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

[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.

This problem trickles up to the presidential election as well, since the electoral college gives each state votes based on the sum of their representatives in congress (2 Senators + N Representatives). So you have all these superenfranchised states out west with 3 or 4 electoral votes which matter to politicians more than they should. Although to be fair, what matters more here are that several of the main swings states (like Ohio) are largely agricultural. And right now--I think the YouTube video alluded to this--the question is who can win the primary in Iowa (big corn producing center), since historical the winning candidate in the early primary elections gets momentum that helps pull them through the remaining ones.

Their particular political biases aside, our elections are amazingly stupid. I'm sure that (and most if not all of the above) isn't news to you though.

As for which party supports what: it's actually a strange reversal here. Free-marketeering Republicans ought to be against subsidies, but their base is largely rural. Democrats are supposed to the the party of economic intervention, but they are also the urban party. (But they still are effectively Iowa's bitches right now...) Which just goes to show that our political parties are pretty stupid too.

[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).

[anosognosia]

Well, I'm thinking of, for example, the WTO protests. It's ironic that the protesters, in opposing the trade initiatives which centered around reduction of these subsidies, would unwittingly be supporting the Republican or generally American position. But it's comprehendible if the Republicans aren't up-front about this position. If they are though, it's even more bewildering.

[paulhope]

Good point. From what I've heard, a lot of WTO protesters are actual U.S. laborers whose jobs are threatened by subsidy/protectionism reduction; those protesters, being part of the special interest that would be harmed by the WTO, make sense. But yeah--when protesters who are ideologically "anti-globalization" in any form do those protests, they've got strange bedfellows.