What can government do to help people?

According to most, government can do anything and everything. It seems that many believe that the most important thing government can and should do to help people is to make every possible decision for them, give them everything they need (if not want), and especially keep them from doing anything the government considers to be bad. Especially people who own (or make) too much: too much money, too much success, too much noise, and… too much land.

Whether Uncle Joe and Waiting-for-the-White-House Kammie are truly Marxists or just run-of-the-mill socialist Democrats, it is clear that they believe government can and should do everything possible to “help.” Even if it means harming other people to do it. With their victory on 6 JAN 2021, elements of their “Great Reset” are closer to reality.

Again, consider land.

What does history show? What is one very common thing that socialist, totalitarian-leaning “revolutionary” (or counter-revolutionary) governments do when they get power? They “redistribute” land. That is, they seize it (with or without payment) and then they give to the disadvantaged (and the government’s friends).

Of course, it is what all governments do with money – called taxes. It is actually not just land but wealth of any sort that is targeted. Wealth that doesn’t belong to the Friends of Joe (or whomever). But right now, let’s talk about land. It’s a biggie, and our rapidly-gaining-power socialists are thinking about it.

Consider this proposed Biden-Harris regime “help.”

According to an Agriculture Online story republished by Newsbreak: ‘Justice’ bill would transfer up to 32 million acres to Black farmers. [The Fifty States has about 900 million acres, so this would be about 3%. Supposedly (according to the Atlanta Black Star newspaper) in 2017, less than 50,000 black farmers had just 1 million acres of farmland. That paper also claims that in 1920, 1 million black farmers owned 20 million acres. However, other sources claim different numbers, some as high as 5 million acres in 2020.]

The Newsbreak story continues: Black-owned farmland could expand sevenfold under a bill filed by three Democratic senators to reverse decades of discriminatory practices by the Agriculture Department, sometimes called “the last plantation.” The Justice for Black Farmers Act would enable Black farmers to acquire up to 160 acres apiece at no charge through a USDA system of land grants. (Although introduced in the 116th Congress, it is (I understand) being reintroduced in the 117th.)

Supposedly this land would come from the open, free market: willing sellers of farmland. Farmers retiring, going out of business, or reducing the size of their farms. Perhaps at auction or via bankruptcy cases, both from family farmers and corporate farmers.

Do you buy that? I don’t. I do believe that is what was claimed in South Africa and Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) back in the day. Don’t know if Lenin made that promise or not; probably not: a bullet is cheaper than a buyout. Things were visibly nastier a century ago.

There is no doubt that black farmers have been badly abused by the FedGov, State governments, local governments and their white neighbors, businesses, and fellow citizens. For more than a century and a half. This certainly contributed to the drop in farmland and black farmers, as people streamed to the cities, especially in the North and West, to find new work and new homes. (Although blacks were certainly not alone in the mass migration from rural to urban areas.) This migration was not a one-time thing, but lasted for those same 15 decades – and indeed continues today, for families of all ethnicities.

We are told that there are only 3.4 million farms in the Fifty States today. That is just ONE percent of Americans. And less than 1% of those farmers are black. But in 1920, with just 106 million Americans, 49% were farmers: 51 million: so all ethnicities have seen their numbers shrink: black farmers more quickly than others. Most people blame federal government policies and actions for much of this, and I do not gainsay that. But it is also obvious that not ALL the negative government impact was due to racism in the USDA or various offices: clearly a lot of it is due to the usual sins of the bureaucracy and the even greater sins and stupidity of our beloved Congresscritturs.

So why do we think that the FedGov can FIX the mess it created?

Any bets that they will make it WORSE? While wasting billions of dollars?

Face it, government bureaucrats and most government-ruining politicians despise and hate farmers, ranchers, loggers, hunters, and fishers. Not just kulak-starving and -killing communist bureaucrats and politicians. The reasons for that hatred are many, and I am sure some are “valid.” But much is just sheer nastiness. And long, long traditions. To the statists, the people who run cattle or sheep are just herders and cowboys – the nomadic barbarians their esteemed city states had to deal with. Those who plow and plant and harvest, and raise chickens and pigs and dairy cows? They are just peasants. uncouth, uncultured, and uneducated. Even if they wander around with PhDs and have family farms and ranches with revenues of a million FRNs a year. (Unless they have titles, of course.)

And they REALLY hate paying them off, year after year, with price supports and subsidies. Just because they have to eat. Pity, that.

Note: this is NOT a form of “reparations” for slavery. That is a different issue, and sure to be in addition to this “justice” bill.