{"id":10692,"date":"2015-03-18T05:00:04","date_gmt":"2015-03-18T09:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/?p=10692"},"modified":"2015-03-17T10:14:54","modified_gmt":"2015-03-17T14:14:54","slug":"the-richard-scarry-rule-of-politics-and-the-political-economy-of-farm-subsidies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/10692","title":{"rendered":"The Richard Scarry Rule of Politics and the Political Economy of Farm Subsidies"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"RichardScarry\"<\/a>
What is this “austerity” thing we keep hearing of?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A few\u00a0years ago, while reporting on the madness that is European farm subsidies, this columnist came up with a “Richard Scarry” rule of politics. Most politicians hate to confront any profession or industry that routinely appears in children\u2019s books (such as those penned by the late Mr. Scarry). This gives outsize power to such folk as farmers, fishermen, doctors, firemen or\u2014to cite a fine work in the Scarry canon\u2014to firms that build Cars and Trucks and Things That Go. The rule is seldom good news for taxpayers, and there is a logic to that too: picture books rarely show people handing over fistfuls of money to the government.<\/p>\n

The Scarry rule was tested afresh on March 7th at the inaugural “Iowa Ag Summit,” a campaign-style forum for politicians pondering White House runs in 2016. Reflecting Iowa\u2019s clout as host of the first caucuses of the presidential election cycle, the summit lured nine putative candidates, all of them Republicans. Democrats were also invited, but declined. Such grandees as Jeb Bush, a former governor of Florida, Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin and Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey took turns to sit on a dais beside a shiny green tractor, to tell an audience of corn (maize) growers, pork-producers and hundreds of reporters how much they love farmers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

From an great\u00a0article<\/a>\u00a0titled “Paying Fealty to Farmers” which you should read in its entirety if you have any interest in agricultural policy, and which can be found in this week’s issue of the Economist<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Both my wife and I fondly remember reading Richard Scarry books (or having our parents read them to us) growing up, so I thought the “Richard Scarry” rule of politics was particularly funny and, it turns out, a good rule of thumb when it comes\u00a0who reaps the benefits of political capture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few\u00a0years ago, while reporting on the madness that is European farm subsidies, this columnist came up with a “Richard Scarry” rule of politics. Most<\/p>\n

Continue readingThe Richard Scarry Rule of Politics and the Political Economy of Farm Subsidies<\/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-10692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1gPg8-2Ms","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10692","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=10692"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10699,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10692\/revisions\/10699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}