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I'm an Iowa native. I find the cartoon itself pretty ridiculous. Why shouldn't CEOs of multibillion-dollar companies earn more than farmers? In addition, every
by gragas 10y ago
I'm an Iowa native. I find the cartoon itself pretty ridiculous. Why shouldn't CEOs of multibillion-dollar companies earn more than farmers? In addition, every single farmer I've ever met is very well off. In addition to the money made while farming, farmers are sitting on millions of dollars of land.
- jccc 10y agoI'm having trouble finding that part of the cartoon that suggested an Ag CEO should not make any more than an average farmer. Could it be instead that the cartoon is about the scale of the difference? There is an actual number in the punchline. [Edit: Nebraska native, by the way.]
- lolc 10y agoWell if they'd terminated the contract because he was not funny that would be one thing. But it seems he hit a nerve there no?
- gpvos 10y agoMore like he hit their bottom line.
- astrodust 10y agoIt's not a question of more, running a multi-national corporation is obviously more responsibility, it's a question of the factor. > Every single farmer I've ever met is very well off. Maybe you're in an area where the crops are in demand and your view is heavily biased.
- qaq 10y agoAnd Larry and Sergey gave Sundar Pichai 200 mil. not to jump from Google and Steve gave Tim Cook 400 mil. to stay on. It's their private business how they compensate their executives.
- astrodust 10y agoNot if they're accountable to shareholders.
- qaq 10y agoThey are accountable to shareholders they are not accountable to farmers and are not bound by what farmers think is a fair compensation.
- astrodust 10y agoIf farmers, and by proxy the people in general have no say at all then their society is broken.
- qaq 10y agoWhy would they have a say in how private company compensates it's officers?
- dragonwriter 10y agoFor companies which are corporations, because a corporation is a creature of government, granted a charter by some government and permitted to operate within the jurisdiction of others with various privileges and protections because doing so is seen as serving the public interest for which those governments are responsible to their people.
- qaq 10y agoYou are perfectly fine regulating the tax side, even in most socialist European countries there are no pay caps.
- astrodust 10y agoThat's the "say" I'm talking about. Where the public can vote to dis-incentivize out of control executive pay with taxes. Making $5-50MM per year is a lot, but some make in excess of $1B per year and pay almost nothing in taxes. This money doesn't come from nowhere, and these multi-billionaire hedge fund managers are often squeezing it out of things like managed pension funds and other investment pools.
- mmanfrin 10y agoWhy shouldn't CEOs of multibillion-dollar companies earn more than farmers Every farmer. 3 people vs 2,129.
- davidw 10y agoThere are 2129 farmers in Iowa? I have to say that wasn't very clear.
- mmanfrin 10y agoThe exact text of the comic is: "There is. In year 2015 the CEOs of Monsanto, DuPont Pioneer and John Deere combined made more money than 2,129 Iowa farmers." Note 'combined'.
- jws 10y agoHeavens no. There are 88,000 farms and something like 130,000 "farm operators" in Iowa.† That 2129 of them are doing very poorly shouldn't come as much of a surprise. I'd be surprised if at least 3% of them aren't actually losing money! There is something to be said about income distribution, but it didn't make it accurately through the comic strip. ␄ † https://www.extension.iastate.edu/agdm/articles/edwards/EdwSept14.html https://www.extension.iastate.edu/agdm/articles/edwards/EdwS...
- alistairSH 10y agoExcept there are FAR more than 2129 farmers in Iowa. There are apparently >80,000 farms in Iowa and 130,000 farm operators.[1] So, the CEOs of a few multi-national corporations make more than some undefined subset of farmers in Iowa. Are the 2129 the least successful farmers? The most? A random sampling? I assume the cartoonist meant something like 2129 * [average farm revenue] = sum(coo salaries)? 1 - https://www.extension.iastate.edu/agdm/articles/edwards/EdwSept14.html https://www.extension.iastate.edu/agdm/articles/edwards/EdwS...
- jqm 10y agoPartially agree. I do happen to think the cartoon raises a very valid point. But... having known a lot of farmers they are indeed usually quite well off. And many of them are not aweshucks salt of the earth types people often perceive, but rather more like a sort of spoiled generational semi-duke or noble type thing looking down upon the little non-land owning commoners who they often pay very little and sometimes wantonly abuse. That being said.. what was the guy thinking? He has to know who financially supports the paper. Maybe he was ready to do something else.
- zaphar 10y agoI've known a lot of farmers too, admittedly none of them from Iowa, and none of them were like what you describe. Maybe it's due to regional differences but I'm inclined to think you exaggerated rather a lot there.
- jqm 10y agoNope. No exaggeration. I've known probably 30+ farmers in 4 or 5 states (and even worked for a few) and many have attitudes exactly as I state It's not that they were bad people or unkind (although some are... bordering on abusive), but it's the attitude of inherited big landowner. It absolutely exists. In retrospect I suppose "spoiled" (in the sense a gulf state prince might be) probably isn't the right term. Every farmer I've known has worked hard and paid attention to their task. But the attitude I speak of is pervasive. The landed nobility and the little people. At least in my experience. And I found it unpleasant.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- rabboRubble 10y agoAgree with jccc... the point wasn't that a single farmer wasn't earning the same amount as 3 corporate CEOs, it was that the 3 CEOs earned more than 2000+ farmers combined. Furthermore, I think you missed a level of insight about where the earning power is. That land may come with a mortgage and other liens. The trick is scrounging enough money to pay the mortgage every month on that land. Only after a lifetime of paying off the mortgage, does the typical farmer or rancher have enough equity in the land to make it a cash windfall when they sell. I think the cartoon was commenting on the difficulty of making the farming business model work because of the tiny incoming cash flow from raising crops and being the frontline person working the land.
- Laforet 10y agoI agree. Not to mention that corn farming was not profitable at pre-recession commodity prices and even more so now without government subsidy. In New Zealand, our main agricultural outputs (dairy and meat cattle) have recently gone into the unprofitable territory and it was only land speculation that kept the farms producing at the current level.
- jkestner 10y agoThat's a naive view, and anecdata. Many farmers don't own their land but lease it. They're also subject to the whims of weather and the commodities market... not exactly a steady income.
- onetimePete 10y agoAlot also loose the land they had, to the banks over time and become glorified landscape facility managers for the bank or for example a energy company. The guy in that "My-little-farm"-book you've read, might never have smiled so happy, and it might never have been his "little-farm". I know a lot of people who wont accept this though. You got to be rich, living the good life out there- else, where to daydream-escape towards from a day in the city.
- inanutshellus 10y agoThe USA prides itself on free speech AND capitalism, but there are obvious conflicts of interest demonstrated here. I imagine losing Monsanto (or whomever's) ad revenue will be very painful to Iowa Farm News... Anyway, it's clear that Iowa Farm News would never intentionally and will never again speak against a major ad source like Monsanto/DuPont/John Deere, and every other news source has been put on notice. That's the newsworthy item - the illusion that news outlets aren't on a leash.
- HillRat 10y agoMedian farm income in the United States is -$930. Yes, negative dollars. Almost every farmer -- basically the bottom 95% at least -- relies on off-farm household income, and just hopes to make enough farming to keep up with debt service and opex (assuming they didn't go into debt on seed, which can happen).
- GunboatDiplomat 10y agoPerhaps they should consider another line of work. If your bar isn't making money, or your hardware store is failing, no one suggests it's unfair the CEO of Budweiser makes more than many many bars combined, or the President of DeWalt makes hundreds of times more than a hardware store does. Why should it be different for farmers?
- pnathan 10y agoWorth looking at the historical farm policies of different countries. But, for the US in particular, the key concept is agrarian myth. I present two comments and suggest reading Age of Reform by Hofstadter. > There is a general idea that somehow the fate of the United States is somehow bound to the fate of the agricultural community. There is a romantic appeal to the family farm as the symbol of the good life in this country. It stands for democracy in its purest and most classic form. This belief persists despite evidence to the contrary. [0] > The agrarian myth is the belief that the most desirable form of community is found in rural, specifically agrarian, village life. In the agrarian village, fundamental Western values such as a strong work ethic, independence, and integrity are supposedly fostered and passed from one generation to the next. Consequently, declines in the value of agrarian life and agrarian villages are seen as signals of an even larger decline of society itself. For those who believe in the agrarian myth, community type and morality become inseparably connected in the rural agricultural village. All other contemporary manifestations of community are incomplete or counterfeit. [1] [0] http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/bitstream/36568/1/sp02re01.pdf http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/bitstream/36568/1/sp02re01.pdf [1] http://sk.sagepub.com/reference/community/n10.xml http://sk.sagepub.com/reference/community/n10.xml
- tropo 10y ago
- mholt 10y agoI'm also from Iowa. The value of farmland is complex, and I'd venture that a farmer is very lucky to be "sitting on millions of dollars of land" if that is indeed the case. (Our farm sold for very well less than a million dollars a few years ago.)