{"id":10557,"date":"2015-02-17T05:00:48","date_gmt":"2015-02-17T10:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/?p=10557"},"modified":"2015-05-24T11:09:49","modified_gmt":"2015-05-24T15:09:49","slug":"catch-22-and-farm-subsidies-its-the-political-economy-stupid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/10557","title":{"rendered":"Catch 22 and Farm Subsidies: It&#8217;s the Political Economy, Stupid"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Catch22.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-10561\" src=\"http:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Catch22.jpg\" alt=\"Catch22\" width=\"188\" height=\"281\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The\u00a0father of Major Major, a character in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/1451626657\/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=1451626657&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=marfbel-20&amp;linkId=FNQYLWG5BT46B2MW\">Catch 22<\/a>, a novel by Joseph Heller, makes a good living not growing alfalfa. &#8220;The more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the government gave him, and he spent every penny he didn&#8217;t earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce.&#8221; Each day, Mr Major &#8220;sprang out of bed at the crack of noon&#8230; just to make certain that the chores would not be done.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>To this day, to be treated as a farmer in America doesn\u2019t necessarily require you to grow any crops. According to the Government Accountability Office, between 2007 and 2011 Uncle Sam paid some $3m in subsidies to 2,300 farms where no crop of any sort was grown. Between 2008 and 2012, $10.6m was paid to farmers who had been dead for over a year. Such payments explain why Tom Vilsack, the agriculture secretary, is promoting a rule to attempt to crack down on payments to non-farming folk. But with crop prices now falling, taxpayers are braced to be fleeced again.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>From a great <a title=\"Milking Taxpayers\" href=\"http:\/\/www.economist.com\/news\/united-states\/21643191-crop-prices-fall-farmers-grow-subsidies-instead-milking-taxpayers\" target=\"_blank\">article<\/a> in the most recent issue of <em>The Economist<\/em>. The article goes on to mention how people like the Walmart heirs, CNN founder Ted Turner, Senator Chuck Grassley, Jon Bon Jovi, and &#8220;working-class&#8221; hero\u00a0Bruce Springsteen (whose net worth is <a title=\"Bruce Springsteen Net Worth\" href=\"http:\/\/www.celebritynetworth.com\/richest-celebrities\/rock-stars\/bruce-springsteen-net-worth\/\" target=\"_blank\">estimated<\/a> to stand at about $300 million) are among those hard-up rural folks who receive\u00a0farm subsidies.<\/p>\n<p>What is behind this state of affairs? <a title=\"Bellemare and Carnes (Food Policy, 2015)\" href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/pii\/S0306919214001523\" target=\"_blank\">It&#8217;s the political economy, stupid<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The\u00a0father of Major Major, a character in Catch 22, a novel by Joseph Heller, makes a good living not growing alfalfa. &#8220;The more alfalfa he&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/10557\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Catch 22 and Farm Subsidies: It&#8217;s the Political Economy, Stupid<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1gPg8-2Kh","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10557"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10557\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10937,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10557\/revisions\/10937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}