patrick.net

What Vicente's graph says is important. It is a giveaway to Republicans.

But look at the big picture:

Why should anyone be deeply worried about "10 to 30 billion" worth of farm subsidies when you look at the size of the defense budget, which was $685B in 2010? We are talking between 1.5% and 4.4% of the defense budget here.

To expand and what someone said earlier, $10B for farming could be considered a very cheap defense budget.

If you were going to look for budget items to cut, I'd start by bringing the boys and girls home from war. It would be much cheaper to subsidize them and let them do some peaceful farming.

Hooray, a big picture thinker. SS, Medicare, Medicaid, and defense are the only items that really matter in the budget, everything else is at best a rounding error. As of this time SS and Medicare have nothing to do with debt or deficit. So fixing the budget AT THIS TIME (ss/mc will have to be dealt with also) has only 2 possible solutions, cutting defense and medicaid or raising taxes. Or both. Everything else is just an ideological smokescreen.

thunderlips,

I have to say I don't see much use of most of the items on your wishlist. Patriot missiles around big cities?? What for??

>>Every country in the world uses the military to patrol their own borders.

I suppose most armed forces around the world do"patrol the borders" in some sense, and I think we do as well.

But I have never seen a country except a totalitarian one or an immediate neighbor of same that has soldiers lined up along every mile of border unless in a state of ongoing war.

For me, that is food for thought.

Thunderlips11.

After reading your thoughts I'm even more convinced that using armed forces for domestic policing duties in peacetime is a thoroughly bad idea.

Can you imagine what might happen when you get a bunch of battle-scarred and armed Marines manning our borders and airports?

People think TSA is bad, imagine veteran Marines and just be careful what you wish for.

Here is an example: 4 Marines shot a 15-year old Mexican goat herder

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esequiel_Hern%C3%A1ndez_Jr

If you read the story and the background it will become quite apparent that these Marines were just trigger happy idiots.

There are also many other weaknesses in your view of national defense. For example,

1. A long-range enemy bomber would be tracked and intercepted long before reaching the continental US.

2. The reason we do not much hunt for submarines along the costs is that it is not effective. Instead we try to find them on the near Murmansk, on the way in or out of base.

3. Shooting down suspect airliners with Patriot missiles is just an all-around bad idea. After 9/11 we have better routines for scrambling an interceptor jet if needed. With your thinking, any stray jet with engine problems would be suspect if straying off course. Think about the jet that landed in Hudson River.

I think you should rethink what you are saying here. I don't have the time and inclination to discuss this at length but some of the above points ought to give you pause.

justme says

What Vicente’s graph says is important. It is a giveaway to Republicans.
But look at the big picture:
Why should anyone be deeply worried about “10 to 30 billion” worth of farm subsidies when you look at the size of the defense budget, which was $685B in 2010? We are talking between 1.5% and 4.4% of the defense budget here.
To expand and what someone said earlier, $10B for farming could be considered a very cheap defense budget.
If you were going to look for budget items to cut, I’d start by bringing the boys and girls home from war. It would be much cheaper to subsidize them and let them do some peaceful farming.

Ron Paul is promising to cut military, not sure if he'll have much change of winning though. Our nation has lost a lot of it's true American conservatism in exchange for bipolar left and right.

thunderlips11 says

So every single Russian Sub is tracked 24-7, 365, from port to every waypoint on patrol, and back again without ever being lost?

Like I said, I don't have time for this, but the level of argumentation you are presenting here is very weak.

Here 's another example:

I did not make the claim that you put in my mouth above, and it is disingenious on top of that.

What I said is that it is more EFFECTIVE to track them from Murmansk than it is to hunt for them at random outside our coasts. That's like looking for a needle in a haystack. And you are completely missing the point: The Russian subs carry ICBMs, INTERCONTINENTAL ballistic missiles. They don't need to be near our coast to conduct their mission. Most of them are hiding in other locations, not near a coast somewhere.

Enough. And stop putting words in my mouth. Done.

Wasteful Corn for ethanol subsidies (at least they may be cut greatly)...
Completely wasteful subsidies Steven Rattner slams-govt-support of corn

Sugar cane is much more efficient for producing ethanol.

Yes but lots more corn gets grown by republican voters in the red states than sugar cane.

@Shrekgrinch,

All I can say is that your idea above makes as much sense as anything else you have said this year...

HousingWatcher says

Farmers are doing quite well and don’t need subsidies. Food prices are going up. Farm land prices are skyrocketing. Why should we subsidize them?

This could also be due to Bernanky's easy money policy. It has to go into speculation since speculation provides more financial benefit due to its preferred tax treatment.

What ever...in this budget crisis, there was talk of cutting this and cutting that. These were barely touched.

shrekgrinch says

I think that to end unemployment, farms should be required to sow their fields with people using spoons.

They should be required to use Americans for labor. Just cut off their welfare or unemployment and we won't "need" Mexicans for this any more.

Tenouncetrout says

Yeah but the Devil is in the details.
And the biggest determining fact right now, is...
It's not a republican controlled Washington, just a big ole cozy king size heart shaped rotating bed, that all of them are lying in.

The recovery is down for the count, and the President is Laughing about the lack of Jobs.

I'm TOT and I still approve this message!

More welfare for big agriculture corporations.

when-one-farm-subsidy-ends-another-may-rise-to-replace-it

Again, who really supports these?

Let me put it to you this way: My Uncle has been a dairy farmer his entire life. The farm was handed down to him from his Father and so on. Thus the land was paid for long ago. That said, if subsidies go away for starters a LOT of farmers would go bust pretty quick. When that happens your food prices will skyrocket. Americans are sort of ignorant about food. Compared to the rest of the world we pay a pittance for our food. Take away those subsidies and kiss those cheap prices buy-bye.

I just find the disconnect hilarious. People in the rural farming areas are often the loudest mouths about the evils of "welfare" and "socialism". However if you talk about removing their subsidies they squeal like pigs. Let's say it costs me a dollar for a cantaloupe, but it took a dollar of subsidies to buy me that "low" price. Frankly I don't care if the price of a cantaloupe goes up by a dollar. To use a conservative line, that dollar is currently extracted from me by force anyhow, and given to someone based on how adroitly they bellied up to the trough.

Now I can see an argument for subsidies being used to maintain family farms as some kind of "traditional" element, but increasingly that's not what's happening. Agribusiness is a large recipient, and it enables them to gobble up even more small farms.

edvard2 says

Let me put it to you this way: My Uncle has been a dairy farmer his entire life. The farm was handed down to him from his Father and so on. Thus the land was paid for long ago. That said, if subsidies go away for starters a LOT of farmers would go bust pretty quick. When that happens your food prices will skyrocket. Americans are sort of ignorant about food. Compared to the rest of the world we pay a pittance for our food. Take away those subsidies and kiss those cheap prices buy-bye.

Why would someone with a paid for farm need subsidies?

Almost all of the agricultural subsidies go to corporate farms. That's easy to look up. It's not about cheaper food, it's about bigger profits for the stockholders and bigger salaries for the executives.

bob2356 says

Why would someone with a paid for farm need subsidies?

Here's why they're needed. Unlike other professions farmers do not receive a normal, weekly paycheck. Most income is seasonal. In the meantime you must buy seed, feed for animals, and so on. Subsidies help farmers by making things like feed more affordable. Some of you who think farmers are getting rich off of this are mistaken. My Uncle certainly isn't doing it for the money and there are MANY years when they barely get by. Without subsidies he would go under. Like I said- subsidies are one of the main reasons you can go to the store and buy a loaf of bread for $1.50 or so. Food in the US is cheap.

edvard2 says

My Uncle certainly isn't doing it for the money and there are MANY years when they barely get by.

Nobody wants American farmers to starve. However if, as I said, he has to charge $2 for something instead of taking subsidies to artificially make it cheaper, so be it. Nothing you have said, proves that subsidies are beneficial in a macroeconomic sense. If we weren't paying the subsidies in the form of taxes, maybe he'd end up with MORE money as that subsidy money would NOT be laundered through Federal agencies with overhead costs, and given to his large competitors.

Well hey- what does my Uncle know? He's only a farmer with 60+ years in the profession. I guess some of you who I'm assuming know everything there is to know about the business of farming are clearly be specialists in the field.

edvard2 says

He's only a farmer with 60+ years in the profession. I guess some of you who I'm assuming know everything there is to know about the business of farming are clearly be specialists in the field.

You haven't explained why an expertise in farming makes him an expert in public policy. How did farmers EVER survive before subsidies? Some of them got rich at it hundreds of years ago, well before the 1920's/30's when many current policies came about. There must have been some lost secret.... Perhaps the Grange/Grangers took it to their graves.

But what do I know I work at an Ag school in the middle of farm country.

Why would he be an expert at these policies? Because he is well-aware of how they work because its an integral part of his business affairs. Incidentally the subsidy program came about during the depression when thousands upon thousands of farmers went bust- the same way that many thousands of ordinary citizens lost all of their money in the banks. The FDIC and farm subsidies are in many ways interconnected, as a sort of government-backed security measure. Without it therein lies the very real possibility that the health of the nation's agricultural sector could be placed into a dire situation without this security.

edvard2 says

Because he is well-aware of how they work because its an integral part of his business affairs.

A defense contractor is well aware of how to get Federal contracts for a billion-dollar boondoggle, it is an integral part of their business.

A Walmart greeter is well aware of how to take advantage of food stamps and every other supplement to keep their poverty liveable. Why if they didn't have them, they might have to ..... organize or strike or something. Horrors!

So?

edvard2 says

Like I said- subsidies are one of the main reasons you can go to the store and buy a loaf of bread for $1.50 or so. Food in the US is cheap.

You are aware that most of the farm subsidies are to DECREASE production in order to keep prices up aren't you? Follow this link to the St Louis fed article. http://valuingeconomics.blogspot.com/2008/09/some-history-on-farm-subsidies.html Food in the US is so cheap because it is so cheap to produce in the midwest. There aren't many other places on the planet where there is that much land that can be farmed so easily.

bob2356 says

You are aware that most of the farm subsidies are to DECREASE production in order to keep prices up aren't you?

Yes, it is well-known that farm subsidies have tended to pay large agricultural companies not to grow stuff over time. There have been some reforms, as the St. Louis Fed article that bob sent points out, although not enough. The prior cap for direct payments used to be for farmers making $2.5M (wow!), and the new cap is still quite high -- certainly in the "job creator" range.

Seasonality on its own is not sufficient to account for this. Other businesses are seasonal too -- that's why fisherman and farmers get to calculate their tax withholding differently from many of us. But that doesn't show why we need a subsidies year after year -- that just shows why we might need to give new farmers a small subsidies loan to get started. How many new farmers do you know who are starting from scratch?

Also, the unpredictability of weather isn't sufficient justification either. Farmers already have crop insurance (see the NYT article for some details), and they can already get disaster pay if there's truly a widespread disaster.

A lot of these subsidies are getting harder and harder to justify (if they were even justifiable to begin with) when we're undergoing austerity measures.

Let's not even get into ethanol. A huge scam forced upon all of us.

edvard2 says

That said, if subsidies go away for starters a LOT of farmers would go bust pretty quick.

Why can't commodity prices go up to make up the difference?

bob2356

>Yes but lots more corn gets grown by republican voters in the red states than sugar cane.

I really hate the hypocrisy here with these beneficiaries of federal money.

edvard2 says

>That said, if subsidies go away for starters a LOT of farmers would go bust pretty quick.

I am skeptical about this claim. Data?

I don't know who gave you the "dislike" Thunderlips, but you are right.