farm subsidies?

[phk]

We'd flood the market with too much cheap sh**t.

[phk]

What's wrong with cheap food?

Those programs are used to keep prices high.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Why do we pay farmers to make prices higher?

To make sure thier profit margins don't decrease.

[phk]

We'd flood the market with too much cheap sh**t.

Because it would be awful if everyone had food.

Hey its capitalism, somebody has to go without food.

[phk]

Thats another matter altogether, its about protecting farmers from excessive surpluses that would drive them out of business by driving the price to the ground.

For example, the flood of cheap corn into Mexico has dispossessed over a million Mexican farmers, and, with their families, they go to the slums.

Unless you actually want America's slums to double in size.

[phk]

They could open up a prostitution bar or an abortion clinic.

Instead of being given subsidies.

[phk]

I'd rather simply retrain a third of our farmers to do something else and conserve the land, or, on the other side, have the government do a better job at buying up surplus food (on the market, to increase prices) and sending it to poor countries.

Then again, since the world has a food surplus anyway, I think the first option makes more sense, economically and ecologically. It's time to give the Mojave Desert a rest from agriculture.