{"id":2662,"date":"2011-07-06T05:00:40","date_gmt":"2011-07-06T09:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/?p=2662"},"modified":"2011-07-04T19:51:03","modified_gmt":"2011-07-04T23:51:03","slug":"more-on-the-political-economy-of-agricultural-subsidies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/2662","title":{"rendered":"More on the Political Economy of Agricultural Subsidies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From an <a title=\"Notable and Quotable\" href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB10001424052702304450604576415880239918492.html\" target=\"_blank\">article<\/a> in the <em>Wall Street Journal<\/em>:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">&#8220;The Department of Agriculture no longer serves as a lifeline to millions of struggling homestead farmers. Instead, it is a vast, self-perpetuating postmodern bureaucracy with an amorphous budget of some $130 billion &#8212; a sum far greater than the nation&#8217;s net farm income this year.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">This year [the USDA] will give a record $20 billion in various crop &#8216;supports&#8217; to the nation&#8217;s wealthiest farmers &#8212; with the richest 10 percent receiving over 70 percent of all the redistributive payouts. Free-market conservatives don&#8217;t dare touch the Department of Agriculture, given the senatorial clout of Midwest farm states. Don&#8217;t expect left-wing Democrats to object either. In a brilliantly conceived devil&#8217;s bargain, the Department of Agriculture gives welfare to the wealthy on the one hand, while on the other sending more than $70 billion to the lower income brackets in food stamps.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Here is <a title=\"The Department of Food Subsidies\" href=\"http:\/\/www.realclearpolitics.com\/articles\/2011\/06\/23\/the_department_of_food_subsidies_110326.html\" target=\"_blank\">more<\/a> from the same author.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From an article in the Wall Street Journal: &#8220;The Department of Agriculture no longer serves as a lifeline to millions of struggling homestead farmers. Instead,&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/2662\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">More on the Political Economy of Agricultural 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":[18,30,43,55,26,34,14,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-agriculture","category-commentary","category-crop-insurance","category-economics","category-food","category-macro","category-micro","category-policy","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1gPg8-GW","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2662","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=2662"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2680,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2662\/revisions\/2680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}