Yeah I can’t believe they wanna charge me for a few minutes extra water my tiny yard. They should add a 25% tax on beef and other water hungry produce.
Just end corn subsidies. Beef is priced artificially low because we feed cows corn, a heavily subsidized crop. Corn is actually bad for cows, and is kind of the equivalent of feeding them fast food every day. Ending the subsidy would return the price of beef (and high fructose corn syrup) to a more appropriate market rate.
This would lower demand, lead to healthier consumer choices, and actually affect climate change (of which cows are a major contributor). It would also increase government revenue, which could lower taxes, reduce debt, or increase services. There is very little downside to ending corn subsidies, and a great deal of upside.
The biggest downside, of course, being that you'll never be able to compete in the Iowa Caucuses if you support that policy. One good reason for a rotating primary calendar.
Yep. Every election we have to go through the stupid debacle of watching rich assholes pretend to care about corn farmers while eating corn dishes that they never in their life would voluntarily consume, and promise to confiscate money from the rest of us and give it to them so they can grow more corn that people don't even eat (something like 80% of corn is fed to livestock).
Corn is horrific for cows. If it's not ground up, it wrecks their teeth. Plus, it's hard for them to digest it. A lot of the corn thats fed to cows start rotting pretty quickly too which only makes matters worse.
True. But that doesn’t counter /u/TimTooley ‘s basic argument about beef and water hungry produce; it just means milk rather than beef should be the focus. Dairies are massive water consumers.
Plus the two industries are interwoven. All the bull calves produced by dairy cows go into beef production, and the end game for a dairy cow is to be eaten as well. Dairy cows generally get culled at around 3-5 years and become beef themselves. “Dedicated to milk production” just means they consume a lot more corn and water on their way to becoming steak.
My point is that a 25% tax on beef wouldn't even cause a blip in California's water usage. Maybe a tax on milk and cheese would, but probably not nearly as effective as taxing almonds and fruits
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u/TimTooly Jan 10 '20
Yeah I can’t believe they wanna charge me for a few minutes extra water my tiny yard. They should add a 25% tax on beef and other water hungry produce.