Could some people be coming to believe that gifts from Uncle Sam end up being paid from their own pockets, yes even “ethanol” gifts?
It’s not like hog troughing is only happening in Iowa. Once the practice begins, then everybody wants in, and the main beneficiaries are a bloated body of drones who (it is true) spend, but who don’t produce anything that adds to the national wealth.
Of subsidies, I find the Ethanol subsidies to be the saddest of all.
Here you have these farmers in Iowa, which is God’s Gift to Corn. You plant the kernel, and the corn springs up so thick and fast you practically have to jump out of the way. Farmers in Iowa have an advantage over farmers anywhere else in the World, and the demand for their product as a food product grows year after year. If they just went about their natural business of growing needed food, they would already be the richest farmers the World has ever known.
But instead they have to go on the government dole, and subvert their entire industry to produce a product that nobody wants in order to grab that “free” government dollar. They tie themselves in knots to preserve their precious little slice of the government pie, and worry all day and night that somebody is going to take it away.
They are like a dog protecting a gnawed-over bone when he lives in a butcher store.