Welfare For Big Sugar
As Americans are growing fatter and fatter and more and more unhealthy from sugar consumption, our government is giving big sugar big handouts. Great piece by Senator Dick Lugar in the Wash Times. He's calling for other legislators to help him stop end these subsidies (cue big sugar lobbyists!):
The collapse of communism brought an end to many of the world's command-and-control economic systems and central planning by government bureaucrats. But a notable exception is the United States government's sugar program. A complicated system of marketing allotments, price supports, purchase guarantees, quotas and tariffs that only a Soviet apparatchik could love, the U.S. sugar program has actually lasted longer than the Soviet Union itself.It imposes a hidden tax of billions of dollars annually on consumers and businesses and has destroyed thousands of U.S. manufacturing jobs. It substitutes the federal government for the private sector in basic decisions about buying and selling, supply and price.
...The beneficiaries of this Depression-era relic are sugar beet farms in some Northern states and sugar cane farms in Gulf states and elsewhere. But the biggest winners are a handful of huge industrial operations that cover thousands of acres.
In sugar land, as in communist countries, prices are set by the government, not the market. Agriculture Department central planners determine "marketing allotments" to assure domestic producers at least 85 percent of the market. They limit imports to keep prices inflated far above world levels. The planners set the split between cane and beet sugar and mandate a sales limit for each processor and mill.
If prices fall below the official level, a price-support system of "loans" to processors ensures that Big Sugar gets its federal share. The recipients get their loans in taxpayer dollars, but can repay them in (what else?) sugar.
...In 2006, the Commerce Department calculated that for every sugar-growing job saved by artificially high prices, three manufacturing jobs in the confectionery industry are lost.
We taxpayers have no business subsidizing any businesses. If you can't make it on your own, you should go out of business.
Imagine if a real Presidential contender appeared on the scene and promised to do away with all the government subsidies, close unnecessary military bases, simplify the tax code, and quickly evolve government programs to be as lean and efficient as we percieve private businesses to be.
At first he would take off like a rocket, but when every state and special interest began to realize the economic shock from these reforms, he would plummet like that Russian astronaut, screaming in rage about those that put him in that position.
Eric at April 1, 2011 8:16 AM
I completely agree with you Amy.
We should NOT as taxpayers be subsidizing businesses.
Among many other things....
Melody at April 1, 2011 9:17 AM
Our government is a handout machine. It grants favors to well-organized interests, and they give "unrelated" political contributions to the already-powerful, to keep them that way.
The peasants pay more for everything to support this scam. Politicians see the best taxes as increased prices for the goods and services which you buy.
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Protected From UglyRipe Tomatoes
02/24/05 Mises.org by Gary Galles
-> mises.org/mobile/daily.aspx?Id=1753
== ==
[edited] UglyRipe tomatoes come from 10 years of work by Joe Procacci. Customers say they have the luscious taste they remember from the good old days. Few UglyRipe meet the FTC’s standard of beauty for selling out of state, because they fail the roundness standards.
This is the latest in a long line of rip-offs in the name of consumer protection, enforced by government empowered marketing boards. Marketing boards trace from New Deal legislation to “save” agriculture.
Florida growers of pretty but bland tomatoes dominate America’s winter supply, and they protect their profits at consumer expense. Marketing boards block the sale of “lower quality” tomatoes to restrict competition from newer varieties that consumers might prefer.
== ==
That's why winter tomatoes are pretty but tasteless. The government is protecting us from having to think too much about them. This also applies to other fruits and vegetables such as oranges, apples, and peanuts.
Do you buy peanut butter?
Andrew_M_Garland at April 1, 2011 10:18 AM
No argument from me.
Cousin Dave at April 1, 2011 11:26 AM
Long overdue and it will never happen. The cost to each of us is small, the benefit to the advantaged is large, and it doesn't cost that much to buy the congress.
MarkD at April 1, 2011 12:49 PM
As Americans are growing fatter and fatter and more and more unhealthy from sugar consumption, our government is giving big sugar big handouts.
Both of those clauses are true (though I'm less gung-ho about blaming sugar alone for increased fatness).
However, they're not actually strongly related, despite the (presumably intentional) implication.
By which I mean, the handouts to "big sugar" in the US amount to an artificially inflated price for sugar.
If those subsidies, tariffs, and whatnot are removed, we're likely to see more sugar consumed, as the price plummets.
(Even if I was a fat-crusader, I'd think it a worthwhile tradeoff in terms of a free market and removed government interference, as well as dropping the price of food.)
Sigivald at April 1, 2011 2:40 PM
@Sigivald: the substitution of high fructose corn syrup for sugar would lessen as sugar prices came down, and that's good. As most sugars enter the blood stream, a person loses his appetite, but that does not happen with HFCS, for some reason
(I'm assuming sucrose is one of the "good" sugars.)
mpetrie98 at April 1, 2011 3:14 PM
The whole farm subsidy system needs to be scrapped. We support milk & cheese, sugar, pork, beef, peanuts, cotton and any number of other farming endeavors through government regs.
The need to go.
Jim P. at April 1, 2011 8:10 PM
@Sigivald: the substitution of high fructose corn syrup for sugar would lessen as sugar prices came down, and that's good. As most sugars enter the blood stream, a person loses his appetite, but that does not happen with HFCS, for some reason
Not to mention that sugar tastes better than HCFS. For whatever reason, my sweet tooth has subsided considerably since I got older (somewhat replaced by cravings for salty foods, though, and a weakness for potatoes, sigh), but when I do indulge in something sweet, I try to make sure it has actual sugar in it (Grown-Up Soda is good for this -- sweet but not TOO sweet). My first taste of Sprite in Latin America with real sugar was enough to push my opposition to sugar subsidies from "present" to "passionate."
marion at April 2, 2011 5:55 AM
Yep, the only reason there is a market for HFCS is because of price supports on sugar.
Cousin Dave at April 4, 2011 12:48 PM
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