There’s something maddening about the belief that food production would be more abundant and efficient—and the results healthier and less expensive—with even more subsidies for relatively well-off farmers and agribusinesses. Indeed, there is lots of evidence that farm subsidies stifle innovation, make producers less competitive, reduce incentives to boost efficiency and consume less water and fewer pesticides, and shift the focus from farming crops to chasing subsidies. As a result, many farmers end up doing less with more, and people end up paying more for less.
Adding insult to injury, farm subsidies often lead to overproduction, which in theory should reduce the price of farm products and reduce farmers’ profits. That is, if the government did not appease this powerful lobby by buying its excess production. In other words, taxpayers pay for subsidies or loan guarantees, and then for the resulting production surplus, and then for storage.
Gary Galles reminds us of John Adams’s greatness.
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Arnold Kling reviews Michael Gibson’s Paper Belt on Fire.
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Noah Carl decries covidian “fact-checking” (so called) groupthink.
