreak of the war were basically confiscated by the Government and pressed into Government Service….still as slaves.

There were huge draft riots in the south which made the ones in New York seem tame by comparison. Men didn't want to go and fight a rich man's war.

The attitude toward blacks in the meantime was much more hostile in the north than in the south and remained so into the 1960s.

The real problems in the south began during Reconstruction, but that is a completely different issue.

Suffice it to say that both Political Parties were quite cynical in their stance toward Black Americans at the very best…something which continues to this day.

We all run the risk of being wrong when painting with a broad brush.

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You talked a lot of sense in that post. For the most part well said and well thought out. Except for this bit:

"The attitude toward blacks in the meantime was much more hostile in the north than in the south and remained so into the 1960s."

I'm not saying that the north were a bunch of colorblind do-gooders who were encouraging their penny-loafer wearing daughters to marry a black man, but they were certainly not as overtly hostile to blacks as the south was.

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Originally Posted by Del Arroyo

Not necessarily. If you had a strong central government which was opposed to drugs, like Afganistan under the Taliban to name one, drug gangs would be severely hampered.

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Did you miss the point about warlords in general ? The Taliban just happened to be of the religious wonk variety with issues about narcotics, who for a while were able to gain hegemony over much of the place. They certainly weren't even close to a "strong central governement"; they ascendancy was ultimately largely the result of the assorted local bosses' opportunism and their ability to in general terms bribe the bastards, and when the wind changed the minor warlords quite cheerfully jumped ship again and are now happily back to poppy farming.

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And if you suspend normal due process, like Honduras did recently with MS-13 gang members, it is fairly easy to identify and eliminate organized gang structures, as long as you have popular support.

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...until they adapt. Outright police states (meaning well-run ones here à la DDR) are about the only societies largely unviable for crime, but then that tends to be mainly because the authorities essentially have a monopoly and the means to enforce it.

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And as a note to Watchman-- drug lords in Afganistan DO depend on wealthy societies in the West for their livelihood, because without those paying customers, there would still be no market and no mark-up for their drugs.

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I said that already, didn't I ? But worry you not, if it comes down to the classic postapocalyptic Mad Max scenario you'll have a vast supply of petty strognmen and warlords extracting food and such from the peasant farmers. That, after all, is the rock bottom from which modern states so very slowly climbed out of over millenia. Unsympathetic historians often point out Medieval feudal barons and their warrior retinues weren't really much more than heavily armed local mafias.

I don't think you're quite catching onto the point here, DA. Whether the warlords base their poor substitute for an economy on exporting drugs, diamonds and/or other such valuables or have to content themselves with taxing enough food and valuables off the local farmers and merchants to feed themselves and their bully-boys is very much a cosmetic detail. The point is that such a "warlord economy" is the situation societies default to when their structures fall apart - what fills the void left in the absence of a real society.

Police states suck about as bad, just in a different way. You could say such systems are societies gone wrong - the social equivalent of cellular reproduction going haywire and resulting in a cancer, to give a crude medical analogy.

I'd say if the wealthy suburbs are allowed to opt out of contributing to collective social programs, the poor suburbs should be allowed to opt out of corporate welfare, defence spending and agricultural subsidies.

Well if you want to deconstruct it completely, Watchman, then modern beauracratic governments are nothing more than super-warlords, claiming a much stricter monopoly on violence and dressing it up with alot more paperwork. The original point was that no individual within a society is independent of the whole. The very idea of wealth itself would be meaningless without other people, and lots of them.

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Originally Posted by Idaho

I'd say if the wealthy suburbs are allowed to opt out of contributing to collective social programs, the poor suburbs should be allowed to opt out of corporate welfare, defence spending and agricultural subsidies.

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It's a deal! :thumbsup:

Now... seeing as how the biggest single area of expenditure is welfare in this country I'd be more than happy.

The poor would then have food that was moire expensive due to the lack of subsidies, and possibly even a reduction in related jobs.

~:smoking:

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Originally Posted by Del Arroyo

Well if you want to deconstruct it completely, Watchman, then modern beauracratic governments are nothing more than super-warlords, claiming a much stricter monopoly on violence and dressing it up with alot more paperwork.

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Modern "Westphalian" states evolved out of the earler feudal messes mainly for the purpose of better scrounging up resources for extended warfare. Thankfully, they grew past being limited to those considerations a fair while ago. Machtstaat into Rechtstaat, as it were.
Plus they're waaaaay preferable to the alternatives.

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The original point was that no individual within a society is independent of the whole. The very idea of wealth itself would be meaningless without other people, and lots of them.

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What constitutes "wealth", however, is a social construct - an artefact. Money for example is purely symbolic; it only has any value because the society and its inhabitants define it as such.

Chicken and egg.

People are pack animals. They live in groups and need to organize their relations somehow. Isolated, most of them start going nuts and in any case become quite limited in what they can realistically aspire to achieve.

Thanks for the first

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Originally Posted by Goofball

You talked a lot of sense in that post. For the most part well said and well thought out. Except for this bit:

"The attitude toward blacks in the meantime was much more hostile in the north than in the south and remained so into the 1960s."

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and
Explanation:


I am surly not trying to portray the condition of Black Americans form 1865 to 1970 in the south as anything idyllic. Some truly tragic and if I can apply the word "evil" things did occur. But these things usually tended to happen in areas where Blacks were uncommon (not excusing bad behaviour on this account). The attitude in the south with high concentrations of Blacks was that they were somewhat wayward children that needed watching and were for the most part excluded from polite society. (no excuse here either, the popular view of the time was that those of black decent lacked the mental capacity to be full members of society, this was not a strictly southern view)

Blacks found them selves unwanted and often driven out of areas in the north following the Civil War. Those who remained found themselves isolated in ghettos, but at least there was some safety in numbers. Lynchings beyond the previously slave holding border states were less talked about and less common simply because Blacks were less common and kept that way. It was however dangerous to be Black and found just passing through theses areas. Lynchings there were more likely to be Irish Catholic Immigrants, the very same as whom had been drafted coming off the boat to serve in the Union Army.

The Ku Klux Klan was founded, in the south, during the Reconstruction as a self protection measure against The Carpet Baggers, scalawags, and their often Black minions. By the1870s it was out of existence. It was however refounded in 1915. It spread pretty much nation wide to become a potent political power, with about 15% of the eligible male population nation wide being members. A high concentration of membership was to be found in the upper Midwestern States of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, & Michigan. It was difficult to get elected to office in these states without paying some sort of tribute to the Klan. Its power began to wane in the 1930s but remained an undercurrent at least into the 1950s.

Dr. King's march in Skokie Ill. met with violent protest and court action at least as bad as in Selma Ala. to the point that he attempted no further northern marches. I am however finding it difficult to document the fact via the web. The Nazi march there seems to be all I can readily find. (there seems to be willingness, or desire to forget what makes us uncomfortable)

If you look at the race riots in the cities in the 1960s you will also find that these are mostly in areas other than the south.

In painting the south as the home of racism we are overlooking inconvenient facts of it being much more wide spread. It brings us comfort to think that our ancestors may have been more enlightened than those of others, whether or not that was actually the case.

Let us all hope that we are more enlightened today, even though we may be ashamed of our profound ignorance in the future.

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Originally Posted by rory_20_uk

The poor would then have food that was moire expensive due to the lack of subsidies, and possibly even a reduction in related jobs.

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Actually, if the subsidies would vanish then agriculture can't survive and we can drop those protectionistic measures, making food about half as cheap as it is now.

Not a bad idea, perhaps. (dropping our agricultural policy)

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Originally Posted by doc_bean

Actually, if the subsidies would vanish then agriculture can't survive and we can drop those protectionistic measures, making food about half as cheap as it is now.

Not a bad idea, perhaps. (dropping our agricultural policy)

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People still gotta eat!?!? Wouldn’t the farmers just jack the prices and our grocery bill would be double? In the short term we wouldn’t have much of a choice, no? Left unchecked the US farmers would probably produce like crazy and ruin the rest of the world’s ability to produce a profitable crop.

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Originally Posted by Fisherking

Thanks for the first




and
Explanation:


I am surly not trying to portray the condition of Black Americans form 1865 to 1970 in the south as anything idyllic. Some truly tragic and if I can apply the word "evil" things did occur. But these things usually tended to happen in areas where Blacks were uncommon (not excusing bad behaviour on this account). The attitude in the south with high concentrations of Blacks was that they were somewhat wayward children that needed watching and were for the most part excluded from polite society. (no excuse here either, the popular view of the time was that those of black decent lacked the mental capacity to be full members of society, this was not a strictly southern view)

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I agree with this completely. Its been my observation having lived in different areas of the country that minorities are more prone to abuse where their are small numbers.

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The Ku Klux Klan was founded, in the south, during the Reconstruction as a self protection measure against The Carpet Baggers, scalawags, and their often Black minions. By the1870s it was out of existence. It was however refounded in 1915. It spread pretty much nation wide to become a potent political power, with about 15% of the eligible male population nation wide being members. A high concentration of membership was to be found in the upper Midwestern States of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, & Michigan. It was difficult to get elected to office in these states without paying some sort of tribute to the Klan. Its power began to wane in the 1930s but remained an undercurrent at least into the 1950s.

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It was current until at least 1996. My younger brother recruited for the Army in that area, and one of the things he had to be careful of is not to enlist any advowed members of the KKK. Primarily he covered Iowa and Southern Illinois. Many do not realize where a large percentage of the "White Power" organizations come from. There are some in the south that is for sure, but many come from the northern area of the country - even some from the very states that fought for the Union back in 1860.

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Dr. King's march in Skokie Ill. met with violent protest and court action at least as bad as in Selma Ala. to the point that he attempted no further northern marches. I am however finding it difficult to document the fact via the web. The Nazi march there seems to be all I can readily find. (there seems to be willingness, or desire to forget what makes us uncomfortable)

If you look at the race riots in the cities in the 1960s you will also find that these are mostly in areas other than the south.

In painting the south as the home of racism we are overlooking inconvenient facts of it being much more wide spread. It brings us comfort to think that our ancestors may have been more enlightened than those of others, whether or not that was actually the case.

Let us all hope that we are more enlightened today, even though we may be ashamed of our profound ignorance in the future.

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Agreed completely.


The closet I found is this

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eyesont...2_chicago.html

from one of the links found in that site.

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After Martin Luther King, Jr., working with the Chicago Freedom Movement, negotiated with the city of Chicago on public housing issues, some local blacks felt that he had been duped by empty promises. Members of the Congress of Racial Equality decided to march to Cicero, Illinois on September 4, 1966.

Racial segregation and violence were deeply rooted in Cicero. In 1951 there was a major racial crisis when the Clarks, a black family, rented an apartment and in response 6,000 white people violently attacked the family of a black bus driver. Then Illinois governor, Adlai Stevenson called in the National Guard. In the end Harvey Clark and his family were never able to live in Cicero.

In 1966 Cicero still had no black residents, but many blacks were employed in the city. When protesters marched through town, white residents threw bottles and bricks at the activists. But the marchers were not pledged to nonviolence; they picked up the bricks and bottles and threw them right back. The divide between races seemed to be getting wider, and more blacks felt drawn to the nationalist preaching of Malcolm X.

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I hate cities. Good on these evil snobbish white oppressors.

And DC's gone RED! :help:

No, really, I agree that the NEA must be broken. Preferably in a humiliating way.

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Originally Posted by yesdachi

People still gotta eat!?!? Wouldn’t the farmers just jack the prices and our grocery bill would be double? In the short term we wouldn’t have much of a choice, no? Left unchecked the US farmers would probably produce like crazy and ruin the rest of the world’s ability to produce a profitable crop.

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Without subsidies the US farmers would barely survive in the current climate. I believe in Europe we pay more than double the world price of food due to the subsidies and protectionism. If no subsidies or protectionistic measures where used we'd get the cheapest food, surely this is basic economics ?

I'm not saying it's the best solution, there are other factors to consider, but I do know that i'm paying near twice as much for my food as 7 years ago, and the index has gone up that much. Now I'm not poor (unproductive and lazy: yes) and can afford it, but I've people at the store counting their pennies and putting (normal, inexpensive) food back if they hadn't enough. If we'd find another way to help out our farmers we could probably do a great deal about poverty in the same effort.

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Originally Posted by Alexander the Pretty Good

And DC's gone RED! :help:.

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I haven't 'gone RED'. I've always been 'RED'. :devil:

All kidding aside, education is the great equalizer in terms of opportunity. If we want a true meritocracy, we have to make quality educations available to all who prove themselves capable of benefitting from them, regardless of ability to pay. Otherwise, you wind up with an aristocracy... your education is in line with the amount of money your family has. Now, I don't believe in requiring people that can afford to send their kids to better schools not to, just to fulfill some egalitarian pipe-dream. If your kid is dumb, but you're rich, you should be able to pay for them to go to a better school. But by the same token, society benefits from sending the most capable raw talent to the good schools. So we should be finding creative funding opportunities for seeing that this happens as well.

What's more, a big part of the reason our political system has devolved into a cesspool of graft, corruption, soundbites and chicanery is because we have an ignorant population. When more people know who Nicole Richie is then John Roberts, we've got big problems.

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Without subsidies the US farmers would barely survive in the current climate. I believe in Europe we pay more than double the world price of food due to the subsidies and protectionism. If no subsidies or protectionistic measures where used we'd get the cheapest food, surely this is basic economics ?

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Prices would go down without protectionism, of which Europe and US have a lot on agriculture, but I don't think US farmers couldn't compete (at least, in some cases)- they are sometimes paid to destroy crops to keep the price up.

Don C - the problem with college is the OUTRAGEOUS costs associated with it. Tuition and prices are climbing fast, and college officials aren't slowing it down - they'll just ask for more handouts from the gov't.

CR

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Originally Posted by Crazed Rabbit

Prices would go down without protectionism, of which Europe and US have a lot on agriculture, but I don't think US farmers couldn't compete (at least, in some cases)- they are sometimes paid to destroy crops to keep the price up.

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I'm not sure about the US, your agricultural sector is structured differently from ours, prices would go down though.

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Originally Posted by Crazed Rabbit

Don C - the problem with college is the OUTRAGEOUS costs associated with it. Tuition and prices are climbing fast, and college officials aren't slowing it down - they'll just ask for more handouts from the gov't.

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In a way, though, Don is very right. The rich kids with their daddies' big handouts who go to Ivy League schools despite their dumb butts allow the poorer geniuses to go to said schools essentially for free. Thanks to a bunch of "subsidies" and "gifts" from the rich daddies which translated into scholarships. How else could some of our politicians, who by no means are virtues of intelligence, got into them?

It's rather realpolitik, meaning public schools and less renowned/not elitist East Coast Small Liberal Arts (stereotype) colleges suffer, but it's what we have. It also fosters the kind of dynastic money-based aristocracy that pisses my communistas spirit off badly, but hey.

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Originally Posted by Crazed Rabbit

Prices would go down without protectionism, of which Europe and US have a lot on agriculture, but I don't think US farmers couldn't compete (at least, in some cases)- they are sometimes paid to destroy crops to keep the price up.

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I’m not sure but aren’t the US farmers restricted by who they can sell their goods to? If the restrictions were removed along with the subsidies wouldn’t US farmers produce like crazy and destroy the 3rd world’s agricultural industry?

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Originally Posted by yesdachi

I’m not sure but aren’t the US farmers restricted by who they can sell their goods to? If the restrictions were removed along with the subsidies wouldn’t US farmers produce like crazy and destroy the 3rd world’s agricultural industry?

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No. They wouldn't be able to sell it all for enough to bother doing it. (Presumably.)

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Originally Posted by doc_bean

I'm not sure about the US, your agricultural sector is structured differently from ours, prices would go down though.

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I thought that the prices for EU products were artificially kept low, as a means of protectionism against third world crops?

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Originally Posted by Kralizec

I thought that the prices for EU products were artificially kept low, as a means of protectionism against third world crops?

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Prices are below what would be profitable for crops grown in Europe without subsidies, but the protectionism means that we don't allow third world countries to sell at a price that would be profitable to them, which would be a far lower price than we are paying today.

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Originally Posted by BDC

No. They wouldn't be able to sell it all for enough to bother doing it. (Presumably.)

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I disagree. If you look at the yield a farmer in Iowa gets when he plants wheat, versus what yield a farmer in Niger gets, even with the Iowa farmer's higher salary, he cleans up, because his crop yields are exponentially higher than the Niger farmers.

This is the problem with reforming agricultural policy. If we had been allowing market forces to keep up for the past hundred years, we'd have a stable system. But we've artificially constrained market forces for some time. Remove those constraints, and all sorts of wild things will happen.

My above example is just one example. Let's look at some others:

-Right now, there is a trend afoot to industrialize agriculture. People like Archer Daniels Midland and such are consolidating farms at an alarming rate. Remove all subsidies and you're throwing gas on that fire. I would imagine that within 20 years, the only 'family' farms left would be those where people are independently wealthy and CHOSE to farm, as a hobby.

-Subsidies steer farmers away from dangerous practices (still using DDT? no money for you :thumbsdown: ). Remove the incentives and the farmer will start engaging in these dangerous practices. Aaah, but all you good little Lefties will have the answer to that.... just pass laws forcing the farmer not to do them, right? Wrong. Farmer quits farming and sells out to ADM, who's rich enough to get Congress to pass an exemption.

-From time to time, certain agricultural products, being commodities, will show dramatic price fluctuations (think petrol). While the overall average price may not rise (and in fact, will probably drop), imagine what life will be like when for 6 months to a year, people are paying $15.00 for a gallon of milk, or $50.00 a pound for green beans?

Yes, something needs to be done to reform the West's agricultural policies, but shutting off the tap cold turkey and telling farmers "you're on your own from here" is going to have some pretty ugly consequences.

Argiculture in the United States has a host of protectionism and subsidies (SP) that are used.

FOr instance farmers are paid not to grow certain crops.

Farmers are paid not to plant any crops.

Grain is bought by the government at a set price, regardless of the market. (ie its often slighly higher)

Some argiculture products are not let in. Some is to protect the farmers, some is to protect the native grasses, and some to keep pests and diseases out of our crops.

All have an effect on keeping outside nations from establishing a market for their crops in the United States. But most nations do this in some degree or another. For instance many african nations in need of food, will not allow he genetic alterated grains into their nation. (THis might have changed recently, but I know it used to be true from doing some research)

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Originally Posted by BDC

No. They wouldn't be able to sell it all for enough to bother doing it. (Presumably.)

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I don’t know… seems like it would take very little cost/effort (with all our machination) to plant and harvest a few more acres of unused fields where to do the same in a less agriculturally advanced area it might take dozens of people days to do. The farmer could sell it for almost nothing (break even price) and write it off as a tax deduction to charity. Heck, I bet with a little clever charity organization US farmers could feed all of Africa as a write-off.

That's exactly it, Yesdachi. Yes, maybe you have to pay the Iowa farmer 10 times what the Niger farmer needs to make. But if he produces 100 times the output, he's still going to dominate.

I'd argue agriculture is one of those areas where global trade breaksdown. Food is a strategic resource, so allowing competion in, competition that could potentially put an end to your own domestic production, can be disastrous in the long run. What happens if the world's grocery store starts using food sales as a bargaining chip in other negotiations? You can't just start producing food overnight....

This is actually getting to be a serious problem in the United States on some other strategic interests.... textiles and shoes all come from China. If we really piss China off, we'll all be barefoot and naked (bbbrrrrrrr!!!! It's 5-degrees Farrenheit outside right now.... (that's -13C for you Euros).

The whole food deal actually had a historical background, no?

For one, the 1890's were such terrible times for the US farmers that it wouldn't be far off to call that a crisis for the nation. That was also probably the only time in US history that a viable third party -- the Populists, the farmers -- were so strong; an indication of serious troubles in 2-party obsessed USA. The key cause apparently was the absolute overabundance of crops as American farmers produce so bloody many of them, causing the price to depress so badly that they ended up ruining the world food market and themselves.

There are other factors like railroad corporations' absolute monopolies and all that; but the main lesson from that time tend to point favorably towards the heavy regulation/central planning side of the mixed market when it comes to agriculture. Laissez-faire, in this particular case, happened to ruin everyone. Produces too much? The farmers die. Produces too little? Starvation.

If we're going solve the starvations in Africa what we need is a more global effort towards fixing the distribution system step-by-step; well nigh impossible in other words. There's more than enough food to go around, even with so many artificial walls built to prevent overproduction as it is.

DC: I rather doubt that about the China tidbit. I'd think that whenever we pissed the Dragon so bad that they started evicting their most important trade partner, it'd be relatively easy to move to, say, India or Indonesia for other cheap labor markets; complete with child labor exploitation and the lot, of course.

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Originally Posted by AntiochusIII

If we're going solve the starvations in Africa
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That hasn't even been brought up in this thread beofre you did. Most famine problems are due to war or natural disaster. Stop the fighting and you can stop the famine.