Amen -- it's time to kick farmers off the federal dole:
Many city folk have an emotional attachment to a way of life they have never experienced. The image of the “family farm” possesses particular appeal.
Yet most entrepreneurs work hard, as do farmers, while facing enormous and unpredictable risks, only less based on weather. Working with animals and plants is interesting, not ennobling. And the family farm is largely a quaint historical artifact: today agriculture increasingly is big business pursued by shrewd corporate operators, who are even more adept at politics than economics.
Government subsidies obviously aren't necessary for food production: people have fed themselves and traded their surpluses for thousands of years. The system doesn't help consumers. Reducing supplies and imposing price floors obviously are bad deals for the hungry. Paying off farmers might lower some prices, but steals back through taxes any benefits received by consumers. Agricultural subsidies are designed by farmers for farmers.
But which farmers? Not the idyllic family farmer. The majority of payments go to farms with average annual revenue exceeding $200,000 and net worth around $2 million.
The attitudes of farm-state legislators -- even Republican and supposedly conservative ones -- hasn't been encouraging. But the writer, who is associated with the libertarian Cato Institute -- says even they are starting to get the message. If so (I have my doubts), it's about time.
