With food prices and farm incomes on the rise, Senior Editor Jacob Sullum wonders why America's farmers need yet another multi-billion dollar government bailout.
New at Reason
Comments to "New at Reason":
Other Matt | May 14, 2008, 7:26am | #
By and large, though, Obama is right that farm subsidies "bring Republicans and Democrats together."Yep. And he's got more coming if he makes it to the WH.
Ska | May 14, 2008, 7:55am | #
I say windfall tax........what's fair is fair.I have an uncle who's in some soil conservation program that pays him $40k a year not to grow crops on his land. Land he bought specifically to get that money. Land he bought with cash he made as a doctor.
LarryA | May 14, 2008, 9:15am | #
By and large, though, Obama is right that farm subsidies "bring Republicans and Democrats together.""Bipartisanship" sucks.
Pro Libertate | May 14, 2008, 9:27am | #
I prefer my grids locked.Pro Libertate | May 14, 2008, 9:50am | #
Ye gods, no. It was a lame gridlock joke.Other Matt | May 14, 2008, 12:45pm | #
oh dear. I thought it was a gridiron joke.At least it doesn't degenerate to some discussion about being off grid.
Lajaw | May 15, 2008, 12:13pm | #
If we don't get rid of the USDA, we will not be able to feed ourselves in the USA. Free trade is a worthy goal, until it prevents a country from actually feeding itself.Look at the link below to see where "free trade" has gotten the third world countries.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601068&sid=ahjXx.6rVXXk&refer=economy
And Obama/Clinton/McCain will be more of the same.
Jonathon | May 15, 2008, 2:49pm | #
Jesse,You lost me at "arbitrarily chosen section of the economy". For close to two years I was a contractor with the USDA working on a statistical survey that supported the Farm Bill. I can confidently say from my bizarre experience there that the current system is fucked. However, agriculture is everyone's lifeline, and so your intimation that the pols could just have easily been bought off by the rubber dogshit lobby is blind. As bad as things are it's certainly tempting to say that anything else would be better, and I'm open to the argument of freeing up agriculture. But like Garth says in Wayne's World, we fear change, because far from being protected arbitrarily, this is one market which must not fail!
Zac in Virginia | May 21, 2008, 7:38pm | #
But because it's tax dollars paying for the subsidies, Jonathon, the farmers and agribusiness groups end up paying for at least part of it themselves.Certainly, Dana Carvey's character was absolutely right. I'm a socialist, and even I am a little offended at the amount of subsidy going in the direction of farmers.
What about subsidies for small farmers only? Well, that's something to consider, provided that it doesn't actually close the gap between unsupported big business and subsidized small-timers (don't want to totally kill the incentive to go big, but you do want to give at least some incentive to farm in the first place...)
If you want to insulate the market from failure, subsidize its most vulnerable members, not the captains of the industry.