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

To: tejek who wrote (184599)	3/17/2004 6:03:55 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 1576177

It seems to me that the expense caused by farm subsidies is relatively minor when compared to other sections of the budget. Its not small, but your right that the budgetary cost is much smaller then social security, defense, and Medicare. The cost has generally been in the low tens of billions of dollars per year range. It imposes other costs to the economy besides the cost to the budget but even if you add the extra cost to consumers, and the reduced efficacy of agriculture it still would cost less then those three items (but more then just about anything else). It also amounts to a negative foreign aid program hurting other countries but those costs are spread out across the world they are not just a cost to Americans. If you apply those costs to the equation as well then the total cost probably is more then the cost of Medicare but the equation gets complex and if you want to focus only on the cost to America then I can see why you wouldn't include the damage the programs do to other countries. Tim