Rice is much more labour intensive than other grasses like wheat and corn.
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When I said average it was because new employees started lower and after 6 months they got bumped to our target of $10. Also some hourly folks also made more than $10 per hour. Our goal was a $10 per hour rate. Our employees earned vacation and paid leave (for any reason) at a standard rate tied to the hours they worked. The rate one earned went up the longer you were an employee. Most employees earned 4 hours of vacation/leave time for each 40 hours worked. So each month you would earn 16 hours of leave (2 days). In a year that could accumulate to 24 days or 3 weeks. No reason need be given for taking one's days but they did need approval by one's boss to make sure all scheduling needs were met. Employees could accumulate 400 hours of leave before they had to start cashing it out for money. Those leave days are an actual expense to the company and represent money paid to an employee. If I took two weeks off, I would still get my full paycheck for those days.
Our health insurance per employee was over $5000 per year for a very good plan that was comprehensive. That was a hard cost to the company for each one. Employees were charged $40 per month or 480 per year. So we paid $4500 for insurance and $2000 in paid leave and $1000 in retirement benefits for each $10/hour employee. $7500 per employee. For those making more than $10 per hour, it was more expensive. A $20,000 employee ($10/hr) cost the company $27,500 per year not including any of payroll taxes required (another 7.5% of the $20,000).
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EgonSpengler
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Yes, that could explain it, at least in part. I think India is one of the world's largest exporters of rice.
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While browsing some sites, this little nugget from the "Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations" blew my mind a little bit:
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EgonSpengler
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This site @Birdjaguar cited earlier shows a lot of what I'm inarticulately pecking around the edges of. For example, if you scroll down to...
So that's kind of the basic premise I'm working from. But in terms of efficiency, they also show "Agricultural Productivity"
So the "agriculture value added per worker" in the United States was $83,735 in 2017, whereas it was $1,672 in India. I don't know why that difference is so stark. Note that this doesn't mean the average agricultural worker in the US gets paid $83k in wages and benefits. I expect big companies hoover up most of that money. (The reason GDP isn't a very useful metric for the health of a country's economy is simple: It doesn't tell you how most of the people live. If 50% of India's labor force is in agriculture, and they're generating 20% of the country's wealth, you can bet that the reality "on the ground" is even worse than that; I'd wager there's basically no chance that the 20% is evenly distributed among the 50%.)
Farm Boy
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Mechanization. Fuel energy. Average land operated. Infrastructure for transport. Ability of end-consumer to pay for food. Subsidy/social investment. Are they also raising more kids? Kids pull people's efforts out of GDP and into the invisible bucket of labor that keeps a country/world running. I'm sure I'm missing a lot. But I'm not surprised it's that different. If you wanted to send everyone in America back out farming with an ultra-low carbon footprint through human/animal power, you'd probably need to double to triple the labor input. And that's with decent infrastructure. Not perfect, oil bids out a lot of crops from rail transport in areas, but that's an idiocy of administration that's sort of ramping. Barges are better yet. Not sure the state of India's lock and dam for bulk barge shipping from agricultural areas. I additionally suspect a super low cash value per farmer has a lot to do with growing staple foods as opposed to cash cropping. Better for the environment, crappier for the pocketbook unless socially prioritized.
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Farm Boy
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Ack, forgot to hit the quote button and got distracted.
Why? I'd like to hear the presumption this rests upon. Because it's necessary, maybe? And we don't want to have to pay for things that are necessary if we can avoid it? How about sewage? Roads? Teaching? Medicine? Research? I mean, where do you think we should want people to be? Judging blowjob contests?
Why? I'd like to hear the presumption this rests upon. Because it's necessary, maybe? And we don't want to have to pay for things that are necessary if we can avoid it? How about sewage? Roads? Teaching? Medicine? Research? I mean, where do you think we should want people to be? Judging blowjob contests?
Farm work is usually physically hard, can be dangerous; the results are uncertain and often out of the control of the farmer. Other work is often preferred?Why? I'd like to hear the presumption this rests upon. Because it's necessary, maybe? And we don't want to have to pay for things that are necessary if we can avoid it? How about sewage? Roads? Teaching? Medicine? Research? I mean, where do you think we should want people to be? Judging blowjob contests?
Farm Boy
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Physical work makes you healthier within reason. Happier too. As does being outside for a not insignificant portion of people. The results are often variable, but once upon a time we started insurance industries to socially improve a necessary activity. It's not a bad way to live, assuming society affords you a reasonable degree of dignity and power within it. It's reasonably compatible with raising children and stable communities.
All that is true, but for many folks it is too hard and uncertain a lifestyle. Machines now make expensive too. Rural folks have been leaving their farms for city life since the first cities appeared. They must have their reasons even when city life sucks. 
It started far earlier than that. Where do you think all the citizens of Uruk came from? The surrounding farms!
Farm Boy
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Economics way back. But we're discussing "the lower the better." Farm population hovered somewhat under 50% for a goodly while, then when the economics of buying brand new innovations(McCormic reaper, etc) wasn't breaking them fast enough, intentional trade policies drove them into desperation so they'd start working in the awful factories that drove Marx to write(when city life sucks, as you put it). Rural population plummeted on the rack government created for it. It was a paradigm shift that's stuck, named age of economic social evil and everything. Intentionally, again. That's a policy decision, not personal preference, keeping it at ~1-2% on farms. Can't find a farmstead in collar counties of Chicago these days. All purchased by suburban immigrants. The inequality is bad enough that spare field acres are getting snapped up in speculatory holds now too. They'll rent the production to the guy with the biggest equipment that can overbid with hired men. It won't do the ground/environment any good to spend the fewest human-attention minutes on it possible, the least long term fertility investment possible, but again, economics and social priorities. It's sorta fudged. We as a country are relatively fudged on our agricultural priorities.
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It is the only job I have ever really enjoyed. The problem is that unless you own a farm (and often enough even if you do) it is a gateway to a life of poverty.
sendos
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Apparently stock market is down because bond market is on fire now. It is also dragging down tech stocks due to high borrowing costs.
Does anyone here invest in bonds?
Does anyone here invest in bonds?
Are not interest rates at historic lows?
sendos
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They are, but apparently bond yields are high which counteracts that.
Which means that people expect companies to fail?
Farm Boy
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1/4 of restaurants are already gone. We have a government promising to spend hard enough to create some inflation.
It's not a gateway, you usually start there and don't know any better that you're poor. At least that's one sharecropper's kid's observation. The life isn't bad. But society deems it's a poorly compensated life that we'd be better off without people living. It's really fudged.
It's not a gateway, you usually start there and don't know any better that you're poor. At least that's one sharecropper's kid's observation. The life isn't bad. But society deems it's a poorly compensated life that we'd be better off without people living. It's really fudged.
I invest in bonds, 45% or so of my portfolio is in bonds. I prefer short term bond funds and GNMAs. They are not risky (as in losing the value of the capital) but the returns are much less than stocks. I'm fine with that. In a 50/50 portfolio mix (stocks to bonds) when the stock market loses 40%, that portfolio only loses 20%. Using GNMAs as an example, their price range is pretty fixed between $10.00 and 11.00 so price changes are pretty minimal. Their return over the past 12 months has been 3.17%. Bonds are all about minimizing risk at the expense of growth. I would say they are more for old people than young people. I also have Doubleline Low Duration bond fund holdings.
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