Text 5323, 87 rader
Skriven 2007-10-26 15:18:50 av Alan Hess
Ärende: Agriwelfare
===================
Yet more waste of taxpayer dollars.  I'd rather money go to deserving poor
individuals, and be sent to cities and counties to help redevelop communities
(rebuild or restore vacant homes, sell them, make them tax-producing, etc.)

*********

www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.chapman26oct26,0,5346639.story
baltimoresun.com
Get feds off the farm

Steve Chapman

October 26, 2007

Here's how the American free enterprise system works:

You have an idea for a business. You find the money to start it up. You try to
give customers something they want at a price low enough to keep them happy but
high enough to earn a profit. Either your plan works, allowing you to make a
living, or it doesn't, indicating you should find a different line of work.

Unless, of course, you are a farmer, in which case all this may sound
unfamiliar. A lot of American agriculture operates in an environment where none
of the usual rules apply - where the important thing is not catering to the
consumer but tapping the Treasury. It's a sector that, ever since the Great
Depression, has been a ward of the government, both coddled and controlled.

By any reasonable standard, federal agriculture policy is past due for a major
overhaul. But judging from the latest farm legislation moving through Congress,
not much is going to change.

Back in the 1930s, when the economy was a wreck, the survival of capitalism was
in doubt and Oklahoma was blowing away, you could understand the impulse for
Washington to intervene on behalf of farmers. But the days when agriculture
meant a lifetime of toil for a meager living are just a memory. Today, farmers
monitor soil conditions by computer, drive air-conditioned tractors and have a
higher average income than nonfarmers.

Yet many of them continue to enjoy treatment other industries can only dream
about. Imagine the government rigging the market to ensure high prices to
people selling concrete or cameras. Dairy farmers and sugar growers get exactly
that, courtesy of the Department of Agriculture. Farmers who plant a host of
other crops receive compensation anytime their prices fall below a fixed
minimum.

That's not the strangest part. These days, you don't have to grow anything at
all to harvest federal crop subsidies. Instead, Washington will send you a
check based on the amount of a product you raised in the past, even if you
don't feel like growing it anymore.

All this is sweet for the lucky few who happen to be holding buckets when the
federal cash falls out of the sky. But someone has to foot the bill, and that
someone is anyone who 1) eats or 2) pays taxes. Government meddling raises the
price of products at the grocery, while burning up billions of dollars in
federal revenues. A study by Sallie James and Daniel Griswold of the Cato
Institute put the total cost of farm programs at $430 billion over the past
decade.

Some farmers, and some urbanites, assume that agriculture would plunge into a
death spiral if the government stopped furnishing all this help. In fact, the
majority of people plowing fields would never miss it. In 2005, 85 percent of
all federal payments went to just four crops: corn, wheat, cotton and rice.
Two-thirds of all farmers are locked out of the largess.

Not only that, but the commodities that get no help are just as profitable as
those that do.

Yet Congress shows little interest in ridding us of this extravagant waste.
President Bush proposed to trim costs and reduce payments to the richest
growers, but the five-year farm bill approved by the House in July omitted
these modest reforms. A more ambitious bill to significantly reduce the federal
role in agriculture, meanwhile, was cut down like a weed. The Senate is
considering its own version, but the Agriculture Committee has indicated it's
quite content with the status quo.

The American economy has undergone radical transformation in the last 75 years,
and the majority of farmers have shown they can prosper outside a
government-run hothouse. Yet our leaders seem to think that what was good
enough for Ma and Pa Kettle is good enough for us.

Steve Chapman is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune. His column appears
Mondays and Fridays in The Sun. His e-mail is schapman@tribune.com.

Copyright + 2007, The Baltimore Sun

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