Charlie Quidnunc spotted this one:
the Department of Agriculture is proposing to purchase 400,000 tons (with a âtâ) of sugar from domestic producers
This is why we don’t need to worry about the government Budget. This sort of spending is what grows the economy, right?
The fact that the government can give the agribusiness millions of dollars of handouts and then Obama and Congress have the audacity to complain about the sequester is galling. This is corporate welfare at its most infuriating.
Yeah, sugar’s “down” to 20 cents a pound from highs of nearly 30 a few years ago. But it was in a bubble. 20 c/lb is still higher than it’s been for all but the last four years.
But what’s worse? Buying up sugar on the open market, or just giving the stuff to certain “private”, and already-subsidized, ethanol producers for half price. Talk about your corporate welfare. I mean, awesome for them, I guess. Can any old business just rely on the government to deliver its inputs to it at half market price?
The sheer breadth, depth, and multiplicity of interactions of government interventions in the economy is mindbogglingly disturbing. Loans, subsidies, tariffs, price supports, etc. And to what end?