I’ve heard from many a farmer that the direct subsidies are their margin. Then this goes up the line to the land banks who loan the money for land and operating credit and this goes up the line to the banks that lend them the money and even the big ag suppliers. Great while its in expansion, but in the last few years it blew up into a bubble IMO bigger than the 70s, and bubbles always burst.
When I first moved to Western Kansas, I knew it was real farming country. All the TV and radio stations catered to the farmers but something else surprised me.
Just about everyone who wasn’t in the farming business did not care for the farmers. A typical story would be that they complained all the time about the Government while at the same time getting huge government subsidies.
Also that they complained how no one could make a living farming while driving new Cadillacs, Lincolns, and top of the line 4WD pickups.
I actually got to liking them OK as they all were gun enthusiasts and I belonged to a gun club with many of them. One day I brought to the shooting range a strikingly beautiful Argentine Model 98-09 Mauser made by Deutsch Waffen und Munitionsfabriken. It was unfired when I got it and was the finest made rifle I have ever owned.
A couple of them looked it over and read the inscription in German then began laughing and speaking German to each other. I thought it was amazing that these guys families had probably been in America since the 1890s yet they could still speak German fluently.
They need to stop this program and let the free market work, but of course the socialists in both parties will not allow this to happen. Fascism at it’s finest in America.
Ever heard of WIC? It is there to supply milk for mothers with very young children. I was at the dairy section of Wal-Mart yesterday and the fairly expensive, flavored non-dairy creamers for coffee had a label that said, “wic approved”.
The whole government welfare thing, from all levels, is a joke. It is coming to a head because they have run out of Other People’s Money.
To compare people who work hard with welfare slugs and parasites is beyond the pale. Show me a company that moves to any city that doesn’t receive some tax benefit. The left invented the term “corporate welfare” to attack any business that got to keep some of their tax money.
It seems the net result of government subsidies to farming over the years has had the predictable effects of.....
rampant inefficiencies.
socialized stigma against racial minorities.
Fascist collusion between aggricultural-business and government to the detriment of the small family farmer.
Increased government control and regulation.
The international dimension is also important. U.S. farmers sell into global markets. Most of the rest of the world is far more protectionist, and most countries subsidize their famers far more heavily. This is all very much on the table in the long-stalled (probably dead) Doha Round of talks. U.S. agriculture is a dominant player internationally, and we want to keep it that way.
Every time I read these stories about waste and subsidies I’m convinced ten average American small business owners could in 24 hours take the detail of the federal budget and produce a balanced budget. Instead we spend a billion dollars for Congress, its staff members, and consultants who do nothing more than keep adding to the debt.
The House Republicans elected in 2010 have not balanced the budget even though they have control of spending per the Constitution. If elected Romney isn’t going to balance the budget, he will “tinker” around the edges. The web woven by special interests is too strong.
At this point in time it appears the only way out this out of control spending mess is for a collapse of the entire system and the US government to lose its ability to borrow. The dictator who takes charge will have no choice but to balance the budget.
The dirty little secret are all the “farmers” who live large in urban America on the government payments from the fallow farmland that they own in rural America. The payments for the fallow land are large enough to abandon the farm and move to the city and live. It is bought and sold by people who never intend to farm the land, just own it for the government payments.
This whole thing should more accurately be called “Government Programs to provide Cheap Food For Cosumers”.
For more than 60 years that’s been it’s objective, and is one of the few government programs that regularly meets it’s objective.