I have written about this before, but THIS DENVER POST STORY motivated me to write again about our crazy food policy. In a nutshell, we have subsidies for foods that are bad for us, but not the ones we should be eating. Simple economics tells us we should be doing exactly the opposite. If something is bad, you should tax the hell out of it (not make it illegal, which, as we have seen from our drug policy, is also expensive and stupid). And if we want more of something, we should subsidize it, as we do with education.
So, we grow lots of corn, and eat lots of beef and pork fed with the corn. And we sweeten our food with corn, instead of sugar, because we subsidize the corn, and have quotas on sugar imports, making corn syrup cheaper than sugar. Not that sugar is any better for you, but it is all so insane. We should be taxing pork and using the money to subsidize broccoli and melons.
How crazy is our policy. Well, you need only look at the picture on this post to see. Our money goes in exactly the wrong direction to what we should eat.
Why aren't the Tea Partiers angry about this?
1 comment:
For the Post, that's a pretty good article. It does a good job of surveying the territory and makes some great references. However, there seems to be a disconnect between the Physician's Committee's image and the source data provided by EWG. It looks like anyone can make the numbers sound like whatever they want. They seem to be very skewed and misleading.
Using EWG's top 20 subsidies for foods we eat in the pyramids shown
Grains: 1.Corn, 2. Wheat, 5. Soybeans
Meat/Dairy: 9.Dairy, 10.Livestock
Nuts/Apples: 15.Nuts, 18.Apples
Subsidies actually look like this:
Grains get 91% NOT 14% (11 servings daily)
Meat/dairy get 6% NOT 74% (6 servings daily)
Nuts/apples get 3% NOT 2% (9 servings daily)
And for crying out loud, what age group are we talking here? If I ate that much food from the government guide I'd turn diabetic from obesity and need government healthcare.
In either case, it sounds like profit by force is the right thing to do. It's just an ongoing legislative battle as to who gets to have the legislated profits. What started out as a "save the farmers" program for the Great Depression is now the policy that attempts to control what food ends up on my table and who profits from it.
Good, bad, or indifferent, I do know I don't like melons, and can't stand broccoli, ICK!
Under what circumstances is it OK to use force on another adult human being?
Of all the people in the entire world, who is the best person who is in the best position to make the best decision for you? Then who's in the best position to make decisions for me?
Why do people think its the right thing to do to tell me what's the right thing for me to do?
If all I want to do is peacefully make my own decisions for my life and put my money and purchases to the people who support my lifestyle (not the bureaucrats), what does that make me?
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