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

To: TimF who wrote (184050)	3/4/2004 2:46:00 AM
From: hmaly	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574273

Tim Re.Technically, every expenditure, in the budget costs money. The more pertinent question is, do we, the general public get our money's worth. I would say no. In fact I would argue that for many of the subsidies even if the budget cost was $0 they still wouldn't be worth the money. And you will note, I said they might be if they could be precisely targeted, at the group they were intended to help. You will also note, I said they weren't, so I would agree, with that statement per see. That I think is a false statement. No it is a true statement, and you provide no argument that would suggest it was false. Sure I do. Read my answer. They are set up, to keep the small farmers in business, to keep the monopolies, such as Tyson, from controlling food pricing, by keeping them from creating shortages, and thus gouging the consumers. Even if the cost was worth it my statement about how food prices are increased and how this impacts negatively on the poor would still be true. You want to believe production, is the only thing determining food prices, as more production would create larger surpluses, which in turn would drive down the prices. Not so necessarily. There are already surpluses, and for many farmers, the prices are too low for profits. The big 64,000 dollar question, is if corporations, can make a profit, at current prices, through higher production, or if they will resort to closing down unprofitable marginal land, to create shortages, and drive up prices. The answer is to let the market sort it out. Frankly, I think we need to control the distributer monopolies, such as Kraft foods, more, so farmers have a better choice of buyers. Kraft probably buys 80% of milk processed into cheese, and therefore sets the milk pricing. Tyson, controls the chicken prices, Conagra, grains, etc.