Social care for the Very Rich.
Oh, wow, colour me suprised and tell me that I should know better than expect anything else from American politicians. They have just gone and blocked a bill to cut US farm subsidies, and women and children , at home and abroad are gonna be picking up the tab.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/16/food-aid-republicans_n_878374.html?ref=fb&src=sp
Now, you may want to tell me that I am getting this from a disreputable source, that the Huffington post is a leftie website and what have you, so you don't believe it. Well, you take your own version of reality home and have fun with it.
A more enlightened approach would be to ask if the analysis of what this means is correct.
But anyway, my take is as follows:-
State paid farming subsidies in the USA (and elsewhere for that matter) are not generally used to support mom and pop operations that keep Rural communites alive and stop villages turning into ghost towns - they generally get run so that very wealthy landowners can pump out cheap cotton and other goods on the world market. Now, these (artificially) cheap goods then get dumped on the world's markets and farmers in poorer nations , unable to compete with Western subsidised good, go broke and are condemend to a life of poverty.
The smart thing to do would be stop paying rich people to grow things and buy stuff from poorer people at fair prices instead. This isn't 'Aid', it's simply 'Fair Trade' - the consumer may be paying more because they buy cotton at cost price - but the money goes to people who need the money. Right now, the US taxpayer can buy cotton shirts and food dirt cheap - but only because they pay higher than needed taxes to keep wealthy farming corporations in clover.
Subsidies for farming should be rolled back. Not just Stateside, but in Europe as well.
If th government were to earmark millions for , oooh , welfare moms, foodstamps for the poor, or something like that , the right wingers would moan about ' dependency culture' and the need for hard work and ' making a real contriibution' - but here we see the wealthy farming corporations, and the people who own them, getting their snouts in the trough and getting a free lunch at the taxpayers expense. This is simply ' socialism for the very rich', and it's time that the rich got off of the American and European taxpayers back and made their own way in the world's markets.It's time they gave poorer countries a fairer deal in terms of trading.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/16/food-aid-republicans_n_878374.html?ref=fb&src=sp
Now, you may want to tell me that I am getting this from a disreputable source, that the Huffington post is a leftie website and what have you, so you don't believe it. Well, you take your own version of reality home and have fun with it.
A more enlightened approach would be to ask if the analysis of what this means is correct.
But anyway, my take is as follows:-
State paid farming subsidies in the USA (and elsewhere for that matter) are not generally used to support mom and pop operations that keep Rural communites alive and stop villages turning into ghost towns - they generally get run so that very wealthy landowners can pump out cheap cotton and other goods on the world market. Now, these (artificially) cheap goods then get dumped on the world's markets and farmers in poorer nations , unable to compete with Western subsidised good, go broke and are condemend to a life of poverty.
The smart thing to do would be stop paying rich people to grow things and buy stuff from poorer people at fair prices instead. This isn't 'Aid', it's simply 'Fair Trade' - the consumer may be paying more because they buy cotton at cost price - but the money goes to people who need the money. Right now, the US taxpayer can buy cotton shirts and food dirt cheap - but only because they pay higher than needed taxes to keep wealthy farming corporations in clover.
Subsidies for farming should be rolled back. Not just Stateside, but in Europe as well.
If th government were to earmark millions for , oooh , welfare moms, foodstamps for the poor, or something like that , the right wingers would moan about ' dependency culture' and the need for hard work and ' making a real contriibution' - but here we see the wealthy farming corporations, and the people who own them, getting their snouts in the trough and getting a free lunch at the taxpayers expense. This is simply ' socialism for the very rich', and it's time that the rich got off of the American and European taxpayers back and made their own way in the world's markets.It's time they gave poorer countries a fairer deal in terms of trading.