According to a famous saying, usually attributed to Bismarck, you never really want to see how sausage or legislation is made.
This piece, from Time magazine, about federal farm subsidies is brilliant, brutally honest and features Minnesota’s own Collin Peterson, chairman of the House Ag Committee, in a not-so-heroic role (that’s Rep. Peterson at right).
The story is very long and, as the first sentence confesses, covers a topic that is “not sexy.” But I couldn’t stop reading and highly commend it to those who can handle the truth.
My friend Pasquino (that’s a statue of him at left) called it to my attention by describing the weird vision it inspired in him, thus:
Reading about how U.S. farm policy is actively emptying the Red States in pursuit of greater and greater efficiency, I had some thoughts. A mental picture. A movie.
Picture two cars on a-one lane highway accelerating toward each other.
One is called Efficiency; it’s lean and mean, and bent on eliminating every unnecessary worker, every unprofitable institution, every nuisance obligation, every unnecessary motion except for the motion required to manufacture and sell… and to deposit profits in the Caymans. Nothing else left over.
The other is called Pure Market Capitalism; this is a lunatic religion that says everybody can be a millionaire as long as the marketplace keeps expanding exponentially. Like a balloon. Extra people go into the army.
Less and less, ever smaller, less responsible, ever cheaper; fewer working faster and harder for less money.
Vs.
More and bigger; more investors, more market share, more markets, more stores, more shareholders, increasing endlessly.
One of them has to be a lie.
Efficiency is what Evolution is all about: remorseless, godless, red in tooth and claw, it dislikes people.
Capitalism has created a population boom by feeding more people more efficiently for two centuries going on three, but it cannot continue forever, so the promise is phony. But it won’t be phony for a few years.
It’s like a Ponzi scheme. The early investors (our parents and their millionaire employers) will be fine. The last generation to buy in will lose everything. I know what you’re asking: what are the armies for? You already know.
Pasquino is the nom de plume of Minneapolis writer Eric Hanson.
I don’t know we will ever solve this issue until someone, somewhere at sometime is willing to suggest that the elimination of all subsidies is the only way to stop the gold rush. Frankly, I don’t see that happening. The farm bill does have bi-partisan support. Both Republicans and democrats on the Agriculture Sub-Committee are in favor of it. No real shock there. With all the real problems faced in this bill, perhaps an apology to Mrs. Bachmann is now in order . . . at least she is willing to bite the hand that feeds her!
I think I see what you’re vision is getting at Pasquino. But the TIME magaine article has a couple of dangling loose thread ideas that perhaps inspired your inscrutable vision. The one thought is that the TIME article never completes the natural consequences of the increasing efficiency idea. If the increasing efficiency of the farming economy depletes rural areas of its population, doesn’t that mean that they lose votes? The TIME article doesn’t really connect that idea with the farm subsidy issue. What this reminds me of however is the enclosure movement which occurred over several centuries with varying intensity in England and which inspired the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, as well as many a reformer. In England they ended up with “rotten boroughs” and other distortions of the electoral system in Parliament by which the wealthy landowners held disprportionate electoral power. Poor people driven off the “commons” (really a complex system of land tenure handed down from the feudalistic manorial system) were forced into industrial labor.
I think we have seen a similar trend in this country since the closing the frontier and the disposition of the fedetral lands under the Homestead Act.
But there is another issue which i think you may also be getting at which the old battle between Thomas Malthus and the ability of the land to sustain the feeding of the growing populace versus Adam Smith and Jeremy Bentham which holds that capitalism will figure out ways to sustain a growing population. You throw another ringer in there which is like Herbert Spencer and his Social Darwinism. I personally think that is a fallacy because we do not know that capitalism necessarily functions in the way you describe.
Safety net, not a pot of gold
Huge multi-millionaires are feeding at the trough of government farm subsidies and Rep. Colin Peterson is the primary slop hauler.
The notorious five-year, $280 BILLION farm bill is up for re-enactment and Peterson is the biggest proponent of keeping the ridiculous subsidies system as is.
The farm program began after the droughts and bad markets of the Great Depression put farmers on the welfare rolls. We needed something to secure a safe, affordable and dependable food supply and the program delivered that.
In 1987, Congress passed the Farm Program Payments Integrity Act, which required subsidy recipients to be actively engaged in farming. The intent was to support active, practicing farm operations but Washington has a way of legislating loopholes big enough to drive a mansion through. Minnesota’s Cargill, the largest privately owned company in the world, raked in $51 million over 18 months in 2005. They were one of 2,000 people from the Twin Cities receiving subsidy money. Nationwide, television personality David Letterman and billionaire David Rockefeller along with 600 other New Yorkers benefit from farm subsidy returns on their investments.
I must admit, I get $1,900 a year to keep 42 acres in native prairie but then I’m not a billionaire either.
Time magazine reported Peterson advised House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that the Democrats would loose important farm votes if they cut these subsidies to millionaires. The reality is, Democrats will loose votes if they don’t fix what’s wrong with government. Democrats are the party looking out for the little guy. These subsidies are looking out for the big guys. That’s a political looser with all voters as well as farmers.
Our only hope is that the Senate will vote to put caps on subsidies like has been done with dairy supports. So far Minnesota Senators Norm Coleman and Amy Klobuchar along with North Dakota’s Bryon Dorgan and Iowa’s Charles Grassley are supporting reform.
Peterson has done many good things on the House Agriculture Committee and now that he is chairman he can do much more. The diary program has a system of caps that is working very well. Why can’t they do the same for the five main commodities?
You may want to contact our representatives and remind them that the farm program should be a safety net, not a pot of gold.
“Peterson has done many good things on the House Agriculture Committee….”
The TIME article describes some of the ‘good things’ he’s done lately.