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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (184032)	3/3/2004 5:17:35 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 1574097

1 - They cost billions of dollars. So does military hardware......billions upon billions. Military hardware serves a useful function. And food doesn't? Farm subsidies are a net negative even if you ignore the cost in the budget. And how is military hardware a net positive? Also the fact that military hardware costs billions doesn't support spending billions on anything else. Each thing would have to be evaluated separately and the fact that farm subsidies cost billions is a argument against them. Agreed. To justify the spending they would have to have a benefit that exceeds the cost. I doubt that military hardware would satisfy your formula. 2 - Many of them are structured to increase food prices which hurts consumers esp. the poor. No, they're not.......they are set up to guarantee the farmers a subsistence standard of living. Trust me, no farmer is getting rich off of Uncle Sam. Most farm subsidies go to large companies who do indeed make a lot of money off Uncle Sam. If that's true and I am not sure that it is, then cut off the subsidies to the corporations. Also you point wasn't a reply to my point. Even if no one did get a hefty profit from the subsidy it would still be true that many of them are structured so as to increase prices which does indeed hurt the poor. They are structured to prevent food prices from dropping too low, not to raise them. If that's true 3 - Like all subsidies they create a situation where resources are less efficiently used. They exist because we need farms and farmers. Right now their is a surplus of food but that could change dramatically in a couple of years if world wide droughts were to worsen. We can't afford to run short. Maybe that makes us less efficient but you can't simply plan for the good times and ignore the possibility of bad times. Have you ever taken any economics courses. The ways that subsidies reduce efficiency are pretty basic economic concepts. Econ 101 level ideas. Thank you for your insights. 4 - Third world countries are impoverished by food trade barriers and subsidies. Third world countries are impoverished for lots of reasons and can't afford to buy foor or anything else for that matter on the open market. Third world countries are directly hurt by being unable to export a number of agricultural goods to the US and/or Europe. Huh? Both the US and Europe are self sufficient in terms of food with or without food subsidies. Third world countries are hurt because they are too dependent on one or two exports. Please don't blame are farm subsidies for their poorly managed economies. They are also hurt when American or European subsidies allow American or European agribusiness to undercut the third world's farmers prices on the world market. How is that? Subsidies are used to take land out of production and prevent gluts in certain foodstuffs. If we did not have subsidies, there would be world wide over production and food prices would plummet, economically killing third world countries. Its the US consumer that pays for the subsidies, not the third world. The cost to third world economies of these subsidies and trade barriers is greater then the worth of all the aid they receive from richer countries. But the subsidies also cost the rich countries because they reduce trade and they increase government spending, and because they increase prices for consumers. Seems to me that its you who needs a refresh on Econ 101. ted