Thoughts on Corn, and Farming

USDA's Economic Research Service does a lot of good publications. From the summary for one--

Characteristics and Production Costs of U.S. Corn Farms, 2001: "Corn production costs per bushel vary considerably among U.S. producers, depending on yields, farm location, tillage practices, irrigation, previous field usage, enterprise size, and weather. In 2001, the operating and ownership costs per bushel for corn ranged from an average of $1.08 for the 25 percent of U.S. producers with the lowest costs to an average of $2.98 for the 25 percent with the highest costs. Heartland corn producers had the lowest costs per bushel on average. Corn producers with small corn enterprises had the highest costs per bushel due to their lower-than-average corn yields. Operators of part-time and low-sales corn farms had higher production costs per bushel than operators of farms with higher sales. In 2001, 59 percent of corn producers earned a positive net return per bushel after covering their operating and ownership costs from the market value of corn. "

My thoughts--note the range of costs. While GM's costs are higher than Toyota's or Hyundai's, there's not nearly the range. The big range means that lots of discussion of agricultural programs is misleading, if not unfounded. There's apt to be a big disconnect between the pictures in our head and the reality.

If the cash price for corn is in the area of $2, how can anyone stay in business if it costs them $3? Obviously government programs help, but since the benefits tend to correlate to bushels produced, and the smaller producers are the high cost ones, that's not the entire answer. Another part of the answer is the older farmers, who have no mortgage, have low out-of-pocket ownership costs for land. That makes a big, big difference. To economist, someone with a million dollars worth of land (which is a smallish field crop farmer these days) needs to account for the cost of that land capital. But to a farmer, cash flow is critical. The fact he could sell out and get $40,000 a year by investing the proceeds is irrelevant.

The Limits of Libertarianism

I don't know for sure, but I'd consider Ben Stein to be a libertarian type conservative, believing in the virtues of free markets and less government. But current events strain his convictions, as witness yesterday's column in the Times:New Front: Protecting America's Investors.
He writes on executive compensation in Delphi and United Airlines, cites his father-in-law's war medals, then segues to this--

"But my favorite communication, the one that made me stay up nights, was from a United States Army sergeant who has done two combat tours in Iraq and two more in Afghanistan, and is now home in Georgia training others to serve in those wars. I have been pals with this man for a couple of years now, and we talk on the phone. He has been following my articles online, and he simply asked, 'Was this what I was fighting for in Iraq?'

The question haunts me, not only because of UAL and Delphi, but also because there is something deeply broken about the corporate system in America. Long ago, my pop was pals with Harlow H. Curtice, the president of General Motors in its glory days in the 1950's. Mr. Curtice presided over a spectacularly powerful and profitable G.M.

For that, in his peak year as I recall from my youth, he was paid about $400,000 plus a special superbonus of $400,000, which made him one of the highest-paid executives in America. At that time, a line worker with overtime might have made $10,000 a year. In those days, that differential was considered very large — very roughly 40 times the assembly line worker's pay, without bonus; very roughly 80 times with bonus. A differential of more like 10 to 20 times was more the norm.

Now C.E.O.'s routinely take home hundreds of times what the average worker is paid, whether or not the company is doing well. The graph for the pay of C.E.O.'s is a vertical line in the last five years. The graph for workers' pay is a flat line — in every sense.

Now, my fellow free-market fans may well say: 'Hey, stop your whining. This is the free market at work.' Only it isn't the free market at work. It's a kleptocracy at work. (I am indebted to another of my correspondents for the word.) What's happening here is that the governance system for many — by no means all — corporations has simply stopped working."

He concludes with a message from another soldier, making the same point, that the America of Kenny Boy and Tyco isn't an America she feels comfortable fighting for.

If All Else Fails, Read the Manual

I should know better. I sent off a message to Blogger complaining, actually two messages, about missing posts. Then I read their help messages, tried Internet Explorer (instead of Firefox), found that the website worked fine in IE, went to Firefox and cleared the cache per Blogger's instructions and it works fine in Firefox.

Self, read the damn manual.

Immigrants Get Houses

The Post has an interesting article on how recent Hispanic immigrants are buying houses in
American Dreams, Realized:

"The Teoses and many other immigrants see their homes as the physical manifestation of the hope that they carried with them upon arrival in the United States. Home equity accounts for two-thirds of the average net worth of Hispanic households, studies show. According to 2000 Cenus data, 41.2 percent of Latin American immigrants own homes and other real estate, up from 38 percent in 1997.

In the Washington area, Latin immigrants have become active real estate investors with rental properties and well-thought-out strategies, said Jose Luis Semidey, president of the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals in Northern Virginia and of the Vienna real estate firm ERA Semidey & Associates. Last year, Semidey's company sold 900 homes; 90 percent of his clients were Latino.

'Our community has been changing, but people have not been realizing that. We are very entrepreneurial, with a lot of expendable income,' Semidey said. 'We are here. We are here to stay. We want to progress and to be successful.'"

The theme seems to be people taking advantage of opportunities. My impression is that homeowning is also furthered because families, relatives, and friends share houses, thus combining incomes and because immigrants can get good deals on home repairs (they know someone who does the work and can and will do a job on the side cheaply).

Revamping Bureaucracies

An earlier post and comments on the Farm Service Agency leads to broader consideration of how you revamp an old bureaucracy.

Via Kevin Drum (Washington Monthly) is a link to a proposed alternative to Rumsfeld's Quadrennial Defense Review. Rummy wants more special forces, but doesn't cut major weapons systems, even though there's no military threat to us in the world.

Meanwhile the State Department is revamping its overseas posts--from today's Post: U.S. to Shift Envoys to China, India: "China and India have emerged as the big winners -- and Russia and Germany as the top losers -- in the first round of a broad restructuring of U.S. diplomatic posts ordered by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice."

Oracle is firing 2,000 workers after its takeover of Siebel. (Seems like just yesterday they took over Peoplesoft--what happened to the monopoly concerns?)

The difference is that Oracle's workers have nowhere to go, while the DOD programs (and the FSA offices) are supported by Congress. And of course, there's no Representative from Russia to tell Secretary Rice to what to do. A Senator Helms can play hob with the way an administration wants to run foreign policy, but there's lots more freedom in managing posts in foreign countries.

Searching for the Right Parallels to Cartoons

I posted yesterday agreeing that a parallel to cartoons of Mohammed was the burning of the flag. I post today to disagree with Martin Peretz in The New Republic (registration required).

What the cartoons have revealed: "Muslims are just plain forbidden from depicting the prophet. So, let them not depict him. But Christians and Jews, Hindus and Buddhists are not prohibited, and I assume that the Danish cartoonists were not Muslims but Lutherans (an overwhelming majority of whom assert that they do not believe in God) or from that cool breed of Scandinavian rationalists. Another cartoon shows the prophet greeting some martyrs at the entrance to heaven, and he shouts to them, 'Stop, stop, we have run out of virgins.' When you compare the most offensive of these caricatures to the vile and inciting images of Jews routinely shown on government-owned television all over the Muslim world (forget about the ugly role of caricature in the long history of Christian anti-Semitism) you wonder what all the fuss is about. OK, Bill Clinton doesn't wonder. He's referred to them as 'these totally outrageous cartoons against Islam,' although I myself doubt whether he's ever bothered to look at them. Is he for free expression or for that sloppy multiculturalism that forbids you from raising anyone's hackles? This is the liberal's dilemma. By the way, a European-Arab website--in retaliation, I suppose--has just put out a cartoon showing Anne Frank and Hitler in bed."

I don't agree with his specifics. Offensive cartoons of Jews, whether of Anne Frank or whoever, are parallel to offensive cartoons of Muslims (or Lutherans [by the way, a Lutheran would believe in Christ and God]. Offensive cartoons of U.S. Presidents are parallel to offensive cartoons of Saddam Hussein or the ayatollah. An offensive cartoon of Moses or Abraham or God would parallel one of Mohammed.

I was brought up to be sensitive to others' feelings, but as a liberal I believe in equal opportunity for everyone to offend everyone.

Blogger Problems--Apologies for Duplication

Blogger was having some problems republishing its blogs. That appears to have resulted in two duplicate posts here but I'm not able to delete the duplicates. My apologies.

There also appears to be a problem in counting comments--there's a comment on the FSA post
but the count shows "zero".

Maybe it's time to look at Typepad??

Flags and Cartoons

A commenter at The Volokh Conspiracy raises the issue of how depicting Mohammed compares to burning the flag. Eugene has an interesting discussion, including:

"One can naturally come up with some distinctions — among other things, banning all depictions of Mohammed burdens a wider range of speech (e.g., pretty much any film biography of Mohammed) than banning flagburning would — but I think that on balance these distinctions are unpersuasive. If you want to credibly say to Muslims that they have to tolerate offense to their sacred symbols, you have to tolerate offense to your own sacred symbols, too."

I agree.

Heading in Opposite Directions

Two articles from today's Post suggest the complexity of housing issues. Meanwhile Safeway is having difficulty hiring Starbucks workers, advertising $11 an hour for them. At something over $20K a year, that that doesn't pay for housing in Fairfax:

Fairfax to Buy Affordable Apartment Complex in Reston: "Fairfax County agreed yesterday to purchase a complex of 180 apartments in Reston. With their relatively low rents, the units might otherwise have been converted to luxury condominiums, county officials said.

The county will pay the Mark Winkler Co. $49.5 million for the Crescent Apartments near Lake Anne, the largest outlay from an affordable housing fund approved by the Board of Supervisors last year. Monthly rents at the complex run an average of $1,023 for a one-bedroom apartment and $1,170 for two bedrooms. The current tenants, who represent Reston's mix of ethnic communities, earn incomes of $40,000 to $50,000 for a family of four."

Reality Thins Out An Urban Vision: "In Fairfax County's official vision for Tysons Corner, thousands of people live clustered around the Metro stops planned there -- riding the train or walking to work, leaving their cars at home and injecting new life into the austere glass and concrete hub.

But in the reality of developers' blueprints, a different Tysons is emerging -- one with a population smaller than what county leaders have in mind." [article explains that the zoning requires x million square feet of residential space, which the developer has decided to make into 2K condos instead of 1K. Rationale is that the bigger condos attract people willing to pop for upgrades (granite counter tops, etc.) that are more profitable.]

"Career Professional" or "Faceless Bureaucrat"?

A Republican Attorney General thinks highly of faceless government bureaucrats (whoops, career professionals) (Gonzales, from yesterday's Senate hearing):

"Second, the program is triggered only when a career professional at the NSA has reasonable grounds to believe that one of the parties to a communication is a member or agent of Al Qaida or an affiliated terrorist organization. As the president has said, if you're talking with Al Qaida, we want to know what you're saying."