We've Got To Stop Meeting Like This

It's "oh-dark-stupid" in the morning, as we used to say in the army. But after a night of burning some excess paycheque at the bar, I'm narrowly awake (like wide awake, only rather less so).

Looking at the headlines, I notice that US Senators from both parties are paying careful attention to the side their bread's buttered on.

They prefer to reduce subsidies to the poor by cutting food stamps, rather than end the obscene practice of shovelling money into farms, which the US and other countries have pledged to end under the WTO Doha agreement, and tentatively agreed to cut down under NAFTA.

It's no co-incidence that poor people can't afford the best lobbyists.

Subsidies, particularly agricultural ones, are a way of rewarding inefficiency. If someone from another country can produce say, sugar, more cheaply than you can, should you be allowed to continue running your farm on tax dollars simply because you're "home-grown"?

A note: I'm a full supporter of free trade worldwide. But it doesn't work if you won't play by the rules, and it looks as though in the States, politics will trump trade nearly every time.

Consider softwood: Timber exported by Canada is subject to import duties worth roughly 30% of its value. The US then ploughs the revenue back into its own timber industry. Subsidy by another name.

The US-Canada border was to open to live beef shipments last week. But Montana ranchers sued to keep it closed "to protect public health". So a federal department has said we're doing everything right, but a group of people who are making money from the border closure can go to a judge and ask that they be allowed to continue making money in the name of health?

I'm going to ask that the border be closed to foreign chips in order to protect the public from obesity. The fact that I own a chip business is surely not relevant?

Sugar, cotton, and other agricultural goods are massively subsidized in America, to the detriment of importing producers such as India, who actually produce quality product cheaply. Sugar is an especially obscene case. And of course, much of that money is political subsidy as well, turning up in the pockets of (surprise!) senators lower in the food chain.

And finally, it comes down to this: we're not talking about "trimming the fat" from a bunch of welfare bums so that hard-working John and Martha Deer can go on working the family wheat farm. We're talking about cutting aid to people who are already malnourished so that agribusiness concerns can preserve their price ceilings.

Agricultural subsidies are outmoded waste, and should be phased out in all civilised countries. Unfortunately farm lobby groups are an essential part of the democratic political process.

And at the heart of it, apparently, is a desire by the once-elected President to "hold down future defecits"--The latest plan?

Quick quiz: Holding down defecits is something which could have been done by:
a) Not cutting taxes in the swingeing fashion he did.
b) Failing to invade a nation that had no weapons of mass whatever and no connection to the World Trade Center attacks.
c) Not pouring billions into the Missile Umbrella.

And if our major trade partner would shut down subsidies, then perhaps we'd end ours.

O for the day!

Speaking of agriculture, here's a rather addictive game: Grow.