Farmers Need Free Markets, Not Tariffs and Welfare
If you want to, say, make juice from an orange, the typical way is to mash the orange on a simple squeezer. But the early-to-mid 20th-century cartoonist, Rube Goldberg, had an even better way. His “simple” juice-making contraption involved pulling a string, which releases a guillotine blade, which cuts a cord that engages a battering ram that then enrages a sleeping octopus, which attacks the dangling orange and squeezes out its juice.
Goldberg’s bizarre cartoon machines were hilarious and have for decades inspired students to create their own real-world variety. One website notes that dictionaries in 1931 turned his name into an adjective that means “accomplishing by complex means what seemingly could be done simply.” I’ve always enjoyed perusing them because they remind me of the world’s unnecessarily complicated systems—and see them as analogous to how our governments operate.
Let’s take the issue of farming. The simplest way to provide food for the population is to, you know, let farmers grow what they want to grow, sell their products to whomever they choose, export them in response to demand, and so forth. The more important the product—and food certainly ranks high on any list—the better it is to allow markets to work. Instead, our government micromanages the situation with complex regulations and subsidies that distort the market, raise prices, and pick winners and losers.
Farm policy has been a mess for decades, with both parties to blame. Every politician (and voter) loves farmers, who are perfect fodder for gauzy backdrops of real Americans nurturing the land, flying the flag, and epitomizing everything good and wholesome about the nation. The early Iowa caucuses reinforce this dynamic. Farming is a tough and risky business, but it is, in fact, mostly a business. Creating a mythology about it only makes it harder for lawmakers to address farm policy in a sensible manner that benefits everyone.
Farming has been in the news lately, as the Trump administration talks incessantly about imposing massive new tariffs on agricultural products. It’s also intent on deporting a large portion of those farms’ labor pool. Last month, Trump assured farmers that he would protect them from any negative effects of his on-again, off-again trade war with China—not a surprise given federal taxpayers typically provide massive subsidies to farmers.
“The Trump administration provided more taxpayer dollars to farmers financially damaged by the administration’s trade policies than the federal government spends each year building ships for the Navy or maintaining America’s nuclear arsenal,” according to a 2020 study from the
Article from Reason.com
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