Sounds like free market globalism to me. Exactly what have allowed USA to make untold amounts of "wealth"... And now they are complaining as others are doing it there...
> In fact, the state rents some land to Fondomonte for $25 an acre. The company can then pump unlimited amounts of groundwater for essentially no cost.
There's no justification for this.
What makes it worse is that Saudi Arabia already has what it needs to terraform itself and make its own deserts agriculturally productive in an ecological way. They're just not doing it. Instead, they're working with the government of Arizona to make Arizona look like Saudi Arabia. For $25 an acre.
Silver lining to all those remittances: if the whole world is using our currency to buy goods and services (and also holding dollars as a reserve currency) we can print a lot more money before we’re affected by inflation, or at least that’s how I understood it.
That's got nothing to do with remittances. That's got to do with central governments... And many central governments are moving away from using the US as central currency recently because we're being destabilized. Partly by massive amounts of immigration on the order of 2 million per year, as much as the population of some entire states!
>This is among the best job markets for workers in US history.
And yet most companies are either laying people off or have hiring freezes, and I've personally been unemployed for three months now. Your post has no basis in reality, and it sounds like you're trying to come up with post hoc justifications for your political orthodoxy.
>This is among the best job markets for workers in US history.
Jobs that don't pay the bills are abundant!
There's never been more subway sandwich and Uber driver jobs in history!
Middle class jobs? Flooded with immigrants and hyper competitive.
Much like the housing market which is skyrocket expensive partly because of the 2 million immigrants (the size of some states!) we let in per year who increase demand for housing.
> Those workers pay their taxes. It's up to them what they do with the rest of their salary
Yeah spend it in other countries vs an American who calls this place home who will spend it here to better communities in the USA? They're literally here to exploit the economy of the USA.
Also, what does exports have to do with anything? Does that include siphoning money from the taxpayers to Ukraine? Or siphoning money from the economy in general by immigrants?
Do you feel that Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, or Rupert Murdoch are immigrants who exploit our economy? They have enormous wealth outside the country and pay very little in taxes (much less than Indian immigrants do).
This is such a bad take. Indians are stuck in archaic immigration laws, pay taxes for US services they can never use, send whatever small amount they can save to family in India. And you have a problem with that.
The United States has a perverse immigration policy where we punish people who try to come in through the approved and legal avenues, and rely on those who don't in order to feed our population.
If those illegal workers weren't here the wages on those jobs would stabilize to a wage that an American could afford to work it and Americans would work it.
The rich love immigration. They make way more money off the backs of workers.
That would always be an interesting experiment, if only the people in power would ever allow it. Unfortunately, all political parties try their hardest to perpetuate and foster “illegal” immigration to fill their own pockets.
I am pretty sure that the Americans would not do that work anymore.
First off it require a bunch of them to leave cities and there is a remarkable tendency for people not to do that.
Second, the work is extremely grueling. Many Americans are no longer able to do that sort of physical labor.
Finally, the spiraling cost of food would be so inflationary that we could not afford to pay the people doing the back breaking labor enough for them to consider it worthwhile compared to their other money making options.
They are mostly sending stuff that was stock piled to fight a war with Russia in eastern Europe too, fight a war with Russia in Eastern Europe.
Its all upsides for the USA, they get to decimate one their biggest military foes, show off how weak and bad Russian military equipment is, and get to actually be involved on the right side for a war for the first time in forever and they don't even have to fight.
> "Protecting democracy"...the military industrial complex has been saying this as a justification for taking tax dollars and doing nasty things....for decades.
What do you call arming a country against an imperialistic invader that literally says on TV they have no reason to exist and they will kill as many of them as they need to?.
> Do you still think wearing a covid mask out in public is a good idea for the safety of others?
You’re really avoiding the question here, what do you call protecting a democracy if not what America is doing with Ukraine against imperialist Russians?.
Or do you think Russia bombing civilians and torturing/executing children in Ukraine is a good thing?.
just pointing out that anyone who believes the TV is the purveyor of truth is not really going to be a productive discussion.
We could have a virtue signaling battle.
I wish that Ukraine money would instead go to help starving children with malaria in Africa. The TV says it only takes the price of a cup of coffee to help them. Imagine how much 20 billion could help.
November 2022 was the 3rd election in a row (2018, 2020 & 2022) that the MAGA "movement" failed at Arizona's ballot boxes. The article goes on to mention that Republican candidates have been getting more and more irrational/crazy/authoritarian and that Arizona voters want some normal Republicans like John McCain (who served as a Senator, representing Arizona, for 31 years, also was the Republican candidate for President in 2008).
The first few paragraphs seem like a reasonable summary:
"The historically good results for Arizona Democrats at the polls this month are the third cycle in a row that MAGA has faltered at the ballot box, and political observers say it should be a clarion call to Republicans that Trumpism is a loser in the Grand Canyon State.
But operatives in both parties say that will be easier said than done, as Donald Trump’s grip on the Republican Party electorate remains strong.
“Conservatism wins in Arizona. Crazy does not,” said Chris Baker, a Republican political consultant who works on congressional and legislative races in Arizona and across the country. “The Republican Party in Arizona is at a crossroads right now. Is this the direction we want to continue in?”"
Of course those permits are only for drilling new wells. Existing wells have already dewatered nearby farms. New remedial action is needed to reverse the continuing damage.
Wow I cannot even fathom the amount of hypocrisy here. If it’s so important there should be regulations about this and NO ONE should be able to do draw any amount of water as they please. However time and time again certain political party has fought for deregulation and have always allowed their cronies to do whatever they want as long as money greased the hands. It’s cute how ppl are finding it outrageous that a legally leased land with all the proper instruments in place is somehow ‘violating’ something…
Saudi Arabi wont last the 21st century - for the US (and Israel), its a relationship of mutual convenience. They'll get Iraq'd, Iran'd, etc, eventually.
For that, I recommend reading the book House of Bush, House of Saud : The Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties [0]. The short answer to your question is: money, oil and corruption. The Vice President's official salary was about 10% of his annual income (from the company he was CEO of) that he still received as VP.
The administration devoted a huge amount of effort into convincing the public (both domestic & foreign) that the House of Saud had nothing to do with 911 and that some other random bad guy just happened to be responsible for it all. Like one of those old Bond movies where the Head Villain looks the the henchling who failed directly in the eyes, then saying "this is what we do to failures, then turns and kills the guy standing next to him.
It is wild to me that we still frame stories like this in such an openly xenophobic way. Your opinions on the Saudis should not matter. The nationality of the farm owner is completely irrelevant to the issue. Growing water intensive plants in the middle of the desert is stupid and bad even if 100% of the profit goes to Americans.
It's wild to me that we frame legitimate concerns as xenophobic.
The second sentence explains why the nationality matters:
> Some farms are foreign-owned and are shipping the crop to Saudi Arabia, where it's illegal to grow because it takes too much water.
In this globalistic world it's worth considering that stringent policy in one area of the world can be worked around by taking advantage of lax policy in another area of the world. It's not xenophobic to talk about that. It would be ignorant not to.
>In this globalistic world it's worth considering that stringent policy in one area of the world can be worked around by taking advantage of lax policy in another area of the world. It's not xenophobic to talk about that. It would be ignorant not to.
Saudi owned farms circumventing Saudi laws is an issue for the people of Saudi Arabia. If it is legal in the US, it should be legal for everyone. If you want it to be illegal in the US, it should be illegal for everyone. The owners are and should be irrelevant.
> If it is legal in the US, it should be legal for everyone
That's a strawman. No one is arguing against that.
How a resource is being used by foreign corporations is an important input to policy decisions.
We're at a point in today's society where the mere suggestion that nationality might be relevant is met with accusations of xenophobia. It's the same way with race or sex.
While I agree with your conclusion, unless by "nature" you mean "human nature," the statement
> Race exists due to nature
is absolutely false. Race is a cultural construct and has little to do with biology or national origin.
> We're at a point in today's society where the mere suggestion that nationality might be relevant is met with accusations of xenophobia.
How is the nationality relevant? Would this behavior be acceptable if the farms were owned by an Australian company? What about a publicly traded American company? What about an Arizonan billionaire? I don’t see how that would change anything.
Monopolizing natural resources is bad regardless of the nationality or residency of the people profiting.
In geopolitics (especially as applied to critical resources) -- and that's what this comes down to, really; not simply greed -- this never the case, of course.
It's always relevant who the owners of are - and what kinds of influence led them to being able to put down stakes where they have.
Aside from purely capitalistic motivations, there is such a thing as environmental warfare. Unless you want to naively assume that any foreign nation might always have the best interests of another in mind when exploiting their resources.
A company is not separable from the regulatory environment and culture in which it's based. A British company opening a diamond mine in Botswana is a very different story from a Namibian company opening the same diamond mine.
It is wild to me that this is trotted out when "Saudi" is both a demonym and yet also an actual ruling family name. (And for context, I think it was accurate to describe it as a xenophobic "Muslim ban" and I think "Chinese coronavirus" is racist.)
Yes, it's bad even if Americans do it, but it's definitely worse if it goes to Saud.
Would you object to "Rockefeller company draws unlimited etc"? What if they also literally owned a country?
>Would you object to "Rockefellers draw unlimited etc"? What if they also literally owned a country?
Maybe you misunderstood my point. I'm not giving the Saudis a pass. I would object to anyone doing this whether it is the Saudis, the Rockefellers, or some middle class farmer. The problem here is a poorly constructed regulatory environment which created a tragedy of the commons situation. We made it profitable to do something that is bad for the local environment and inherently stupid. People shouldn't grow water intensive plans in the desert.
The problem here is "company draws unlimited Arizona ground water amid drought". There doesn't need to be an adjective before "company".
You also said "such an openly xenophobic way." I reject the idea that a) the framing is xenophobic in this case, and b) it needs to be framed more generally before we can fix this specific case.
>"We cannot afford to give our water away frankly to anyone, let alone the Saudis, for free," said Mayes.
This person is saying that giving the water away to the Saudis is worse than just giving it away. It isn't simply the action of taking the water that is troubling them. It is that it is going to a scary other. This is classic xenophobia.
"Saudi" is not just a demonym like "German" or "Chinese" but a specific political program, and even a specific small set of extremely bad people. Fixing that would not make a "free Saudi Arabia of free Saudis" in the way we might imagine a "free Tibet of free Tibetans" but literally a different country not named after their psychopathic kings. It names a regime, not a nationality.
It is not xenophobia to acknowledge it's worse to do something dumb which enriches your ideological and material enemies than to just do something dumb.
I think the notion is that the company has zero interest in the well being of the land because they have no ties to it.
That does have some logic, similar to out of state landlords or corporate landlords milking a property for as much rent with absolute minimal upkeep as they have no involvement in the community.
A flaw with that argument with the foreign water exporters and also with the landlord is that local landlords or businesses also can be equally bad.
But still, there is some sense to it and may have some truth if the average behaviors were quantified
I'm shocked anyone would even consider this xenophobic at all. Why would our opinions on the Saudis not matter? You aren't making any sense to me.
It would be one thing if it was irrational, like not wanting to go to a Saudi barber, but when foreign nationals are draining critical geopolitically relevant resources, regardless of if other Americans are doing it to, to call it xenophobic to even mention the association seems like pure madness to me. There is nothing irrational about questioning the motives here.
Utah has also been having water problems. Agriculture uses most of the water in UT, the governor has a farm that grows hay/alfalfa for export to China. With water shortages, instead of cutting back on his farm's water consumption, he got on the TV and told Utahns to "pray for rain".
Arizona passed a law requiring developments of 6 or more homes to provide for water. Consequently, many developers now make all of their developments 5 homes in order to skirt that law. Urban water suppliers (which are government run utilities)_have cut those suburban/rural customers off. Which is making the water problem madly political.
> Fondomonte trucks haul dried alfalfa off the property it uses and ships it back to the Middle East to feed cattle. According to Mayes, cows in Saudi Arabia are essentially drinking Arizona water.
The above statement makes no sense. If cows are consuming dried alfalfa, how are they drinking?
Converting everything to liters (and hoping I didn't mess it up... "acre-feet", for the love of God) shows that agriculture uses around 400 times as much water as a fab.
86 comments
[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 146 ms ] threadThere's no justification for this.
What makes it worse is that Saudi Arabia already has what it needs to terraform itself and make its own deserts agriculturally productive in an ecological way. They're just not doing it. Instead, they're working with the government of Arizona to make Arizona look like Saudi Arabia. For $25 an acre.
The US is dead last in net exports in the entire world[1], so you literally couldn't be more wrong about this.
> India just hit a record for remittances from the US
Those workers pay their taxes. It's up to them what they do with the rest of their salary. Or do you just want to raise taxes on all US immigrants?
> much of the country is struggling for jobs
This is among the best job markets for workers in US history. Companies are struggling to fill jobs. We need more immigrants to fill those jobs.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_net_expor...
And yet most companies are either laying people off or have hiring freezes, and I've personally been unemployed for three months now. Your post has no basis in reality, and it sounds like you're trying to come up with post hoc justifications for your political orthodoxy.
I'm sorry you're unable to find work, but an anecdote isn't data.
"Adding jobs" is a poor and lazy indicator of a healthy middle class and healthy economy.
Jobs that don't pay the bills are abundant!
There's never been more subway sandwich and Uber driver jobs in history!
Middle class jobs? Flooded with immigrants and hyper competitive.
Much like the housing market which is skyrocket expensive partly because of the 2 million immigrants (the size of some states!) we let in per year who increase demand for housing.
> Those workers pay their taxes. It's up to them what they do with the rest of their salary
Yeah spend it in other countries vs an American who calls this place home who will spend it here to better communities in the USA? They're literally here to exploit the economy of the USA.
Also, what does exports have to do with anything? Does that include siphoning money from the taxpayers to Ukraine? Or siphoning money from the economy in general by immigrants?
The rich love immigration. They make way more money off the backs of workers.
First off it require a bunch of them to leave cities and there is a remarkable tendency for people not to do that.
Second, the work is extremely grueling. Many Americans are no longer able to do that sort of physical labor.
Finally, the spiraling cost of food would be so inflationary that we could not afford to pay the people doing the back breaking labor enough for them to consider it worthwhile compared to their other money making options.
Its a quintessential slippery slope.
in hardware, manufactured on US soil by US workers https://thehill.com/policy/defense/unprepared-for-long-war-u..., often build over 30 years ago for specific purpose of killing russians (stingers)
Would much rather my tax money pay American workers to work on the countless issues were facing in America.
Its all upsides for the USA, they get to decimate one their biggest military foes, show off how weak and bad Russian military equipment is, and get to actually be involved on the right side for a war for the first time in forever and they don't even have to fight.
So you don't think helping protect the democracy of another country is a upside worthy of 'your' tax dollars?.
Or destroying your enemy militarily without even having to be in a war?.
"Protecting democracy"...the military industrial complex has been saying this as a justification for doing nasty things....for decades.
You should scope out modern American history for the past 100 years.
What do you call arming a country against an imperialistic invader that literally says on TV they have no reason to exist and they will kill as many of them as they need to?.
I call that protecting democracy.
Do you still think wearing a covid mask out in public is a good idea for the safety of others?
You’re really avoiding the question here, what do you call protecting a democracy if not what America is doing with Ukraine against imperialist Russians?.
Or do you think Russia bombing civilians and torturing/executing children in Ukraine is a good thing?.
We could have a virtue signaling battle.
I wish that Ukraine money would instead go to help starving children with malaria in Africa. The TV says it only takes the price of a cup of coffee to help them. Imagine how much 20 billion could help.
Don't you want to help the children?
I am merely quoting Russian TV not Western TV.
> Don't you want to help the children?
Not sure what help a M270 MLRS will do to feed the children of Africa but I guess you could try.
the vast majority of the dollar value of aid to Ukraine is the value of the vehicles being provided, cant use that to feed children.
But I have a feeling your against any aid to Ukraine regardless of how many lives it saves.
https://www.azmirror.com/2022/11/16/maga-fails-in-arizona-fo...
Can you please summarize?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McCain
"The historically good results for Arizona Democrats at the polls this month are the third cycle in a row that MAGA has faltered at the ballot box, and political observers say it should be a clarion call to Republicans that Trumpism is a loser in the Grand Canyon State.
But operatives in both parties say that will be easier said than done, as Donald Trump’s grip on the Republican Party electorate remains strong.
“Conservatism wins in Arizona. Crazy does not,” said Chris Baker, a Republican political consultant who works on congressional and legislative races in Arizona and across the country. “The Republican Party in Arizona is at a crossroads right now. Is this the direction we want to continue in?”"
It's like asshole whack a mole at this point.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-york-investors-snapping-up-...
But, we don't talk as much as we used to.
The administration devoted a huge amount of effort into convincing the public (both domestic & foreign) that the House of Saud had nothing to do with 911 and that some other random bad guy just happened to be responsible for it all. Like one of those old Bond movies where the Head Villain looks the the henchling who failed directly in the eyes, then saying "this is what we do to failures, then turns and kills the guy standing next to him.
0 - https://www.amazon.com/House-Bush-Saud-Relationship-Dynastie...
The second sentence explains why the nationality matters:
> Some farms are foreign-owned and are shipping the crop to Saudi Arabia, where it's illegal to grow because it takes too much water.
In this globalistic world it's worth considering that stringent policy in one area of the world can be worked around by taking advantage of lax policy in another area of the world. It's not xenophobic to talk about that. It would be ignorant not to.
Saudi owned farms circumventing Saudi laws is an issue for the people of Saudi Arabia. If it is legal in the US, it should be legal for everyone. If you want it to be illegal in the US, it should be illegal for everyone. The owners are and should be irrelevant.
It is reasonable for a region to decide its natural resources should benefit the people who live there above people who do not live there.
That's a strawman. No one is arguing against that.
How a resource is being used by foreign corporations is an important input to policy decisions.
We're at a point in today's society where the mere suggestion that nationality might be relevant is met with accusations of xenophobia. It's the same way with race or sex.
Race exists due to nature and we use it to denote distinctions in our collective race.
We should celebrate our differences, not pretend they don't exist, or are merely humans being derogatory to each other.
How is the nationality relevant? Would this behavior be acceptable if the farms were owned by an Australian company? What about a publicly traded American company? What about an Arizonan billionaire? I don’t see how that would change anything.
Monopolizing natural resources is bad regardless of the nationality or residency of the people profiting.
In geopolitics (especially as applied to critical resources) -- and that's what this comes down to, really; not simply greed -- this never the case, of course.
It's always relevant who the owners of are - and what kinds of influence led them to being able to put down stakes where they have.
You might say it's the name of the game, in fact.
Yes, it's bad even if Americans do it, but it's definitely worse if it goes to Saud.
Would you object to "Rockefeller company draws unlimited etc"? What if they also literally owned a country?
Maybe you misunderstood my point. I'm not giving the Saudis a pass. I would object to anyone doing this whether it is the Saudis, the Rockefellers, or some middle class farmer. The problem here is a poorly constructed regulatory environment which created a tragedy of the commons situation. We made it profitable to do something that is bad for the local environment and inherently stupid. People shouldn't grow water intensive plans in the desert.
The problem here is "company draws unlimited Arizona ground water amid drought". There doesn't need to be an adjective before "company".
>"We cannot afford to give our water away frankly to anyone, let alone the Saudis, for free," said Mayes.
This person is saying that giving the water away to the Saudis is worse than just giving it away. It isn't simply the action of taking the water that is troubling them. It is that it is going to a scary other. This is classic xenophobia.
It is not xenophobia to acknowledge it's worse to do something dumb which enriches your ideological and material enemies than to just do something dumb.
The nationality of the company seems the least important issue in this whole story.
That does have some logic, similar to out of state landlords or corporate landlords milking a property for as much rent with absolute minimal upkeep as they have no involvement in the community.
A flaw with that argument with the foreign water exporters and also with the landlord is that local landlords or businesses also can be equally bad.
But still, there is some sense to it and may have some truth if the average behaviors were quantified
It would be one thing if it was irrational, like not wanting to go to a Saudi barber, but when foreign nationals are draining critical geopolitically relevant resources, regardless of if other Americans are doing it to, to call it xenophobic to even mention the association seems like pure madness to me. There is nothing irrational about questioning the motives here.
Arizona passed a law requiring developments of 6 or more homes to provide for water. Consequently, many developers now make all of their developments 5 homes in order to skirt that law. Urban water suppliers (which are government run utilities)_have cut those suburban/rural customers off. Which is making the water problem madly political.
The above statement makes no sense. If cows are consuming dried alfalfa, how are they drinking?
> It is recommended to bale alfalfa when moisture is between 18 and 20%
https://ag.umass.edu/crops-dairy-livestock-equine/fact-sheet...
> it's a growing controversy
Boo! Boo!
Arizona uses about 5 million acre-feet (gah!) of water for agricultural purposes per year.
https://www.arizonawaterfacts.com/water-your-facts
One TSMC fab uses around 4 billion gallons per year.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/18/semicond...
Converting everything to liters (and hoping I didn't mess it up... "acre-feet", for the love of God) shows that agriculture uses around 400 times as much water as a fab.