>just for perspective, in recent years government payments have
constituted
>between 40 and 50 percent of net farm income in the united states
just another two perspectives:
NEC built a new 64 mb computer chip plant in eastern germany (i
would say, a profitable business with nice options for the
future.) total costs 800 million deutsche mark.
money paid by NEC: 90 millions. the rest of 710 millions were a
gift from the german government, the state and city, where they
built, subsidaries and free credits from the European Community.
nothing of it has to be paid back!
which means: you can own a business by 100%, if you pay 1/10 of the
price and argue, that you are bringing jobs to eastern germany. job
garanties was given for 2 years.
2. example:
mercedes-benz, the third-largest employer in germany, gets paid ALL
the money spent for research (a little more than 1 billion/a) by
tax reductions (a hidden subsidary), which means: one of the most
successful and largest companies in the whole world pays ABSOLUTELY
no taxes. whenever there is a political discussion about that,
mercedes immediately! announces (in the usual polite and slimy
style), that they just had thought over to install the
administration to the usa or any country with
lower taxes. the funny thing is (is it really funny??), that all
these countries meanwhile would be to willing to offer them the
same tax reduction to ZERO, argumenting with new jobs and are
competing among each other about the lowest taxes, which meanwhile
had turned to the highest bidder...
the government taxes workers, gives this money to companies, for
that they create fulltime jobs to earn money they would not need,
if taxes were not that high. a halfday job without these taxes
would result in the same "buying value" (? engl. exp. unknown).
some of the largest software companies here do most of their work
(programming) in bangalore, pay their ridiculous taxes in india, but
are using the high-tech infrastructure of germany for distribution
and marketing (i almost forgot to mention, that they are
constantly weaning about the high costs for transportation)
so the 40 to 50 % are to be seen in this light and although this
number seems real high (the average values for germany are in the
range between 30-40 percent), there are quite a lot of higher rates.
another calculation from the coal industry: it would be cheaper for
the european union to send ALL their coal miners home for the rest
of their life with twice the income of today than to
pay the subsidaries (price difference between european coal and coal
bought at world market prices).
and another absurd point (lets also mention some crazy thing from
agriculture): last year 5000 ha of fibre line were planted, because
the subsidary alone was calculated as more profitable than any other
market fruit. the subsidary was paid after the seeding according to
the area planted. almost none of these fields were harvested, (in
fact farmers never even considered a harvest) because prices for
indian line fibre are so ridiculous low, that it would not have
been worth to drive the tractor to the line field. a local
extension specialist calculated an hourly wage of lower than
2 marks (if he included the special costs for machines, every
farmer lost 40 marks per h by harvesting). you better
take a job as the toilet cleaner in the worst resthouse in town..
at least there you do not have to pay and will loose for doing the
cleaning.
conclusion: subsidaries in general are not sustainable, that system
of money distribution will crash sooner or later or result in
extreme inflation rates. remember: 90% of the consumers
are taxpayers, but neither farmers nor involved in food
production, and do agree:
subsidaries for agriculture are to high
the downregulation needs worldwide agreements about time frames
and rates and this can only be achieved by small steps and fair
prices. we in europe do not want a "panem et circenses" (they
always go together, and you cannot pick any and refuse the
other) like in ancient rome any more.
why time frames ?
because the levels between incomes in industrial and poorly
developed countries will have to assimilate without civil wars.
from our view no nice outlook for our agriculture, but certainly
more sustainable for the south.
klaus
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