Disgraceful Welfare Leaches
No, not single mothers squandering the monthly welfare check in a one big Blue-Light Special shopping spree. These welfare leaches are rich cotton farmers whose government subsidies exceed the market value of their crop by 30 percent. Jacob Sullum writes in Reason that "...the 'cotton competitiveness program' has cost taxpayers $.$1.7 billion during the last eight years. The payments have included $107 million to the Allenberg Cotton Co. of Cordova, Tennessee; $102 million to Dunavent Enterprises of Fresno, California, and Memphis, Tennessee; and $87 million to Cargill Cotton of Cordova, Tennessee":

Speaking of foreign competition, the cotton subsidies are shameful not only because U.S. farmers should have to play by the rules of the market but because this welfare program for the well-to-do has a ruinous impact on poor farmers in other countries who do not enjoy such largess. By artificially boosting the cotton supply, subsidies depress world prices, driving farmers in countries such as Mali, Benin, and Burkina Faso out of business. Oxfam estimates that U.S. subsidies cost cotton-growing African countries $300 million a year.

For American cotton farmers (whose average net worth is about $800,000) the subsidies may be the difference between growing cotton and growing something else, or between farming and pursuing a different line of work, assuming they can't compete without the government's support. For African farmers who earn something like $800 a year, the subsidies can be the difference between eating and starving.

Given this reality, the anger of African leaders is perfectly understandable. Referring to U.S. and European subsidies, Mali's finance minister told the BBC: "The money that those countries put into agricultural subsidies is five times what they give as development assistance. And we've always said to those rich countries, 'You're hypocrites. You tell us to play [by] the rules of the open market at the same time as you subsidize your farmers.'"

Additionally, If we now require poor people in the US to do community service work in exchange for their HUD housing, maybe we should be providing workfare, not welfare, for the rich. Yeah. Since cotton barons are getting all these handouts, shouldn't we get them out there next to all the poor people, picking up highway trash and cleaning toilets?