At any given day you can hear the Iowan outrage at the corner restaurant at welfare handouts. Then they shuffle off to their post office box to pick up their Farm Subsidy check from the Department of Agriculture.

You see if you live in a city their checks are handouts but if you live on a 300 acre estate it's a subsidy.

Oh. And I suppose government welfare to Big 3 auto workers is nobler than subsidizing farm prices to producers.

Originally Posted by ilovetv

Oh. And I suppose government welfare to Big 3 auto workers is nobler than subsidizing farm prices to producers.

What's the difference ???

stay on the subject. We are not talking auto-makers here,we are talking farmers and farm subsidies.

So, who is receiving the money paid out in the farm programs in Iowa? Can you provide data please.

Here is a link you can use. Hope it works.

http://farm.ewg.org/region.php?fips=19000

Thank you for the link. What does, "Subtotal, Farming Subsidies" mean? I'm not clear what the subtotal in the title means when I look at the actual recepients.

I am not sure. However, if you look for a certain farmer by ZIP code or name or town name, it will tell you the total they received per year and scroll to the bottom of the page and it shows for which crops they received the subsidy. The columns there are for 1. not planting; 2. disaster payment; and 3. crop subsidy payment.

It comes to a whole lot of money for some of these farmers. I looked up one of my relatives in Kansas and he had averaged about $80,000 per year in farm subsidies.

Originally Posted by buggyone

I am not sure. However, if you look for a certain farmer by ZIP code or name or town name, it will tell you the total they received per year and scroll to the bottom of the page and it shows for which crops they received the subsidy. The columns there are for 1. not planting; 2. disaster payment; and 3. crop subsidy payment.

It comes to a whole lot of money for some of these farmers. I looked up one of my relatives in Kansas and he had averaged about $80,000 per year in farm subsidies.

So I assume you must agree. We NEED LESS government and way way less government employees. for example, question to those of you who work/worked in the private sector. Who in the private sector got a check at the end of each year for sick days they did not use? Or even better, how about a huge check prior to retirement for all the sick/personal/vacation days you "did not" use during your total years as federal, state and local goverment employees do and this is unfortunitly just one of many seriously sad but true examples of how we are headed for a Europeon type crisis.
PLEASE, someone in the gov tell me why you get a check for unused sick days when nobody in the private sector paying your salary does.
/




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Originally Posted by ricthemic

So I assume you must agree. We NEED LESS government and way way less government employees. for example, question to those of you who work/worked in the private sector. Who in the private sector got a check at the end of each year for sick days they did not use? Or even better, how about a huge check prior to retirement for all the sick/personal/vacation days you "did not" use during your total years as federal, state and local goverment employees do and this is unfortunitly just one of many seriously sad but true examples of how we are headed for a Europeon type crisis.
PLEASE, someone in the gov tell me why you get a check for unused sick days when nobody in the private sector paying your salary does.
/




?

Excellent question!

Can we all agree that the government should not be subsidizing anyone?
SS should be an annuity, that you collect when you get to retirement age.. if you die before that.. the money goes to your estate. If you get more in SS than you paid in (plus interest earned), the government took it from someone else to give it to you.
Welfare is reserved for those that CANNOT (not WILL NOT) support themselves... and if you can afford cable tv or a cell phone, you are NOT in poverty.

JJ

Originally Posted by buggyone

At any given day you can hear the Iowan outrage at the corner restaurant at welfare handouts. Then they shuffle off to their post office box to pick up their Farm Subsidy check from the Department of Agriculture.

You see if you live in a city their checks are handouts but if you live on a 300 acre estate it's a subsidy.

Originally Posted by JimJoe

Can we all agree that the government should not be subsidizing anyone?
SS should be an annuity, that you collect when you get to retirement age.. if you die before that.. the money goes to your estate. If you get more in SS than you paid in (plus interest earned), the government took it from someone else to give it to you.
Welfare is reserved for those that CANNOT (not WILL NOT) support themselves... and if you can afford cable tv or a cell phone, you are NOT in poverty.

JJ

I LOVE IT!

Originally Posted by ricthemic

Who in the private sector got a check at the end of each year for sick days they did not use? Or even better, how about a huge check prior to retirement for all the sick/personal/vacation days you "did not" use during your total years as federal, state and local goverment employees do and this is unfortunitly just one of many seriously sad but true examples of how we are headed for a Europeon type crisis.
PLEASE, someone in the gov tell me why you get a check for unused sick days when nobody in the private sector paying your salary does.

I work for the Air Force. I don't "get a check" at the end of the year for unused sick time. I'm allowed to accrue it (I've yet to hear of a limit) and you're expected to use that in place of Short Term Disability (which isn't offered here but WAS offered at all my private sector employers). Locally, those kind of perks have been vanishing from town and state jobs (I live in NH).

The one perk I *can* get from sick time is when I retire. *If* I have enough sick time, I can "credit" it to my service time when it comes to calculating a pension. In other words, if I've put in 20.5 years and I have 6 months of sick time (which means not missing a day for 12 years), I could put that half year towards my service time and get a 21% pension instead of a 20% pension. This would approximately be an additional $16 per week at my pay grade.

Even though this has abolutely nothing to do with the Iowa viewpoint on farm subsidies, I will answer the question.


I do not know about state and local government employees receiving a lump sum payment for unused sick days at the end of their career. I can tell you about Federal government employees, though, since I am one of those.

Federal employees DO NOT receive a lump sum payment for unused sick days. This practice (for the Civil Service Retirement System) went out back in the 1970's. Currently, any unused sick leave for CSRS employees is added onto their service computation date in 30 day increments to give a little boost to the retirement. For example, a person with a total of 33 years, 5 months of Federal service would receive 2 extra months if he had 88 days of unused sick leave. The remaining 28 days would be lost because it is only counted in 30 day increments.

In 2009, this was added to the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) and will be phased in - as explained in the attached link. http://blogs.federaltimes.com/federa...-leave-credit/

The lump sum payment was a feature that did grant many thousands of dollars to retirees as sick leave carryover is unlimited. I know people that got paid for at least one full year of unused sick leave at their current salary. However, as I said, that went out due to a change in the law back in the late 1970's.

Hope this answers a few of your questions and was not too technical. I have given classes on this and other Federal government benefits many times.

Like buggyone said,

Even though this has abolutely nothing to do with the Iowa viewpoint on farm subsidies,

I am a business owner and it has always gotten under my skin when I hear that people think that because they showed up for work, THAT THEY GOT PAID FOR, and did not take a sick day that they should somehow be credited or paid for it anyway.

I show up everyday and if I'm sick, I'm sick. No pay no credit no extra time at the end, nothing.
Why should you get credit for time you did not work? You did not work it, you were at work and got paid fot that day already.

And before someone throws the "SS you are getting more back than you paid in argument" in there. I have, for as long as I was old enough to know and cared, thought I should be able to put my money in my own account and opt out. And since I am not retired yet there is no guarantee that I will get my SS.

So how far do you go down the rabbit hole when talking about hand outs. If you were not sick you were not sick, no pay for it because you were well!

Just say'in.