Politics

[paulhope]

The latest Economist has a pretty good leader on "the end of cheap food" but, mostly, agricultural subsidies. It's full article on the subject is deeper and worth reading if you have the time.

Apparently, we have a 54 cents-a-gallon tariff on imported ethanol. A tariff? What the fuck?
Which reminds me--did any of you pay any attention to the

Comments

[eliwrites]

I used to scoff at people who followed Hollywood. But I'm not much better.

On actual politics, this hush-hush among Democrats about gov't subsidies to midwestern farmers is one of the drawbacks of having Iowa at the top. Darn.

[paulhope]

Basically, our electoral system sucks. It's like twenty different dumb compromises between two halves of the empowered few piled on top of each other.

[anosognosia]

It's not just the end of cheap food, it's the maintainance of poverty in the third world. Why would Democrats need to keep this hush-hush though? They don't need to pay lipservice to free markets and trades the way Republicans do, do they?

[paulhope]

By "this" do you mean agricultural subsidies?

The general problem is that in the U.S. the political system is structural skewed to over-represent rural areas. Since our Senate has equal representation from each state, that means that people in less populated states are overrepresented (as opposed to the House of Representatives, where representation is proportional to population, modulo gerrymandering). Since most of the low-population states are rural ones where all they do is farm, that means that they have a strong grip on agricultural policy that serves them

[anosognosia]

Right, but I would have thought that the Republicans keep quiet about their protectionism (at least, pending which audience they're addressing), and similarly the Democrats of their opposition to it, so that they are hypocritical only in action rather than overtly so. In other words, I'm surprised that your run-of-the-mill Democrat would express earnesty about ending this protectionism , and that your run-of-the-mill Republican would express earnesty about maintaining it.

[paulhope]

I see. I think, though, that what you get here is less a party divide but a divide between special interest group plus ALL presidential candidates on one side and everyone else who is paying attention on the other. So all candidates (except for ideologues who are relatively fringe, like Ron Paul) are expressing the same things about agricultural subsidies. So Democrats aren't really being hypocritical here, except to the extent that they actually think subsidies are bad (which I expect the smart ones do anyway).

[tcpip]

Apparently, we have a 54 cents-a-gallon tariff on imported ethanol. A tariff? What the fuck?

Sugar. Marginal state. Lobby group.

[paulhope]

Yeah, obviously. But it seems so 19th century. Most of our protectionist laws are subtler than this. And especially when energy policy is such a hot topic lately, the hypocrisy is stunning.