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As a dairy farmer, the government gives me tax dollars to slaughter my herd, and poor milk down the drain, and sometimes the government will buy my milk and divert it to the military, or WIC or other "social welfare" programs.
The government does that to artificially reduce the Supply of Milk in order to drive prices up so consumers pay more.
You as the consumer get screwed twice and don't even get a reach-around, the first time when the government gives your tax money to the big corporate dairy farms, and the second time when the big corporate dairy farms get profits from the artificially inflated price of milk.
Quite a lot is simply destroyed, and I doubt if that is even entered into the equation by the economists. My neighbor's car was totalled the other day. The insurance compaly will replace it, with a car that was newly manufactured. Following that thread, was there a net gain or loss in wealth, or equilibrium?
For every car that is manufactured, the car it replaces ceases to exist as thing of value. So scrapping an old car and buying a new one, in the long run, has made no change in aggregate wealth. Whether the demise of the car takes 15 years or 15 nanoseconds.
So the car, an asset of $20K value, gets totalled. The insurance company bills $20K in premiums, and writs a check for $20K of its assets to the owner, who then buys a replacement car, created by the auto industry, an asset valued at $20K. According to the accountants, they were all added together, and it goes into the books as an increase of $80K in the GDP, which makes us all feel all warm and fuzzy about our national wealth and economy. But in fact, the net value of all wealth didn't change at all.
having had an uncle in the business of dairy farming the problem is that farming can be a tough low profit career and many farmers including my uncle could get more selling the farm land for development then they can make in a decade of dairy farming.
the gov't tries to keep things profitable enough for these guys that they dont just call it quits and we start to have massive shortages as more and more farmers leave the business and prices really sore on these items...
Some smart person once said that their are two ways to get rich. Inherit it......or steal it.
That was me, about 30 or 40 years ago. I decided that, for different reasons, neither was going to happen in my lifetime, so I learned to live well without opulent wealth, and to appreciate the things in life that cost little or nothing.
It's nice to hear somebody say that something I figured out for myself was smart. I don't get that here, much.
I plant some corn seeds and grow a bunch of corn.
The government takes some of my corn and gives it to others.
I would like to think the reason you grew corn was so that others could have something to eat.
Originally, the government gave that land to somebody, with the view that all Americans would some day gain from its use, not just you.
Originally, going back a few more thousand years, a collective effort by people found a way to grow things, so that everyone could eat, not so one person with the greatest penchant for greed could grab the fruits of all that effort, and say This Is Mine All Mine.
having had an uncle in the business of dairy farming the problem is that farming can be a tough low profit career and many farmers including my uncle could get more selling the farm land for development then they can make in a decade of dairy farming.
Then he needs to get out of the dairy farming business. He can raise sheep or grow crops or raise turkeys, chickens or pigs in the alternative.
What you're saying is the government should subsidize my 8-track tape and buggy whip businesses, because things are tough and no one wants to buy 8-track tapes or buggy whips.
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