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Can anyone explain the mission of USFS? Why does the US maintain a bunch of wilderness when it’s buried in debt. Why not use federal assets to generate income
by tonymet 2y ago
Can anyone explain the mission of USFS? Why does the US maintain a bunch of wilderness when it’s buried in debt. Why not use federal assets to generate income instead of burdening taxpayers with taxes & debt payments?
- a_t48 2y agoThis is in the article.
- paulcole 2y agoI see a lot of things that the Forest Service does listed but I don’t see the purpose of why they do them. For example, this quote is not a mission, “The U.S. Forest Service is a federal agency that manages 193 million acres of land, an area about the size of Texas.” It might be part of what they do to accomplish their mission, but it’s not a mission. Could you quote the part of the article that makes their mission clear?
- janosett 2y agoThe budget for this has very little bearing on the debt. See where the money actually goes here: https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/federal-spending/ https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...
- readthenotes1 2y ago"The U.S. government has spent $6.75 trillion in fiscal year 2024 to ensure the well-being of the people of the United States." Reads like something straight out of George Orwell
- ceejayoz 2y agoOnly if you don't know Orwell was an lifelong socialist.
- yellowapple 2y agoContrary to popular belief, socialism is not "when the government does stuff".
- readthenotes1 2y agoOh I do know that Orwell was a lont time socialist (I cannot vouch for lifelong as I do not know how he felt coming out of the womb). He also was very much opposed to authoritarian rule and one of the points of 1984 was to distrust how a government used words to mislead -like in what I quoted
- ceejayoz 2y agoWhat is the authoritarian mislead in said quote?
- lotsofpulp 2y agoI like this website, even though the numbers are a few years old: https://www.thebalancemoney.com/u-s-federal-budget-breakdown-3305789 https://www.thebalancemoney.com/u-s-federal-budget-breakdown... For basically all future years, an even greater proportion (more than two thirds) of federal government spending will be for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid (old and sick and poorer people).
- tonymet 2y agoYou're confusing the budget (maintenance spending) with the value of the real estate assets. That is, all of the land, e.g. 95% of Nevada, about 70% of the entire western USA If that land was generating income, we could pay off the entire $35+T debt in no time.
- tonymet 2y agoI'm talking about revenue, not spending
- exabrial 2y agoI don't mean for this reply to sound rantish... but this is pretty short term thinking. Not maintaining a tremendously valuable asset (nearly priceless) is a waste.
- ninetyninenine 2y agoPeople who don't hike or use nature recreationally tend to view it as completely useless. They do have a bit of a point. The asset isn't really being maintained. It's being maintained for human use as recreation. Overall you don't need to really maintain wilderness to preserve it. Overall you just leave it untouched. You would actually do a better job if you locked down the entire area and just spent the money on keeping everyone out as my own self fish usage of nature as recreation harms it more then it helps it.
- whatshisface 2y ago>You would actually do a better job if you locked down the entire area and just spent the money on keeping everyone out as my own self fish usage of nature as recreation harms it more then it helps it. That would work until a mining company wanted to extract oxygen from Yellowstone Quartz and met with zero public opposition to making use of "empty land."
- ninetyninenine 2y agooh good point. Public opposition is what stops it from happening not the word of law.
- exabrial 2y agoThis is even more short term thinking and a bit of ignorance. Where do you think all of the ‘stuff’ around you came from? Everything starts as raw materials, most of them organic. And besides how selfish would it be to preserve nothing for the future generations.
- ninetyninenine 2y ago
- wepple 2y agoBecause it’s literally one of the greatest things about the US, and once it’s gone.. it’s gone.
- bitexploder 2y agoOnly about 36% of US forests are older than 80 years old. They will grow back, but we should do our best to protect older growth forests.
- fallingknife 2y agoThat's not true. The Appalachians were basically clear cut in the 1800s.
- llamaimperative 2y agoAnd as a result they're way less remarkable than the older forests.
- tonymet 2y agoit doesn't have to go anywhere to be productive.
- JackYoustra 2y agoMany parts of the US government have an egalitarian mission. Beyond USFS, there's the parks, flood insurance, education programs, grant making organizations (as people on this forum are very very aware of), land management and more. You can object to the overall non-profit egalitarian mission (and I do in many cases) but it's not unique to the forest service.
- yellowapple 2y agoI do wonder why the USFS hasn't been rolled into the Dept. of the Interior alongside e.g. the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service. Putting it under the Dept. of Agriculture (as it is now) seems like it'd lead to some perverse incentives, and the overlap in mission and jurisdiction between the USFS and the BLM and NPS seems like it'd produce administrative/managerial redundancies (the cost of which would be better spent on the very jobs being cut right now).
- JackYoustra 2y agoThere are really really weird organizational divisions. You have the DEA and the FDA very far apart despite one having the scientific expertise and the other having enforcement expertise. You have police in every branch of the government, and the DOJ for good measure. You have food stamps in the ag department as well.
- red-iron-pine 2y agothe DEA doesn't need scientific expertise, they're NARCs who can cross state lines. they're cops -- law enforcement -- and they're there to enforce the law, not advise on it. the FDA's job is to think about this stuff and provide recommendations and regulations. and a big part of their purview is Food, hence the F. Drugs are in the name too, but that's as much about the latest cancer medication as it as about street heroin.
- tonymet 2y agoit’s not egalitarian to be insolvent. This is one way to help keep the government from defaulting.
- jeffbee 2y agoThe mission of the USFS is not to "maintain a bunch of wilderness". Its mission, and the reason is is under the Dept. of Agriculture, is to provide forest products in perpetuity to Americans.
- wbl 2y agoIt does however maintain a bunch of wilderness.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- tonymet 2y agoclose, and kudos for earnestly attempting to answer. Here's the mission from the USFS brochure The mission of the US Forest Service (USFS) is to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of the Nation's forests and grasslands to meet the needs of present and future generations.
- jeffbee 2y agoThat's cool, I did not know about their mission statement. But I do know about the Organic Act of 1897, which is still the basis of the existence of the USFS, which states its own purpose, to remove all doubt: "Public forest reservations are established to protect and improve the forests for the purpose of securing a permanent supply of timber for the people"
- tonymet 2y agoyeah I wish I better understood the contemporary policy and why American lumber is in short supply, and the lumber industry seems to be nearly dead. context: i live in PNW around Columbia gorge and the former logging towns around here hardly have any industry left.
- righthand 2y agoWhy does it need to be profitable to exist? Why does it need to generate income? Why can’t we be fine with subsidizing and paying for wilderness and public transportation? Because some well connected business man could charge us money for it and pocket the difference and still barely maintain it and sell it off to be developed into concrete malls?
- tonymet 2y agoYou may have noticed the federal government is insolvent, yet has plenty of assets. When they return to solvency we can discuss involuntary charity.
- consteval 2y agoIf this is truly your opinion, I would imagine you would turn your attention to defense spending. I hear this line of thinking often, and almost every time it turns out the person is lying, sometimes even to themselves. It's not the spending people have a problem with, it's the what.
- tonymet 2y agorevenue and spending both need attention. defense spending must come down too
- righthand 2y agoSo defund a small programs to help reach solvency even though it’s not wasteful and wouldn’t have an effect on solvency? Let corporations destroy the natural world in the name of financial gain? Yep more capitalism-only mindset. Still no reason to do this to the national parks. It’s funny how funding weapons and things like endless TSA security theater is not ever criticized for their contribution to insolvency. The gain has been negligent. No clearly the problem is the education and parks that actually contribute good and real safety and security to the country.
- tonymet 2y ago
- mikeocool 2y agoAll National Forests have a forestry plan that involves selling a certain amount of timber cut from the forest every year. However, forest recreation (which obviously requires the forests to still have trees) also generates a lot of money — both for the local economy around the forest and via things like permits for the government itself. Basically the goal is to maintain the forests as long term assets, not sell them off in one go.
- tonymet 2y agoAll good. obviously they aren't productive enough. It's about 70% of the western usa. surely they could be more productive.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- amanaplanacanal 2y agoWhat do you recommend?
- tonymet 2y agoFirst and foremost, reduce the scope and spending of the federal government by 90% . Assuming that is healthy, activate leasing on federal land (USFS & BLM) to generate income. e.g. logging, petroleum, recreational leases, mining , etc.