{"id":604,"date":"2008-04-11T08:59:04","date_gmt":"2008-04-11T13:59:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/?p=604"},"modified":"2008-04-11T09:14:40","modified_gmt":"2008-04-11T14:14:40","slug":"a-voice-crying-in-the-wilderness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/ramble\/2008\/04\/a-voice-crying-in-the-wilderness\/","title":{"rendered":"A voice crying in the wilderness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonmonthly.com\/archives\/individual\/2008_04\/013499.php\">The Washington Monthly<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>So why do we hear so much about the dire consequences of failing to pass a piddling bilateral trade deal with a ruthless Latin American regime but almost nothing about the dire consequences of the hideous $300 billion distortion caused by the latest round of farm subsidies \u2014 most of which goes to big agribusiness, not struggling family farms? How about a little more noise on the farm front?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Why don&#8217;t we hear more outrage about the ludicrousness that is are farm policy? For those on the left who decry &#8220;corporate welfare&#8221;, here is a great place to focus your opprobrium; for those on the right who are against big government programs, fire away; for those who are in favor of free trade, this is a no-brainer; for those who are protectionist, they are already too familiar with no-brainer.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[Update] <\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.economist.com\/blogs\/freeexchange\/2008\/04\/go_ahead_nix_the_subsidies.cfm\">Go ahead, nix the subsidies<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>So by all means, eliminate farm supports and don&#8217;t stop there. I suspect that once all agricultural subsidies, including those for energy crops, are removed, the net effect on food prices will be a moderation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Please, let this trend catch on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Washington Monthly: So why do we hear so much about the dire consequences of failing to pass a piddling bilateral trade deal with a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":647,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thoughts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pekNN-9K","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/647"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}