Don Carr of the Environmental Working Group posts a fine summary of nine bogus arguments made in favor of farm subsidies. Among the myths, Carr tackles the assertion often parroted by Congresswoman and farm-welfare queen Kristi Noem that farm subsidies are a national security issue. (It must be nice to dress up your own dependence on government handouts as a patriotic duty.)
Carr notes that all sorts of vital foodstuffs, like fruits and vegetables, make it to our tables without federal subsidies. He finds agreement from Sallie James of the really conservative Cato Institute:
...can we please abandon once and for all this nonsense idea that we need farm subsidies to have food security? Appeals to "national defense" are disingenuous and cynical. They are also belied (rather obviously) by the fact that we see abundant supplies of fruit, vegetables and other horticultural goods even though those products attract no subsidies directly. The best way to ensure a food security is to ensure open markets, so food can flow from where it is abundant to where it is scarce. Self-sufficiency is a misguided policy, as the experience of North Korea can attest [Sallie James, "Republican Hypocrisy Watch," Cato@Liberty, 2010.11.07].
James goes so far as to argue that the subsidies Republicans like Noem and Missouri's Vicki Hartzler are o.k. with cutting, like CRP and other environmentally oriented measures, do less damage economically than the market-oriented handouts Noem and Hartzler defend. And harming the economy harms national security. Carr cites EWG colleague Craig Cox to point to other threats big farm subsidies pose to our national security: water pollution, obesity, elimination of small family farms, and reduction of diversity and resilience in our food production system.
Other myths Carr tackles:
- All farmers get subsidies (where have we heard that one?).
- Farm subsidies help small farms and small towns.
- Farm subsidies make food cheap.
- Eliminating subsidies would hurt the environment.
- Banks won't lend without subsidies.
- Farmers need subsidies to "feed the world."
It's nice to see you finally speak out against unconstitutional government handouts as the waste of money they are--even if it's only in an attempt to jab a Republican you don't like. The issue is bigger than Noem and bigger than party loyalty, so I appreciate you finally getting on the right side of an issue--even if it's for shallow reasons.
Red states most pessimistic about the future: http://trib.com/business/article_6fbb31df-34aa-5634-8ed0-b0d801a27fa1.html
Cory, some of the statements I do agree with and others I disagree. But overall, the intellectual vigor made in all of them are so light as to be worthless.
I am an ex farmer. I raised mostly hogs that had no subsidy. I always thought that if we could roll with supply and demand, and there was always meat in the store, the rest of the farmers could do that also. Public mind set means more than logic when it comes to voting. South Dakota will not have an income tax and Oregon will not have a sales tax. That is because of public assumption of what we will tolerate. But we will tolerate the lowest paid teachers.
Roger, I don't know how many years ago that you raised hogs but if it was in the 90's to mid 2000's you were getting a subsidy because those were the years of LDP's!
The corn or soybean farmer may have been on the recieving end of them but they were in essence a subsidy that allowed you as a pork producer to buy your inputs i.e. corn and soybean meal at dirt cheap prices because if the corn or soybean farmer or for that matter the wheat farmer would not have had the LDP's they would not have been able to stay in business because ALL of those commodities were below the cost of production.
Tax on soda could curb obesity, save 2600 lives a year, help end farm subsidies:
http://news.opb.org/article/could_a_soda_tax_prevent_26000_deaths_per_year/