Wednesday, May 14, 2008

The Farm Bill

Greg Mankiw discusses some of the worst parts of the Farm Bill. Who thinks these things up?

"New sugar program: The bill would make the government buy sugar for 2X the world price, store it, then resell it at about an 80% loss to the taxpayer. Sugar sells for about 11¢/lb on the world market. The US government would have to buy sugar for about 22¢/lb, store it, and then auction off the excess to ethanol plants. We estimate that such an auction would net the government about 4¢/lb. In addition, this new provision would require the government to guarantee that domestic sugar producers get 85 percent of the domestic sugar market."

And I don't want to subsidize farmers with million dollar incomes.

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