cut crop insurance before food stamps

[dilletante]

a number of my friends seem to be staunch anti-libertarians, and that sometimes confuses me. i think i just read the wrong articles, because this (titled as above) is what i think of as a classic libertarian position. (i think even the rabid ayn rand fans have been known to beat this drum, and they have a lot less that can usually be said to

Comments

[lyonesse]

it's not a "classic libertarian position" because:

. it attempts to protect food stamps, a libertarian punching bag

. it is about farm subsidies, and few self-identified libertarians know anything about corporate farming, even that it exists -- they see everything in terms of the individual, whereas those "farmers" are generally more or less ceo's.

i'm totally with you on the wish about corporate welfare. but few libertarians even know that phrase; that's pure liberalese.

[dilletante]

yeah, that's why i say i must just read the wrong articles. my impressions of libertarians mostly come from reading reason magazine (a self-identified libertarian news site); and to a lesser extent volokh conspiracy, a legal-news site with a somewhat-self-identified libertarian bent. both of those sources have a lot (negative) to say about farm subsidies, and not much to say about food stamps (except to opine that e.g. the sequester's cuts to social services were deliberately designed to hurt people in order to gin up political support for eliminating it, and that the mandated spending cuts could easily have been made in ways that don't hurt anybody instead). and they certainly use the phrase "corporate welfare."

[lyonesse]

libertarians who write website articles may be more thoughtful than libertarians who merely accost one in conversation or correspondence; my experience is mostly with the latter.

[rednikki]

There's plenty of "libertarians" out there writing articles on the Web. But they're a different kind of libertarian, in that they think corporate subsidies are important but poor people should be left on their own to survive or die.

[twoeleven]

well, reducing spending is rarely popular on the left, and the right seems to care about it only when they're in opposition. these days, they can't even manage that, since the tea party loons seem deliberately innumerate, and there seems to be (also? overlapping?) "fuck the poor" faction, too.

[dilletante]

hm, i think i missed all the news about the tea party somehow too. i had the vague impression that the tea party was the suddenly-resurgent populist anti-tax faction of the republican party, and so i was recently confused when one of my virginia friends characterized another one as "having gone all tea-party" in describing him as a supporter of ken cuccinelli (who the few accounts i've read of seem to paint as a completely rabid authoritarian loon).

[twoeleven]

both statements are correct: they are innumerate, populist anti-tax et ceteras. :)

my observation -- hardly original -- is simply looking at the things they complain about vs where the money actually goes. they whine about food stamps while doling out an order of magnitude(?) more money to farmers, much of which does go to big ag, who hardly needs it. they complain about the weather service while turning a blind eye to the military. usw.

both contradictions are in fact good populist opinions, since most people are innumerate... and while not necessarily ignorant, are not particularly interested in finding out what things cost (or what the weather service does vs what private industry could reproduce at a profit, &c).

[harimad]

they whine about food stamps while doling out an order of magnitude(?) more money to farmers

I half-heard an article on NPR about how surprisingly (to me) large the food stamp program is. I don't remember the number so I went looking.

SNAP: $111.6B
USDA's 2013 Budget Summary and Annual Performance Plan shows that 72% of its $155B outlay was for nutrition assistance.
Yup - that's large.

Farm Support: $15.8B plus more
This is trickier because there are multiple programs including crop insurance and commodity support. One number I could find from a reliable source, in the time I have right now:
$15.8B - 2012 crop insurance from Environmental Working Group
EWG says that 10% of farms collect 75% of farm support.

Maybe someone could help fill in the blanks?

[fennel]

What do you mean by "staunch anti-libertarians"? None of my theories about this phrase are panning out when I test them for applicability to people I know.

[dilletante]

well, the main thing that inspired the thought was more than once happening to run across profiles of people i knew on dating sites and noting that they included variations of "no libertarians." also whenever i mention libertarians on lj i seem to get replies along the line of lyonesse's above, which seem to be based on a different caricature of libertarians than the one in my own head.

[twoeleven]

it's one of several left-wing caricatures. there are so many to choose from. (likewise, plenty of right-wing caricatures of the left.)

[cruiser]

All those left and right wing caricatures are why I give no credence to the statements of anyone who makes a statement to the effect of "Group X believes Y" unless the person making the statement is verifiably a member of Group X.

[cruiser]

I think a significant part of why corporate welfare doesn't get more traction as a political issue is pragmatism. If you think about where politicians get their campaign money from, you're probably not going to be surprised to find any politicians but true idealists who are going to come out in favor of hurting the people who are paying for their campaigns. Sure, you'll find people from energy producing states saying that we have to cut subsidies to agriculture, and people from agriculture states saying that we have to cut subsidies to manufacturing, but by and large, you're not going to get the votes to cut much of anything. So why waste time, effort, and political capital arguing against things that are going to stay entrenched?

[hissilliness]

Expanding on my earlier comment, I would much rather live in a country that extended welfare to both poor people and rich people than one that did neither. The areas where I agree with libertarians are substantial, but they are not my top moral or legislative priorities