A li'l Bachmann news for SamiraFollow

Yes they are.

I also made that comparison, and it's the very next part you quoted.

The price of high fructose corn syrup is very much an economic issue. The government is controlling which ingredients manufacturers are buying. The second wasn't supposed to support the similarities between subsidies and welfare. You stated that subsidies didn't cost us anything and I pointed out how they did.

But it isn't helping the country; the corn subsidies are contributing to medical illnesses. Corn isn't subsidized because the government believes it is good for the economy. Corn is subsidized because the food industry is an oligopoly will a lot of lobbying power. This is the pork that fiscal conservatives should be attacking.

Could have fooled with me the purely economic nature of subsidies and purely social nature of welfare.

We're giving them money. This isn't fundamentally different than tarp or the stimulus package. The money we spend on subsidies should be given back to the tax payers to fuel a more capitalistic society right?

There is. Do you think poor people cost nothing? Do you think the welfare moms who would not otherwise be able to afford food for their kids would not cost us anything if we simply didn't give them money? When those kids are malnourished, who is going to have to conduct an investigation? Who is going to have to take those kids away and provide care? What about the kids who are negatively affected by the lack of additional funding? Do they have as an equal chance to become an economically productive member of society? Or does a harsh home environment lead to drugs and crime, which we have to clean up after?

Welfare prevents additional costs. If a penniless hobo dies on the street we still have to pay someone to pick up the body and dump it in a hole. If the cost to keep him alive is less than the cost to clean up the mess, then you bet I'm handing him my money.

Edited, Dec 22nd 2009 10:44pm by Allegory

Sounds like they are exactly like the presence or absence of abortion in the health-care bill too.

But here that's what makes it fun!

So your argument boils down to "charity is good but government charity is bad"?

Are you f*cking kidding me?

Not all - your interpretation is wrong.

My parents get subsidies from the government for their farm in WV. While some are based on what crop you grow or what livestock you raise, most have nothing to do with it. Some are as simple as "grow/raise and sell $x amount of any crop/livestock and get $x amount of money."

Some subsidies are meant for the simple purpose of helping the small farmer survive in the current market. It costs far more to raise most livestock than you get at the market for it, typically pennies on the pound for pigs and cattle. But WV's climate doesn't bode well for more "cash crops" (which is almost a joke term these days) so small farmers are losing their ability to support their families, thus subsidies.

All of this isn't to say you can't argue the point that a subsidy still isn't welfare, which may or may not be the case, but you can't say that it isn't to help the farmer out because, in some cases, that is exactly what it is meant to do regardless of crop.

Won't this make the farmers feel entitled, so they put less effort into growing more successful crops?

Some may be. But most are about specific crops. I stated several times that subsidies are subject to misuse just as any other government funded program may be. The larger point is that *all* welfare payments are purely about helping someone directly, while only *some* subsidies are.

We have not determined which sort Bachmann's farm entails, but based on the relatively small amount of total income gained from subsidies and the specific mention of specific crops targeted by the subsidies, it's most likely not of the "give folks free money" type.



Sure. But what is the purpose of that? Is there not some economic benefit to be had by having a farmer produce $x worth of crops and receive $x worth of subsidies? It increases the total quantity of those crops produced, while keeping the prices lower. Doesn't it? If we want people to be able to buy corn at $x/bushel in order to keep prices in the grocery stores as low as possible, but the farmer has to sell corn at $2x/bushel in order to stay in business, the government might subsidize the difference in order to keep the farmer producing corn.

The point is that the government doesn't do this just to help out the farmer. The government sees a benefit to having that person be a farmer and produce some volume of crops and pays money to make that happen. If it were just about helping the person, they'd just put them on welfare, wouldn't they? It might even be cheaper...




There's some economic benefit derived beyond the farmer. Cheaper farm output for one thing. If people are spending less on food, they have more money left over to buy other things which are taxed higher. There are a whole lot of aspects to this and a whole lot of interconnected reasons for subsidies. That's how they differ from plain old welfare.

...But if they are only spending less on food because their taxes have already paid for it. Isn't that the reason you don't like government programs?

Also, gbaji seems to be massively confused, as the point of subsidies is to artificially increase the price of things in the short run, the long run, and pretty much every other run in between.

Except it's more of a "we'll tax you 30 cents and give it to the corn companies, who will then sell canned corn for some amount between 71 and 99 cents for a can" situation. It rarely, if ever, is a situation where the consumer breaks even, because it's directly providing an incentive for inefficiency in pricing.

Subsidies are, in general, a bad idea from an economic-efficiency standpoint regardless of who's being subsidized, who's doing the subsidizing, or, for that matter, what other name you put on it (such as "welfare"). More to the point, it is not a logically consistent position to take that, say, farm subsidies are good and welfare is bad (or vice-versa), and claiming that it is or even appears to be after anything more than a cursory blindfolded glance by a one-eyed man with macular degeneration is a sign of intellectual bankruptcy.

The real point is that subsidies are the government taking tax money from citizens and redistributing it to select industries in order to manipulate the markets for "the common good".

That ain't capitalism and it's amusing that Bachmann, she of the McCarthy-esque list of "known socialists in Congress", is happy to grab some of that cash while she rails against socialism.

Yep, and I'm in favor of planned economics, but in short, What Jophiel said.

Hey, I'm holding out for Bachmann-Boehner Overdrive.