Indeed, the obvious response to Ms. Badger is: "why not?"

Going a step farther, as Amy points out: most programs that transfer taxpayer money directly to private hands should not exist in the first place, at least, not at the federal level.

Just to take an example: any sort of welfare - helping people who are down on their luck - should happen at the local level. Various states and communities may want to address this differently. Why are the feds involved at all?

I think there's something to be said for domestic food production... we dont want this outsourced to cheaper countries in case of war or and energy crisis... best to be producing food at home

Because if a community has a lot of poor, random, usually the other people in the community are not in much of a position to help. In the US, people os socio-economic brackets congregate. Miles and miles of ghetto, followed by miles of lower middle class, followed by middle class, followed by wealthy.

You suggestion would work better here. I live in a village of about 1.1k. Down by the train station, there are apartments where cleaning ladies and other menial workers live. There are a few farms, and a few bigger apartments in townhouses in the center. Then there are row houses, twin houses, and single houses. It's very mixed, you've got factory workers, farmers, teachers, maids, professors, businessmen all in the same little area.

But I've never been anywhere like that in the US. I'm not saying they don't exist, just that there are so many large tracts segregated by income that it would never work.

"never been anywhere like that in the US. I'm not saying they don't exist, just that there are so many large tracts segregated by income that it would never work."

When you start to understand the economics of how these low income areas are created (these days mostly through the Section 8 housing programs) then you will start to understand why welfare needs to be at the county level and below.

It is the federal programs that keep people, in one place, and entrenched in poverty as opposed to having to move to where the jobs are.

Please elaborate?

I don't waste my money in strip clubs. Why should you be allowed to waste my money in strip clubs? If you want to waste money in strip clubs, get your own money.

One, as a business a brothel doesn't take the mortgage deduction. This is deducted as a business expense, in this case proportional as a percentage of the house used in said business.

Two, Obama raised the question of degrees and efficacy not that long ago. He was proposing pell and other forms government educational aid be rationed this way.

Farmers produce results in exchange for the subsidies. The poor aren't required to do so. And back in the days of segregation, teachers, doctors, poor people and bums all lived in the same neighborhoods and once the richer people had a chance to leave--they did. Ever wonder why?

So I see that Badger commits the fallacy of assuming that a tax deduction or cut constitutes a subsidy. That's tantamount of saying that the government rightfully owns all property, and that anything the government allows the citizen to keep constitutes a subsidy. We can argue about the propriety of the home mortgage interest deduction, but I will still claim that morally and legally, that is not a subsidy. All of that money that the government spent to prop up Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the banks who made bad loans? That was a subsidy.

Please elaborate?

Posted by: NicoleK at April 15, 2015 3:22 AM

Poverty isn't just something that *happens* to people randomly.

The federal government through their poverty programs tends to keep the poor isolated into big voting blocks of people receiving government benefits. Like in the inner cities.

Before these poverty programs people would move, to find work so they could survive.
The government has made it possible for them to remain where they are and collect welfare for generations,

If poverty programs are funded on the county level, when you get too many poor people in an area without jobs, it becomes more attractive to find work, and move to an area that has work, rather than to remain in an area collecting meager benefits, because that it all that can be supported by the local tax base.

It is a supply and demand thing.

If you didn't have farm subsidies food would be at least 2X the price it is now.

If you didn't have farm subsidies food would be at least 2X the price it is now.

Posted by: ParatrooperJJ at April 15, 2015 8:31 AM

I doubt it. Only certain crops are subsidized. And subsidies from the government can actually cause farmers to grow crops that yield a big cash subsidy from the government without contributing to the food supply.

Growing corn for ethanol is a prime example. Caused the prices for edible corn to rise rather than fall.

Sugar is the same way. Government sets the price higher than the market, and then limits imports. That is why your chemical laden soft drinks are filled with nasty tasting corn surup rather than delicious sugar.

The price controls and import limits of sugar benefit two or three companies who process and sell sugar in the US.
Explain how it benefits the average taxpayer and/or shopper (I like to pay tax money to make my sugar more expensive?).
So there are 'results' in exchange for subsidies. They're not the kind of results I would pay for, but hey.

There is also confusion on who really benefits from the various tax breaks and programs. Ag programs are sold as helping farmers and keeping prices down. As Isab pointed out it often doesn't keep prices down. The real benefactor is the large food processors. Similarly with the mortgage deduction. It is sold as helping poor homeowners. But the reality is it helps banks and is mainly used by high income types. Another one is the tax deductibility of local taxes. This helps high tax local governments, mainly helping democrats.

Want a smaller government, fight to eliminate all tax breaks, loop holes, subsidies, et al. While they are sold as helping the poor the main users of such rules are high income and high wealth individuals. Poor people don't have the time, energy, and education to research the tax code. Rich people can pay someone else to spend all day researching the tax code. And when government treats everyone equally there is little reason to spend large sums for your special group.

The strings that we attach to government aid are attached uniquely for the poor.

Wrong.

We put plenty of strings on aid and tax benefits for the non-poor as well.

[Props to Cousin Dave for pointing out that the government not taking your money is not the same as the government giving you someone else's money.]

We don't drug-test farmers who receive agriculture subsidies (lest they think about plowing while high!).

No, but we do expect there to be a farm, or at least a sizable lot of land in an agricultural area. You can't get an agricultural subsidy for your backyard tomato patch or for that suburban lot you rented to developer to be used for an office park.

We don't require Pell Grant recipients to prove that they're pursuing a degree that will get them a real job one day (sorry, no poetry!).

We expect them to be in college. Should they drop out or drop to a less-than-full-time status, they lose all or part of their grant.

And, you can get a "real" job that require a poetry degree. There aren't many of them and they don't pay well, but they are real jobs.

And those non-degree jobs? They're real jobs, too.

We don't require wealthy families who cash in on the home mortgage interest deduction to prove that they don't use their homes as brothels (because surely someone out there does this).

We expect there to be a house and a mortgage in order to take the mortgage interest deduction. Hence the corresponding IRS-reported form from the the bank required in order to take the deduction.

The uses to which the house is put (legal and illegal) and zoning requirements are left to local governments to regulate.

And, yes, farm subsidies are ridiculously administered, even if we accept that they're necessary to sustain crop production in this country.

The more I learn about government, the more Catch-22 resonates with truth:

Major Major’s father was a ... longlimbed farmer, a God-fearing, freedom-loving, law-abiding rugged individualist who held that federal aid to anyone but farmers was creeping socialism. He advocated thrift and hard work and disapproved of loose women who turned him down. His specialty was alfalfa, and he made a good thing out of not growing any. The government paid him well for every bushel of alfalfa he did not grow. The more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the government gave him, and he spent every penny he didn’t earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce. Major Major’s father worked without rest at not growing alfalfa. ...he sprang out of bed at the crack of noon every day just to make certain that the chores would not be done. He invested in land wisely and soon was not growing more alfalfa than any other man in the county. Neighbors sought him out for advice on all subjects, for he had made much money and was therefore wise. “As ye sow, so shall ye reap,” he counseled one and all, and everyone said, “Amen.”

Major Major’s father was an outspoken champion of economy in government, provided it did not interfere with the sacred duty of government to pay farmers as much as they could get for all the alfalfa they produced that no one else wanted or for not producing any alfalfa at all. He was a proud and independent man who was opposed to unemployment insurance and never hesitated to whine, whimper, wheedle and extort for as much as he could get from whomever he could.

"We rarely make similar demands of other recipients of government aid."

So? What's her point? Just because we don't do so with one set of folks doesn't mean we shouldn't do the same with others.