Is Farming the New Black?

[dcarrigg]

Re: Is Farming the New Black?

Maybe I should have been more clear, but my "moralizing" relates to people spending food stamp money. Which is NOT their money in any normal sense. That was the whole point, that people getting these subsidies were not eating healthy stews they were eating junk.

Let's be honest, this whole "calories per dollar" thing is a half truth at best:

First, as shiny! points out, many people are fat but have poor nutrition. Meaning they are eating too many calories and not enough nutrient rich food.
Second, this implies that people are actually reading labels and doing the math to figure out calories per dollar. I bet many people on food stamps couldn't answer the math question of calories per dollar even if they tried. Half the cashiers at Walmart can't even figure out correct change if the power goes out. And that's just subtraction.
Third, if they were actually maximizing calories per dollar there are better ways to do it. A bag of rice or a jar of peanut butter has more calories per dollar. It's cheaper and healthier to eat PB&J.
Fourth, the real reason is obvious. These foods are convenient and scientifically engineered to be delicious.
Bonus: How many calories are in cigarettes and lottery tickets?

I really don't care what free individuals do with THEIR money. This is about people using my money to buy food, live a ridiculous and unhealthy lifestyle and then also expect me to pay for medical care when the extra 100 pounds wears out their body. Is that really so Puritanical?

BTW, I'm really not some evil person that hates the poor. I just think we have a terrible system that doesn't generally help people. It just keeps people poor and dependent forever. If we are going to do food stamps I'd at least prefer the WIC system where there are certain approved items that don't include 2 liters of coke.

It just seems to me to be a double-edged opinion. You get to judge other people's personal choices and want government to dictate what they should and should not consume. But you want government out of people's lives. I guess maybe you just want welfare gone entirely.

I suppose I could as easily take the view that there is a moral responsibility of those with more money to help out those with less. How is this any different from you taking the view that there's a moral responsibility to force people to buy healthy food? Either way, it's a moral view and a judgement of behavior.

You probably pay about 1/100,000,000th of a cent in taxes for a 2 liter soda. Feel free to demand "your" money back next time you see this behavior. But Congress looked into banning junk food and soda. In the end, the cost estimates of running a bureaucracy and enforcing sales of a list of eligible items were deemed too expensive to be worthwhile. But cigarettes, paper towels, or lottery tickets are not eligible items.

[lektrode]

Re: Is Farming the New Black?

It just seems to me to be a double-edged opinion.....

. But cigarettes, paper towels, or lottery tickets are not eligible items.

would have to agree there, dc.

however, while some stuff isnt 'eligible' for snap/ebt - my observation has been that apparently all sorts of other stuff IS ?
and i'm talking about 'livin high on the hog' stuff like: expensive cuts of meat, fish ($20+/lb like ahi) prepared fish dishes (poke, sashimi) soda/sweet junkfood bev's, all manner of takeout (eye see 'EBT accepted here' signs on plate lunch joints)????

stuff that those of us who DONT qualify for these bene's would/might otherwise think twice/3rd time about buying, while we get to watch em heap their shopping carts full of, every 3rd & 5th of the month.... (never mind wheel it all out to the parking lot and load it into their FULL size late model SUV's with the $3500 wheels/tires and custom exhaust pkgs...)

just sayin.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Is Farming the New Black?

would have to agree there, dc.

however, while some stuff isnt 'eligible' for snap/ebt - my observation has been that apparently all sorts of other stuff IS ?
and i'm talking about 'livin high on the hog' stuff like: expensive cuts of meat, fish ($20+/lb like ahi) prepared fish dishes (poke, sashimi) soda/sweet junkfood bev's, all manner of takeout (eye see 'EBT accepted here' signs on plate lunch joints)????

stuff that those of us who DONT qualify for these bene's would/might otherwise think twice/3rd time about buying, while we get to watch em heap their shopping carts full of, every 3rd & 5th of the month.... (never mind wheel it all out to the parking lot and load it into their FULL size late model SUV's with the $3500 wheels/tires and custom exhaust pkgs...)

just sayin.

I've had my own personal anecdotes. I've seen at least a couple recent college grad / under-employed hipsters buying fancy things at Wholefoods with the gubmint card. It bothers me too. That's about the most natural thing ever for Americans. We have always been a nation of Puritans, fire, brimstone, and witch trials after all.

It's just a question of whether it actually saves money to hire a bureaucracy whose job it is to stop the hipster from buying Boursin and filet minion with food stamps and sneaking back onto the ol' college campus to score free pizza for the rest of the week, or whether letting some of the abusers go is cheaper than policing them. It's just a matter of cost/benefit.

I don't take objection to the conservative stand against these programs. It is consistent. Conservatives never claimed not to be moralizing. Nor did liberals for that matter.

[reggie]

Re: Is Farming the New Black?

Score one for reggie's thesis:


http://www.discourse.net/2013/09/enc...y-is-falliing/

Nice find. Interesting blog. I'll have to add to my reading list.

[reggie]

Re: Is Farming the New Black?

That's because there's a big pile of venture capital money that's been deployed to rent out $100 bicycles for $8 a day.

I understand this, but why????

VC money is just a lever. Why deploy it in this fashion... for this purpose?

[lektrode]

Re: Is Farming the New Black?

I've had my own personal anecdotes. I've seen at least a couple recent college grad / under-employed hipsters buying fancy things at Wholefoods with the gubmint card.

and we wont even get into the 'baby factories' who krank em out because the larger the numbers, the bigger the payouts - meanwhile they feed their kids the junkiest of junkfoods (ramen, hotdogs/spam and soda) while they gorge on the sashimi/poke (at 10-15-20bux/lb)

It bothers me too. That's about the most natural thing ever for Americans. We have always been a nation of Puritans, fire, brimstone, and witch trials after all.

It's just a question of whether it actually saves money to hire a bureaucracy whose job it is to stop the hipster from buying Boursin and filet minion with food stamps and sneaking back onto the ol' college campus to score free pizza for the rest of the week, or whether letting some of the abusers go is cheaper than policing them. It's just a matter of cost/benefit.

I don't take objection to the conservative stand against these programs. It is consistent. Conservatives never claimed not to be moralizing. Nor did liberals for that matter.

why would it be necessary to hire a(nother) buracracy ??

you cant seriously believe that existing technology couldnt be used to prevent the use of snap/ebt to purchase what a lot of/most people would consider 'luxury' food items, if not downright superfluous/non-nutrional stuff (like junk-snacks, soda/sweet junkjuice, never mind bottled/flavored 'vitamin' water)

the other SCAM is when they use the ebt to buy stuff they then return and because its apparently not possible to credit-back to the users ebt account, the supermarkets issue return-for-credits in CASH - or buying stuff for friends that is then sold to em for cash

have seen/heard about it all.

the only bigger scam is the ones the supermarkets themselves pull (out this way): 'regular' price most stuff thru the roof and then put the stuff they want to get rid of 'on sale' the weeks that the ebt accounts get recharged - then, after all the ebt money is gone (about 1/2way thru the month, after gorging the 1st couple weeks) - they put the good stuff on sale...

i could give you all kinds of anecdotal stuff, but i'm sure you've seen/heard about it all, too.

i dont have any problem with those down on their luck, jobless etc - but i do get a bit less than charitable with the 'baby factories' - esp when i see the vehicles (all tricked out) that they parade around in (vs my 20yo chevy) and the 'high on the hog' stuff the haul home (to their sect8 houses) - and remember the survey sometime last year, about how many people could come up with 1000bux in cash the next day if they had to?

wasnt many - and show me somebody who goes to a 7-11 (who also 'accepts' ebt) more than a couple3x/month and i'll show you somebody who _cant_ come up with a grand if they have to.

i _might_ go into a 7-11 or similar once or twice a month - but it wouldnt be even 15x/year - why?

because I CANT AFFORD IT - so how is it these people can?

[dcarrigg]

Re: Is Farming the New Black?

and we wont even get into the 'baby factories' who krank em out because the larger the numbers, the bigger the payouts - meanwhile they feed their kids the junkiest of junkfoods (ramen, hotdogs/spam and soda) while they gorge on the sashimi/poke (at 10-15-20bux/lb)




why would it be necessary to hire a(nother) buracracy ??

you cant seriously believe that existing technology couldnt be used to prevent the use of snap/ebt to purchase what a lot of/most people would consider 'luxury' food items, if not downright superfluous/non-nutrional stuff (like junk-snacks, soda/sweet junkjuice, never mind bottled/flavored 'vitamin' water)

the other SCAM is when they use the ebt to buy stuff they then return and because its apparently not possible to credit-back to the users ebt account, the supermarkets issue return-for-credits in CASH - or buying stuff for friends that is then sold to em for cash

have seen/heard about it all.

the only bigger scam is the ones the supermarkets themselves pull (out this way): 'regular' price most stuff thru the roof and then put the stuff they want to get rid of 'on sale' the weeks that the ebt accounts get recharged - then, after all the ebt money is gone (about 1/2way thru the month, after gorging the 1st couple weeks) - they put the good stuff on sale...

i could give you all kinds of anecdotal stuff, but i'm sure you've seen/heard about it all, too.

i dont have any problem with those down on their luck, jobless etc - but i do get a bit less than charitable with the 'baby factories' - esp when i see the vehicles (all tricked out) that they parade around in (vs my 20yo chevy) and the 'high on the hog' stuff the haul home (to their sect8 houses) - and remember the survey sometime last year, about how many people could come up with 1000bux in cash the next day if they had to?

wasnt many - and show me somebody who goes to a 7-11 (who also 'accepts' ebt) more than a couple3x/month and i'll show you somebody who _cant_ come up with a grand if they have to.

i _might_ go into a 7-11 or similar once or twice a month - but it wouldnt be even 15x/year - why?

because I CANT AFFORD IT - so how is it these people can?

I think it's mostly because they can't afford a car. So 7-11 is in the neighborhood. And that's where people go. It'd be easy to ID junk food if the gov would give a definition of junk food. But you can imagine the bureaucracy that would be needed. Scientific proof to claim what's junk and what's not. Clear definitions. Lobbyists from Frito-Lay. The whole bit. It'd be a blood bath on the hill. And anyone who started it would get the same flack that Bloomberg got with his "no large sodas" plan. I still think Bloomberg was a control freak for that. And I think that a small bag of chips is fine for one person and bad for another. Is hummus good? Or bad? Is turkey pepperoni good? Or bad? Is deli ham good? Or bad? Is german potato salad good? Or bad? How about mac'n'cheese? Clearly it's devoid of nutritional value and high calorie. But how much cheaper can you feed a family? I honestly don't think these are easy decisions to make. Especially when the metrics are not so clear.

[lektrode]

Re: Is Farming the New Black?

I think it's mostly because they can't afford a car. So 7-11 is in the neighborhood. And that's where people go.

while thats a somewhat valid point, i'd also say that its a function of laziness (not an uncommon trait amongst some of the aforementioned) - but i lived in an inner-city/urban environment - the north end of beantowne - and got by just fine without a car - and even with a 7-11 right around the corner from me, always managed to get the vast majority of my groceries without ever 'needing' to goto the _convenience_ stores - either by walking to the neighborhood green grocers, meat guys, or over to the haymarket and hey! - rode my bike when it was necessary to goto the stop n shop the other side of kenmore or over to charlestown - so its not like people HAVE to shop where stuff costs A LOT MORE, just because they dont have a car, ya know?

altho i also realize that not every innercity area is as convenient as intown beantowne is, you get my point, eh dc?

its also why i'm of the opinion that damn few (under the age of 62 anyway) should be 'eligible' to sit around on their fat asses watchin daytime tv (and krankin out babies) when they could be doing _something_ to earn their snap/ebt/sec8 - but i'll leave that for another rant.
;)

It'd be easy to ID junk food if the gov would give a definition of junk food. But you can imagine the bureaucracy that would be needed. Scientific proof to claim what's junk and what's not. Clear definitions. Lobbyists from Frito-Lay. The whole bit. It'd be a blood bath on the hill. And anyone who started it would get the same flack that Bloomberg got with his "no large sodas" plan. I still think Bloomberg was a control freak for that. And I think that a small bag of chips is fine for one person and bad for another. Is hummus good? Or bad? Is turkey pepperoni good? Or bad? Is deli ham good? Or bad? Is german potato salad good? Or bad? How about mac'n'cheese? Clearly it's devoid of nutritional value and high calorie. But how much cheaper can you feed a family? I honestly don't think these are easy decisions to make. Especially when the metrics are not so clear.

again - without intending to label you with this - but this is just more liberal/welfare-statist apologism - the solution to that contrived dilema is to simply use the same definition of what is or isnt 'junkfood' as is already being used to define it for the purpose(s) of the federally funded school lunch (and now breakfast, soon to be dinners??) programs.

then, with this already very well defined (never mind argued-about for decades now) set of 'guidelines' - simply program the 'cash' registers to reject anything that doesnt conform to the guidelines - they DONT serve filet mignon (or ahi sashimi) in school lunches, so why should it be 'eligible' for snap? - and with the database technologies and computing power available today (see NSA capabilities) - why should this be a 'problem' (for anybody other than the welfare-statist activists and their apologists/lobby-industrial complex)

but again, for the record, i dont have any problem with the costs of the social safety net, nor working people who have been discarded like so much trash from corporate amerika, when they finally have no choice but to apply for/collect the benefits that they/we have paid for in advance - illegal immigrants aside, of course.

without even considering that the social safety net is likely the ONLY thing preventing riots in the streets these daze.

and just soz ya know where i'm comin from - i even agree with (most of) krugman's latest - primarily his last sentence here

Obviously, the Obama people are less wrong than the Republicans. But, by any objective standard, U.S. economic policy since Lehman has been an astonishing, horrifying failure.

but too bad it was mostly his political bunch and their policies that resulted in his buddies there in lower manhattan riding off into the sunset with TRILLIONS in bernanke bux that has resulted in this same failure (to effectively 'prime the pump') - and we wont even get into their biggest failure of them all: aka THE BIGGEST 'inside job' of them all

that is, aside from - you know - the abject failure to "pivot to jobs" and the latest excuse over there in syria (which is looking more and more like john F(raud)'s move to upstage hilary for 2016.... but thats another rant entirely... ;)

[DSpencer]

Re: Is Farming the New Black?

It just seems to me to be a double-edged opinion. You get to judge other people's personal choices and want government to dictate what they should and should not consume. But you want government out of people's lives. I guess maybe you just want welfare gone entirely.

I suppose I could as easily take the view that there is a moral responsibility of those with more money to help out those with less. How is this any different from you taking the view that there's a moral responsibility to force people to buy healthy food? Either way, it's a moral view and a judgement of behavior.

You probably pay about 1/100,000,000th of a cent in taxes for a 2 liter soda. Feel free to demand "your" money back next time you see this behavior. But Congress looked into banning junk food and soda. In the end, the cost estimates of running a bureaucracy and enforcing sales of a list of eligible items were deemed too expensive to be worthwhile. But cigarettes, paper towels, or lottery tickets are not eligible items.

Generally I do want to get government out of people's lives, but if it's going to be there I'd at least like it to make sense. This is not a Bloomberg situation where I'm advocating to ban unhealthy foods. There is a huge difference though when it comes to how taxpayer money is being spent. This isn't about morality and judgment of behavior. This is a practical matter. Taxpayers have to pay for their food and for the medical care required as a result of their poor food choices.

I realize cigarettes aren't covered, that's why people on food stamps frequently have 2 orders: one for allowed items and another cash order for a carton of cigarettes, case of beer etc. How hard is it to add soda to the list of non eligible items? Why does that require any additional bureaucracy? The real problem is more likely that soda companies make $4 Billion from food stamps each year. Speaking of soda and calories per dollar: why should a program designed to feed the hungry pay for diet, zero calories, soft drinks?

I don't understand why it's relevant that my tax dollars are spread over a huge number of people and transactions. If I gave 1 cent per year to every person on food stamps that would cost me over $400,000 per year. So what's the point? It doesn't mean I pay any less in taxes just because there are many recipients and other people paying taxes. By this kind of logic nobody should ever complain about government spending because for each government purchase they are only covering a tiny fraction personally. That's just nonsense.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Is Farming the New Black?

Generally I do want to get government out of people's lives, but if it's going to be there I'd at least like it to make sense. This is not a Bloomberg situation where I'm advocating to ban unhealthy foods. There is a huge difference though when it comes to how taxpayer money is being spent. This isn't about morality and judgment of behavior. This is a practical matter. Taxpayers have to pay for their food and for the medical care required as a result of their poor food choices.

I realize cigarettes aren't covered, that's why people on food stamps frequently have 2 orders: one for allowed items and another cash order for a carton of cigarettes, case of beer etc. How hard is it to add soda to the list of non eligible items? Why does that require any additional bureaucracy? The real problem is more likely that soda companies make $4 Billion from food stamps each year. Speaking of soda and calories per dollar: why should a program designed to feed the hungry pay for diet, zero calories, soft drinks?

I don't understand why it's relevant that my tax dollars are spread over a huge number of people and transactions. If I gave 1 cent per year to every person on food stamps that would cost me over $400,000 per year. So what's the point? It doesn't mean I pay any less in taxes just because there are many recipients and other people paying taxes. By this kind of logic nobody should ever complain about government spending because for each government purchase they are only covering a tiny fraction personally. That's just nonsense.

Why can't you just admit you are moralizing?

It doesn't matter how many times you say "my" or "me" or "mine." In the end, for an individual to make a decision on what to buy, there is none of your money on the table. Now there are some of uncle sam's dollars. But they're not yours. They're all of ours. And even if we hired a million accountants to track every hundred-millionth of a cent through multiple transactions, I'd doubt we'd be able to link more than a penny of your lifetime taxes due to a soda purchase with a WIC card.

So, in the end, you are doing exactly what Bloomberg does.

You are using your personal moral views to dictate what other people should or should not be allowed to do regarding food purchases.

And that's fine. Just admit you're taking a moral stand here.

Even if functionally zero dollars of "your money" goes into their individual decisions, you justify stripping away individuals' personal liberty to choose what to eat, smoke, drink, or do on an everyday basis by claiming that "it's my money."

Well, some of it's "my" money too. And I say let people buy what they want. Especially if it would cost "me" more money to have the government police and account for every ding-dong and twinkie and ho-ho and Mountain Dew on the shelf.

Or would you rather tax dollars go to pay $200 per hour for a lawyer to fight a lawsuit that says Twizzlers are healthy because they're made of whole-grain wheat?

I don't see why Uncle Sam should police what other people eat and how other people behave to "your" personal moral standards.

[don]

Re: Is Farming the Old Black?

Leaving the Land

Picking Death Over Eviction



Every night for the past eight months, residents have formed a ring around Zhuguosi, a rural village in southwestern China, to prevent demolition crews from destroying it.

By IAN JOHNSON

As she drove down a busy four-lane road near her old home, Tang Huiqing pointed to the property where her dead sister’s workshop once stood. The lot was desolate, but for Ms. Tang it lives.

Four years ago, government officials told her sister that Chengdu was expanding into the countryside and that her village had to make way. A farmer who had made the transition to manufacturer, she had built the small workspace with her husband. Now, officials said, it would be torn down.

“So my sister went up to the roof and said, ‘If you want to, tear it down,’ ” Ms. Tang said.

Her voice trailed off as she recalled how her sister poured diesel fuel on herself and after pleading with the demolition crew to leave, set herself alight. She died 16 days later.

Over the past five years, at least 39 farmers have resorted to this drastic form of protest. The figures, pieced together from Chinese news reports and human rights organizations, are a stark reminder of how China’s new wave of urbanization is at times a violent struggle between a powerful state and stubborn farmers — a top-down project that is different from the largely voluntary migration of farmers to cities during the 1980s, ’90s and 2000s.

Besides the self-immolations, farmers have killed themselves by other means to protest land expropriation. One Chinese nongovernmental organization, the Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch, reported that in addition to 6 self-immolations last year, 15 other farmers killed themselves. Others die when they refuse to leave their property: last year, a farmer in the southern city of Changsha who would not yield was run over by a steamroller, and last month, a 4-year-old girl in Fujian Province was struck and killed by a bulldozer while her family tried to stop an attempt to take their land.

Amid the turmoil, the government is debating new policies to promote urbanization. A plan to speed up urbanization was supposed to have been unveiled earlier this year, but it has been delayed over concerns that the move to cities is already stoking social tensions. New measures are also being contemplated to increase rural residents’ property rights.

In the past, many farmers chose to leave their land for better-paying jobs in the city. Many still do, but farmers are increasingly thrown off their land by officials eager to find new sources of economic growth. The tensions are especially acute on the edge of big Chinese cities. After having torn down the historic centers of most Chinese cities and sold the land to developers, officials now target the rural areas on the outskirts of cities like Chengdu.

But such plans are opposed by local farmers. Many do not want to leave the land, believing they can earn more in agriculture than in factory work. Farmers on the outskirts of Chengdu, near the workshop where Tang Fuzhen committed suicide, say they can easily earn several hundred dollars a month, pay that dwarfs government compensation offers. Others, like Ms. Tang, have already made the leap from agriculture to industry.

A Village vs. Demolition Crews

A mile north of Ms. Tang’s demolished workshop is the village of Zhuguosi, whose residents have been involved in tense standoffs with the police since 2010. The village is to be torn down for Chengdu’s New Financial City. The district abuts the city’s extravagant new government complex, which has buildings modeled on Hong Kong’s waterfront exhibition center and the Beijing Olympic stadium known as the Bird’s Nest.

Every night now for the past eight months, residents have formed a ring around their village to prevent demolition crews from destroying it. Some of the houses have been torn down, but others remain, and cows still graze the fertile land — a surreal sight with the new city government buildings in the background.

“If we don’t oppose this, then we don’t have anything,” said Han Liang, a 31-year-old who is one of 80 to 90 villagers who keep watch each night. “We have lost our land.”

As in other land expropriation cases around Chengdu, government officials declined to comment. But according to deeds and correspondence provided by the villagers, most were offered compensation of roughly $1,500 per mu (one-sixth of an acre) — inadequate, in their view, because the payments amount to only what they earn in a couple of years.

While none of the residents of Zhuguosi have committed suicide, they have faced off with the authorities. The police have encircled villagers and carried them off, and photographs indicate that some have been beaten.

According to the Tianwang Web site, which monitors grass-roots protests, Chengdu routinely has several violent confrontations on its outskirts each day. Nationally, China has tens of thousands of similar conflicts a year, according to government estimates.

An Ancient Form of Dissent

The suicides, while not numerous relative to the overall population, represent the outrage that many farmers feel when their land is taken away. Suicide has been used as a form of political protest in China since at least the third century B.C., when the poet and statesman Qu Yuan drowned himself. Self-immolations have historically been practiced more by Buddhist and Daoist clergy members, and imitated by other people as a form of protest.



“It fits in with the historical pattern,” said Dr. Michael R. Phillips, director of the Shanghai Suicide Research and Prevention Center and professor of psychiatry at Emory University. “It’s a lever to change the behavior of powerful people who you don’t have influence over.”

The deaths come even as suicides in China are declining. After being among the highest in the world, rates have dropped 50 percent over the past 20 years, according to epidemiological studies.

Most of these rural self-immolations take place outside the public eye. Ms. Tang’s suicide was initially covered in the local news media and on the Web, but reporters were later barred from talking to the Tang family, journalists and family members say. Other families say that even local Chinese news media were often blocked by plainclothes police officers from entering their homes to conduct interviews.

That contrasts sharply with the government’s efforts to publicize self-immolations by Tibetans protesting Chinese rule of their region and to prosecute people accused of helping the protesters.

“It is striking how differently the two are treated,” said Corinna-Barbara Francis, a China researcher for Amnesty International. “They are trying to cover up the issue in the countryside.”

That may be because the government cannot claim, as it does with the Tibetans, that foreign forces are behind the suicides. Instead, government policies seem to be the cause of the tens of thousands of episodes of unrest recorded by the government each year. Exact statistics are not available, but Chinese researchers estimated that in 2010 the country had 180,000 protests, with the majority related to land disputes.

An analysis of the suicides shows that many of those who took their lives, like Ms. Tang, tasted prosperity and were incensed that it was being taken from them. According to relatives and neighbors, the Chengdu city government had offered Ms. Tang 800,000 renminbi, or about $131,000 at current exchange rates, for her workshop. Given that commercial property in the same district sells for 20 to 30 times that amount, Ms. Tang was unwilling to sell.

The exact financial details of her garment business are unclear. Ms. Tang and her husband ran the business together, and after her death he left Chengdu. But her sister estimates that Ms. Tang spent more than the government’s offer on fixed assets alone, like equipment and lighting.

“The government said it needed the land to widen the road, but we didn’t think they’d tear down the building,” said Ms. Tang’s sister, Tang Huiqing.

A Workshop Under Siege

After months of negotiations, Tang Huiqing said she was feeding her 8-month-old grandchild at 5 a.m. on Nov. 13, 2009, when men dressed in camouflage and carrying metal rods surrounded her sister’s workshop. Family members quickly arrived to defend it. The men and the family members began quarreling, and one of Ms. Tang’s brothers was beaten and suffered a broken rib, according to family members and a report on the compensation that he later received from the city.

Ms. Tang retreated to the roof and shouted down at the men, according to her sister, who watched the events unfold.
“When she was on the roof she heard us being beaten,” Tang Huiqing said. “She called out, ‘Brother, sister, are you being beaten to death?’ She didn’t get an answer. She said for everyone to stop, for everyone to sit down and consult and negotiate. But no one listened to her.”

Then she doused herself and set herself on fire, an event captured by onlookers’ cellphones. A few days later the workshop was torn down and family members received compensation for injuries.

The impact of these suicides is impossible to measure, and there is scant evidence that the officials responsible for the land expropriations in these cases have been punished.

One of China’s leading newspapers, Southern Weekend, analyzed eight cases from 2008 to 2010 and found that in all instances the officials responsible were still in their posts. Certainly, the deaths continue today. The most recent self-immolation was of Hu Tengping of Zhoukeng, a village in Jiangxi Province.

Mr. Hu, who worked as a migrant laborer in Changsha, returned home for the Chinese New Year this year to find that his home had been torn down for an undisclosed development. Later that same day he went to the Communist Party offices and set himself on fire. According to relatives, the family was never able to recover Mr. Hu’s corpse.

“There is no one helping us,” said Mr. Hu’s sister, who asked that her name not be used for fear of retaliation. “There’s no justice in the world. There’s no law.”

After Suicides, Some Changes

A national activist who tracks unrest, Huang Qi, said cases like Mr. Hu’s and Ms. Tang’s have spurred the government’s recent crackdown on corruption and forced it to rethink the idea that fast urbanization is the best way to stimulate economic growth. In Chengdu, at least, the party secretary behind the city’s ambitious urbanization drive, Li Chuncheng, was toppled last year, a move that Mr. Huang said was partly caused by unease over the methods used to take land.

Political analysts in Beijing also say that economic reforms that could be unveiled in November would increase compensation for expropriated rural land, while other measures could give farmers more rights to determine how their land is used. Currently, all land is owned by the government, and farmers have only usage rights.

“Li Chuncheng’s problem is mainly due to the efforts of the Chengdu people,” Mr. Huang said. “There have been more protests against land expropriation in this one city than in many provinces. The cases were terrible, but I think they had an effect.”

Tang Huiqing thinks so, too.

“My sister’s sacrifice brought a change,” she said. “Right now they don’t dare tear down so many homes. There’s more consultation. At least here, they don’t tear down as much. Maybe in this village it’s better.”

The effect on her family, however, was grim. The sisters’ mother joined the Communist Party shortly after it took power in 1949, elated at its promise to take land from landlords and redistribute it to poor peasants like the Tang family. Her daughter’s death broke her will to live, and she died a few months later.

“She was heartbroken,” Ms. Tang said. “She couldn’t understand how they could act like this to unarmed, ordinary people.”

Mia Li and Amy Qin contributed research from Beijing. Sim Chi Yin contributed reporting from Chengdu.

[DSpencer]

Re: Is Farming the New Black?

Why can't you just admit you are moralizing?

It doesn't matter how many times you say "my" or "me" or "mine." In the end, for an individual to make a decision on what to buy, there is none of your money on the table. Now there are some of uncle sam's dollars. But they're not yours. They're all of ours. And even if we hired a million accountants to track every hundred-millionth of a cent through multiple transactions, I'd doubt we'd be able to link more than a penny of your lifetime taxes due to a soda purchase with a WIC card.

So, in the end, you are doing exactly what Bloomberg does.

You are using your personal moral views to dictate what other people should or should not be allowed to do regarding food purchases.

And that's fine. Just admit you're taking a moral stand here.

Even if functionally zero dollars of "your money" goes into their individual decisions, you justify stripping away individuals' personal liberty to choose what to eat, smoke, drink, or do on an everyday basis by claiming that "it's my money."

Well, some of it's "my" money too. And I say let people buy what they want. Especially if it would cost "me" more money to have the government police and account for every ding-dong and twinkie and ho-ho and Mountain Dew on the shelf.

Or would you rather tax dollars go to pay $200 per hour for a lawyer to fight a lawsuit that says Twizzlers are healthy because they're made of whole-grain wheat?

I don't see why Uncle Sam should police what other people eat and how other people behave to "your" personal moral standards.

To keep things simple:

1. Whether I'm "moralizing" or not is just an ad hominem distraction.
2. There is a difference between Bloomberg saying "nobody can buy this" and me saying "the government shouldn't spend taxpayer money on this item".
3. It's not "stripping away individual's personal liberty" to not have taxpayers buy people whatever they want. Do you seriously believe that? Does the fact that food stamps don't pay for beer strip away people's liberty? Of course not. (And one could argue that beer is more like food than diet coke)
4. You mention buying soda with a WIC card. I assume you don't realize that WIC does not cover soda? WIC, unlike the SNAP program, already does what I'm saying by limiting its use to items that are generally perceived to be more nutritious and reasonable cost. This raises the question: Do you believe the WIC program has "stripped away individual's personal liberty"? Do you advocate changing WIC so that it works just like SNAP and can be used for anything? That's not a rhetorical question.
5. Uncle Sam shouldn't police what people eat. It should however be intelligent in the way it spends taxpayer money. If not having a government program that pays for people to smoke cigarettes, drink beer and play the lotto is enforcing my (or anyone's) moral standards, then so be it.
6. So the government shouldn't police people's behavior to moral standards? Really? That's like half the point of having a government. If you just mean not to "my" personal moral standards then fine, I don't recall insisting that our system of government should be changed to where I am dictator of America. I'm just voicing my opinion.

[c1ue]

Re: Is Farming the New Black?

I understand this, but why????

VC money is just a lever. Why deploy it in this fashion... for this purpose?

Because your view of what VCs do has nothing in relation to what they actually do.

VCs seek to make money. The better ones seek to also create something in the course of making said money, but in reality there is really only goal.

[Forrest]

Re: Is Farming the New Black?

To keep things simple:

1. Whether I'm "moralizing" or not is just an ad hominem distraction.
2. There is a difference between Bloomberg saying "nobody can buy this" and me saying "the government shouldn't spend taxpayer money on this item".
3. It's not "stripping away individual's personal liberty" to not have taxpayers buy people whatever they want. Do you seriously believe that? Does the fact that food stamps don't pay for beer strip away people's liberty? Of course not. (And one could argue that beer is more like food than diet coke)
4. You mention buying soda with a WIC card. I assume you don't realize that WIC does not cover soda? WIC, unlike the SNAP program, already does what I'm saying by limiting its use to items that are generally perceived to be more nutritious and reasonable cost. This raises the question: Do you believe the WIC program has "stripped away individual's personal liberty"? Do you advocate changing WIC so that it works just like SNAP and can be used for anything? That's not a rhetorical question.
5. Uncle Sam shouldn't police what people eat. It should however be intelligent in the way it spends taxpayer money. If not having a government program that pays for people to smoke cigarettes, drink beer and play the lotto is enforcing my (or anyone's) moral standards, then so be it.
6. So the government shouldn't police people's behavior to moral standards? Really? That's like half the point of having a government. If you just mean not to "my" personal moral standards then fine, I don't recall insisting that our system of government should be changed to where I am dictator of America. I'm just voicing my opinion.

Government exists only to protect the members of the society from threats, and unlawful behavior. They are not supposed to be morality enforcers, merely law enforcers.

If people make dumb morality laws, they can unmake them.

If my forced contribution to others (as opposed to my Tithes and offerings) is not kept to minimally healthy food options, and then I have to pay more forced contributions because the people who needed my tax money ate foolishly, and ruined their bodies, and need extra health care, then I have the right to be a little concerned about it, even if it is a mere penny. This is about principle and law, not scale of personal burden.

[DSpencer]

Re: Is Farming the New Black?

Government exists only to protect the members of the society from threats, and unlawful behavior. They are not supposed to be morality enforcers, merely law enforcers.

If people make dumb morality laws, they can unmake them.

If my forced contribution to others (as opposed to my Tithes and offerings) is not kept to minimally healthy food options, and then I have to pay more forced contributions because the people who needed my tax money ate foolishly, and ruined their bodies, and need extra health care, then I have the right to be a little concerned about it, even if it is a mere penny. This is about principle and law, not scale of personal burden.

Some concept of morality is the driving force behind why most laws exist. Government does not just enforce the laws, it creates them. The basis for creation is typically along the lines of "it's immoral to kill someone, therefore it's illegal".

I agree with your last paragraph, but if the government only forced me to contribute a total of one penny of my earnings, I wouldn't complain.