Benefit Culture

[MK-2]

Ok, put it this way. You are told to not have kids. Would the average person be annoyed at this? Yes. You are encouraged through various means to eat one less meat meal per week. If even 50% of the population do this, that is 1/14th of the world's meat intake gone.

The latter is a LOT easier than the prior to do.

All I'm saying is I feel neither option really has a chance of working, I'm not saying I agree with either.

[Flatpackhamster]

Ok, put it this way. You are told to not have kids. Would the average person be annoyed at this? Yes. You are encouraged through various means to eat one less meat meal per week. If even 50% of the population do this, that is 1/14th of the world's meat intake gone.

The latter is a LOT easier than the prior to do.

The argument that it takes an awful lot more land to produce meat than crops is a popular one with vegans, who all live in urban areas and shop in supermarkets and who assume that all land is equally productive and all land can be used to grow crops. It is a nonsense argument as five minutes spent with a farmer will clarify.

[Flatpackhamster]

Has anyone out there stopped to think that we work, or have worked, in the one industry that's been responsible for putting more people out of work and removing more jobs from the 'market', than any other industry in history?

I'm afraid that isn't the case. New jobs have come along to replace those old jobs. IT jobs, for example. Assembly work for computers. Servicing. Women who once could only get work as secretaries to men are now starting their own businesses (a majority of SMEs are now run by women). IT means that someone can be self-employed, run their own diary, handle their own phone calls on the move, etc etc.

Wake up, folks, smell the bacon sarnies, look out the window.......and realise that there will never be enough paid employment to go round anymore, not unless we drastically shorten the working-life of every employed individual, enforced retirement at 45-50, something like that.

Read Alvin Toffler's 'The Third Wave', he predicted exactly this situation back in the 80's.

There is plenty of paid employment. What there is in the UK is an active disincentive to hire, a dislike of unskilled British workers and an active disincentive to work. The disincentive to hire is the cost of employing people - Employer's NI, and the difficulty of firing incompetent staff. The dislike of unskilled British workers is a direct result of the dismal all-must-have-prizes education system, and the benefits system provides an active disincentive to work.

[jamesb]

What other industry has wiped out more jobs? Or even on a similar scale? It continues to wipe out jobs as computers are able to do more and more.

The spinning Jenny?

The combine harvester put farm-hands out of work, but it stopped there, it didn't put road-sweepers out of work, or lighthouse-men. Computers are still finding their way into every area of work and wipe out most jobs where they can be used, instead of using people.

No - road sweepers were put out of work by road-sweeping machines that mean one person can do the job of twenty. We make tools to free up people from having to do unskilled labour - the problem (depending on your point of view) is that then people are required to know how to do more skilled tasks in order to continue working.

As an absolute number yes, we probably do have more people out of work now than ever before. However as a percentage of the population it's halved from 1985 - 2008. Admittedly there was a rise in 2009, and it's probably going to increase more, but that's not the fault of computing.

Deny it if you will, say I'm wrong if you will, have the last word/post, if you must.

Thank you. You're wrong. Look at the numbers.

But I'm right.

No, you're not.

Yes and no. Yes, it is concentrated, no it doesn't give you the same energy as the plants that were used to produce it. ie. 10 tonnes of grain to make 1 tonne of beef does not then give the same energy output as eating that 10 tonnes of grain would have.

Someone feeding cows ten tonnes of grain isn't exactly making efficient use of resources. It is difficult to grow any useful or nutritious crops on most grassland, and the actual nutritional value (to humans) of doing so is less than you would receive by letting cattle graze there. Cattle are much more efficient and effective at digesting plant matter, and converting it into energy, and so make a happy medium for us - plus they allow us to use fallow land.

[localzuk]

The argument that it takes an awful lot more land to produce meat than crops is a popular one with vegans, who all live in urban areas and shop in supermarkets and who assume that all land is equally productive and all land can be used to grow crops. It is a nonsense argument as five minutes spent with a farmer will clarify.

Having been having this discussion and having read quite a large number of papers on it I can categorically tell you that you are wrong here. What are cows fed in feed lots in most countries? Maize, and other similar crops. That land that grew the maize could easily grow crops for human consumption.

Then look around the UK at the land used for grazing (we don't make as much use of CAFOs in the UK). Much of it is suitable for growing crops, it is just more profitable to sell meat instead.

Speaking to a farmer isn't a good example of doing research, as you're speaking to a single biased source. Speaking to people who have done PhDs on the subject, or have spent their entire careers looking at farm efficiency etc? Or getting statistics from government departments studying land use etc...

Some figures for you - 70% of grain grown is used to feed feedlot animals. Around 68% of agricultural land is used for livestock pastures. (stats from Chrispeels, M.J.; Sadava, D.E. 1994. "Farming Systems: Development, Productivity, and Sustainability". pp. 25-57 in Plants, Genes, and Agriculture. Jones and Bartlett, Boston, MA.) and the FAO Database 2003.

[jamesb]

Having been having this discussion and having read quite a large number of papers on it I can categorically tell you that you are wrong here. What are cows fed in feed lots in most countries? Maize, and other similar crops. That land that grew the maize could easily grow crops for human consumption.

Then look around the UK at the land used for grazing (we don't make as much use of CAFOs in the UK). Much of it is suitable for growing crops, it is just more profitable to sell meat instead.

There is a definite logical issue here. Meat is sold at a higher price than vegetable matter - granted. However, given the amount that it's claimed that livestock consume in order to produce a small quantity of meat, the cost of all that grain should render that profit minimal. There has to be more to why farmers produce livestock rather than crops than simply profit.

Edit: Fillet steak (most expensive beef) has a maximum wholesale price of £50/kg. The cheapest wholesale price for grain I could find works out about £0.36/kg. Now, there's obviously a massively higher profit to be made there (assuming of course that your cow only produces fillet steak, and there's no wastage whatsoever) but there's a bit more to it. Looking at rough figures you can produce 10 tonnes of grain from a hectare of land, which according to the vegan argument can also produce 9 pounds of meat. Something definitely seems to be off about the profit argument.

[localzuk]

[QUOTE=jamesb;749114]

Having been having this discussion and having read quite a large number of papers on it I can categorically tell you that you are wrong here. What are cows fed in feed lots in most countries? Maize, and other similar crops. That land that grew the maize could easily grow crops for human consumption.

Then look around the UK at the land used for grazing (we don't make as much use of CAFOs in the UK). Much of it is suitable for growing crops, it is just more profitable to sell meat instead.[/quoteE]

There is a definite logical issue here. Meat is sold at a higher price than vegetable matter - granted. However, given the amount that it's claimed that livestock consume in order to produce a small quantity of meat, the cost of all that grain should render that profit minimal. There has to be more to why farmers produce livestock rather than crops than simply profit.

Grain costs very little to produce in comparison to meat. The US beef market was worth $30bn in 2009, compared to the wheat market at $8.4bn. The maize market over there was worth $28bn, however the key thing to take into account there is that maize is heavily subsidised. About $6bn comes from the US govt and goes to maize/ethanol fuel production, and more on top of that for normal maize corn growth. One study put US subsidies at around 62% of all income - and beef farming itself is not subsidised at all.

[Flatpackhamster]

Having been having this discussion and having read quite a large number of papers on it I can categorically tell you that you are wrong here. What are cows fed in feed lots in most countries? Maize, and other similar crops. That land that grew the maize could easily grow crops for human consumption.

Could it? When did you become an expert on what grows on soils and drainage?

Then look around the UK at the land used for grazing (we don't make as much use of CAFOs in the UK). Much of it is suitable for growing crops, it is just more profitable to sell meat instead.

I do. I can see, for example, that the chalk downland around here which has about 3" of soil is only suitable for sheep grazing. Talk to Welsh hill farmers about how foolish they are and how Snowdon should be used for cabbages. They'll laugh in your face, and rightly so.

Speaking to a farmer isn't a good example of doing research, as you're speaking to a single biased source. Speaking to people who have done PhDs on the subject, or have spent their entire careers looking at farm efficiency etc? Or getting statistics from government departments studying land use etc...

Oh, definitely. It's not worth talking to the people on the ground who just spend their lives working the soil, best have a conference somewhere warm and write some papers on the subject.

[Flatpackhamster]

Incidentally, I'm fairly certain that the product in feed lots isn't 'big pieces of corn which humans could eat', but is the rendered byproduct of the inedible (to humans) part after the edible (to humans) part has been sent off for processing in to high fructose corn syrup or something ghastly.

[RingOfFlame]

wow and people say I take threads of topic! From benefits to vegetarians will save the planet. I do not know about you lot bit if I eat to much veg I can become rather windy Just imagine the methane cloud all those vegetarians are going to create! Not going to do our climate much good. Although some might even find the energy to waft it away.

[nephilim]

You know I was thinking the same thing @RingOfFlame ....

[witch]

Actually, it is cows producing methane you need to be worried about:

Are cows the cause of global warming?

A cow does on overage release between 70 and 120 kg of Methane per year. Methane is a greenhouse gas like carbon dioxide (CO2). But the negative effect on the climate of Methane is 23 times higher than the effect of CO2. Therefore the release of about 100 kg Methane per year for each cow is equivalent to about 2'300 kg CO2 per year.
World-wide, there are about 1.5 billion cows and bulls. All ruminants (animals which regurgitates food and re-chews it) on the world emit about two billion metric tons of CO2-equivalents per year. In addition, clearing of tropical forests and rain forests to get more grazing land and farm land is responsible for an extra 2.8 billion metric tons of CO2 emission per year!

[bossman]

@nephilim:

OOps! thanked you with the wrong account hehe! ;-)

Totally empathise with you on the TV program which showed the 2 smack-heads (You could see the pair of them, gaunt, thin and undernourished looking) with 3 children in tow (poor little souls) and another 2 on the way.

New legislation has to be brought in to stop people using children to enhance financial gain, it should be like this:

1st child receives child allowance
2nd child receives half the child allowance
3rd child and any other child thereafter is taxed off the child allowance from the first 2

How many would have large families then once the carrot had been taken away? (not many if any is my guess).

Also to stem the teenage pregnancies by at least 80%:

Stop giving them paid for accommodation and benefits (give them vouchers to spend in certain shops) and their parents or immediate families look after them (How many young women would then have the child in the first place or even become pregnant)

Those other 20% who end up getting pregnant would have to name the father and he should be either jailed if he cannot afford to pay or made to work to pay doing whatever low grade job that no one else would do. (How many young men would then not take precautions)

Draconian measures instead of throwing money at them would have results guaranteed!!

An American congressman likened the work-shy takers to wild animals in a speech to the senate saying that if you them free food then what is the first thing that they will do? the answer he stated was this "They will breed" he said, now how true this is (the wild animals part) I don't know but I do know that some people in this country see having a large family as a free meal ticket for life and then complain about it not being enough!.

Well I say as a hard working taxpayer "Enough! is Enough!" its time to get tough with people who think and act this way.

I empathise with those people who are in genuine need of help but it seems that most of these don't get what they deserve as the fraudsters take the lions share of the benefits and more if they can get it, then work on the fiddle to gain more unbelievable but true.

I voted for this government because they promised to get tough on these scrounging fraudsters (I await the outcome of the latest round of benefit changes) my next vote and I fear lots more taxpayer votes will hinge on how this government deals with benefit fraud.

Rant over

[pcstru]

@nephilim:
they promised to get tough on these scrounging fraudsters (I await the outcome of the latest round of benefit changes) my next vote and I fear lots more taxpayer votes will hinge on how this government deals with benefit fraud.

Of course they did. The 1.5 billion lost through benefit fraud is certainly not to be sniffed at and a with just a few newspaper articles or TV spots on Sky it certainly keeps people nicely distracted from the 15 billion George Osborne's chums deprive the exchequer of every year with their nice little tax 'loopholes'. But I'm surprised anyone has a critical eye for anything outside the city of London when it comes to people who have cost us real money. All the unemployed would need to be given mansions, butlers and chauffeur driven Ferraris for all 6 of their kids before they began to make inroads into the problems that have been caused by people who a year after being bailed out by the taxpayers, were awarding themselves billions in bonus payments for a job well done.

So yes, benefits cheats. Absolutely terrible - something really must be done.

[localzuk]

Could it? When did you become an expert on what grows on soils and drainage?

So, if land is growing maize, it can't possibly grow anything else? You know how preposterous that sounds?

I do. I can see, for example, that the chalk downland around here which has about 3" of soil is only suitable for sheep grazing. Talk to Welsh hill farmers about how foolish they are and how Snowdon should be used for cabbages. They'll laugh in your face, and rightly so.

Well done, you've managed to choose small scale thinking as your method of argument. Those areas of land do not make up the majority of land in use for agriculture. Stop thinking 'this bit of land here is basically sheet rock, it ain't any good for farming' and start thinking that 29% of the planet is land. Sure, a good amount of that is unsuitable for some produce or other, but to say that crop farming is not possible on all that land that is used for animals? That's ridiculous to the extreme.

Oh, definitely. It's not worth talking to the people on the ground who just spend their lives working the soil, best have a conference somewhere warm and write some papers on the subject.

OK. Now I know you're just being a troll. You do realise that a farmer will have experience of his land, his crops and his animals. So, they are NOT an expert on farming in general. They are not an expert on getting the most out of the world's land. No, people that spend their lives studying worldwide farming techniques, land use and the like are experts on this sort of thing.

Your argument is like saying that because I work on the ground in a school doing IT, I therefore should be in charge of IT globally, and know everything there is to know about IT...

Actually, it is cows producing methane you need to be worried about:

Are cows the cause of global warming?
A cow does on overage release between 70 and 120 kg of Methane per year. Methane is a greenhouse gas like carbon dioxide (CO2). But the negative effect on the climate of Methane is 23 times higher than the effect of CO2. Therefore the release of about 100 kg Methane per year for each cow is equivalent to about 2'300 kg CO2 per year.
World-wide, there are about 1.5 billion cows and bulls. All ruminants (animals which regurgitates food and re-chews it) on the world emit about two billion metric tons of CO2-equivalents per year. In addition, clearing of tropical forests and rain forests to get more grazing land and farm land is responsible for an extra 2.8 billion metric tons of CO2 emission per year!

And to put that into perspective, worldwide CO2 production from motor vehicles is around 900 million metric tonnes per year, according to 'World Population Prospects 1950-2050 (The 1996 Revision), on diskette (U.N., New York, 1996).'