{"id":2459,"date":"2011-06-23T05:00:09","date_gmt":"2011-06-23T09:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/?p=2459"},"modified":"2011-06-20T06:01:22","modified_gmt":"2011-06-20T10:01:22","slug":"farm-subsidies-and-foreign-aid-why-fund-both","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/2459","title":{"rendered":"Farm Subsidies and Foreign Aid: Why Fund Both?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From a\u00a0<a title=\"Why Fund Both Farm Subsidies and Foreign Aid?\" href=\"http:\/\/shortsentences.org\/2011\/02\/why-fund-both-farm-subsidies-and-foreign-aid\/\" target=\"_blank\">post<\/a> I had missed when it was published in February but which deserves to be linked to over and over:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">&#8220;The USDA routinely\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/01\/16\/opinion\/16sun3.html?_r=1&amp;ref=farmbillus\">disburses<\/a> $10 billion to $30 billion a year in farm subsisdies. President Obama has\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/philanthropy.com\/blogs\/government-and-politics\/foreign-aid-would-grow-slightly-in-obama-budget\/28051\">allocated<\/a> $47 billion for the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/nationaljournal.com\/nationalsecurity\/obama-budget-gives-state-department-usaid-47-billion-20110214\">State Department and USAID<\/a> for the next fiscal year (not including proposed expenditures for Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan).<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Why does the U.S. simultaneously fund domestic agricultural subsidies\u00a0<em>and<\/em> foreign aid? The policies oppose each other. When it comes to promoting development opportunities for farmers around the globe,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.usaid.gov\/our_work\/agriculture\/\">one<\/a> of USAID\u2019s ostensible goals, the left hand of the U.S. binds its right.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Agricultural subsidies primarily benefit corporate farmers, distort world food prices, and nudge us to eat ridiculous amounts of high-fructose corn syrup. But these policies are longstanding, seemingly immutable, and have support on both sides of the political aisle, as Jonathan Rauch elegantly and exhaustively describes in\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=2HPv0LjncOUC&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;dq=government's+end&amp;hl=en&amp;ei=FL1nTeGqJMjSgQf-qonMCg&amp;sa=X&amp;oi=book_result&amp;ct=result&amp;resnum=1&amp;ved=0CCgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\"><em>Government\u2019s End<\/em><\/a>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>For me, the answer to the question in the title probably lies in a combination of the rational ignorance of some voters and in the mistaken belief among politicians that there is such a thing as a free lunch.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From a\u00a0post I had missed when it was published in February but which deserves to be linked to over and over: &#8220;The USDA routinely\u00a0disburses $10&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/2459\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Farm Subsidies and Foreign Aid: Why Fund Both?<\/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":[18,16,55,34,14,12,44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-agriculture","category-development","category-economics","category-macro","category-micro","category-policy","category-politics","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1gPg8-DF","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2459","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=2459"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2464,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2459\/revisions\/2464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}