Lord, it pains me to write the title of this post, but in interest of preserving my principles, I must. A farm bill is winding through Congress and Bush has threatened to veto it. He is absolutely right to do so. Farm subsidies have gotten entirely out of control. I understand the basic principles and reasons for subsidies. One, a nation’s food source should be protected, ’cause if we can’t eat, it will be hard for us to invade soverign nations, wiretap the citezenry, torture people uhh…I mean spread democracy…and the second reason is a significant input of farming (weather) is completely uncontrollable and (insert whining noise) it’s just not fair.
The second reason rings a bit false for me. I work in an industry where oil prices have a major negative impact on sales. Neither me, nor my company controls the global price of oil. (I do, however control the global price of copper, which is why I’m writing this post from my yacht….damn, must have been dreaming again).
Every industry has unknowns and uncontrollable elements. We used to refer to that in econ text books as “risk”. There aren’t any sure things in a capitalist system. That’s kinda part of the fun.
The only difference between my industry (which is suffering and threatening the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of people) and farming (which doesn’t employ nearly as many people) is that Washington D.C. protects one of these and tells the other to go fly a kite.
But this is America! The Golden Land of the Globally Free Economy! Do you mean to say we have protectionism (cue scary music)???
Uh yeah, we do. The farmers are protected by way of lobbyists. My industry does not do as good of a job of lobbying Congress. That’s it. The only difference. How else can you explain broad bipartisan support for this bill. It’s amazing, Congress can’t agree if the sun rises in the East anymore, but suddenly a bolt of bipartisan cooperation overtakes the Capital.
I mean for God’s sake, the republicans are lobbying George Bush sign a bill supported by Nancy Polosi! Is it opposite day?
Anyway, Bush is right to oppose this and ask for more reform. I’m realize probably the only reason he’s opposing this is because the Dems control Congress, but (TeamKuntz law #41) “A right decision made for the wrong reason is still the right decision.”
