Farming. And Why Taxation is Crushing It, Not the Government. Nor the Wealthy.

Had a good chat with a knowledgeable farm worker at a no-till farm here. They have an open day today. They were saying it was extremely labour intensive but it was a success to which I replied. "Yes your neighbour who's an intensive farmer who used to pay a lot of tax on his workers wages, opts to buy capital machinery instead, yet his business is still on the margin". She got it immediately.

If you're willing as a farmer to put the effort in, in labour, you can make it pay, more than an intensive farm that gets rid of labour and replaces it with capital machinery.

It's all relative I suppose.

Currently you can tell the workers there get a lot out of the work. Even though it's hard they are happy folks. They have been re-grounded maybe? They have rediscovered or are able to maintain their connection to The Earth? They also host people with learning needs who seem to be 'healed' by it apparently.

So it has far more benefit to the world than merely economic. And for the economics of it, taxing the labour of farm workers is what forces some of the farms - probably the less skilled, less determined or who do not necessarily do it for the love of it - to abandon employing labour due to the higher wage the farm must pay the workers to cover their taxation.

Workers do not pay taxes. Their employer does. Shhh! This is forbidden knowledge.

So the moral of the story at least for farming, is that taxation harms farming more than other business factors. Likewise for all businesses on the margin, or low skilled work. Farming is hardly low skilled but it is the primary production process - an observation most people ignore at our peril, and everything else rests atop that. So if farming is doing well, everything else will be too.

For this fundamental reason, if the state insists on intervening, farming is where support should start. Because all else economically is reliant on the success of farming. And by God make sure the state only intervenes by using the farmers wisdom, not that of the bureaucrat and civil servant. 

This is another case history exposing how taxation itself is what causes unemployment and poverty even in a wealthy nation. Not wealth and power, who yes, could do a lot better, but they are the minor player.

Taxation should be abolished. That will not solve all problems of course. But with that leviathan terminated, all remaining problems will now be that much easier to solve.