“the consumer cost per job protected was more than $50.000 per year in sugar, carbon steel, meat, television sets, and footwear. Robert S. McNamara, “Address to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development” (Manila, Philippines, May 10, 1979), p. 12.
The EC has 18 million tons of cereals, 1 million tons of butter, 525.00 tons of skimmed milk powder and almost 800.000 tons of meat in its warehouses. Maintenance costs are put at $10 billion—10 times the value of the stocks four years ago. South , Apr. 1986.
"...calculations suggest that each farm job that is "saved" costs a whooping $100.000 a year in Canada, and between $13.000 and $20.000 in Japan, America and the EC. Of course, such jobs are saved only at the expense of jobs in other sectors.
Far from preserving rural idyll, the CAP harms Europe’s farmland in two ways. First and most damaging, it artificially raises returns on a particular crops and thus encourages their cultivation in a manner that spoils the countryside. Farmers have an artificial incentive to squeeze more crops from every acre. That may mean cultivating more land that would otherwise be woodland or bog, or using bigger doses of nitrates and pesticides. monoculture leads to soil erosion and encourages horrors such as Holland’s manure mountain and the feeding of cows and sheep on the ground-up carcasses of other animals. The Economist, Jul., 1990.
My book and my notes always come handy during these days. |
