The Department of Agriculture should be abolished. Yesterday, if possible.
It’s basically a welfare scam for politically connected farmers and it undermines the efficiency of America’s agriculture sector.
Some of the specific handouts – such as those for milk, corn, sugar, and even cranberries – are unbelievably wasteful.
But the European Union’s system of subsidies may be even worse. As reported by the New York Times, it is a toxic brew of waste, fraud, sleaze, and corruption.
…children toil for new overlords, a group of oligarchs and political patrons…a feudal system…financed and emboldened by the European Union. Every year, the 28-country bloc pays out $65 billion in farm subsidies… But across…much of Central and Eastern Europe, the bulk goes to a connected and powerful few. The prime minister of the Czech Republic collected tens of millions of dollars in subsidies just last year.
Subsidies have underwritten Mafia-style land grabs in Slovakia and Bulgaria. …a subsidy system that is deliberately opaque, grossly undermines the European Union’s environmental goals and is warped by corruption and self-dealing. …The program is the biggest item in the European Union’s central budget, accounting for 40 percent of expenditures. It’s one of the largest subsidy programs in the world. …The European Union spends three times as much as the United States on farm subsidies each year, but as the system has expanded, accountability has not kept up. …Even as the European Union champions the subsidy program as an essential safety net for hardworking farmers, studies have repeatedly shown that 80 percent of the money goes to the biggest 20 percent of recipients. …It is a type of modern feudalism, where small farmers live in the shadows of huge, politically powerful interests — and European Union subsidies help finance it.
Is anyone surprised that big government leads to big corruption?
By the way, the article focused on the sleaze in Eastern Europe.
The problem, however, is not regional. Here’s a nice visual showing how there’s also plenty of graft lining pockets in Western Europe.
P.S. I imagine British politicians will concoct their own system of foolish subsidies, but the CAP handouts are another reason why voters were smart to vote for Brexit.
P.P.S. The CAP subsidies are one of many reasons why the European Union has been a net negative for national economies.
International Liberty 
[…] very critical of the European Union because the bureaucrats and politicians in Brussels push for dirigiste policies such as tax harmonization and climate […]
We need to eliminate all deductions and subsidies. In addition to being fair, a flat tax will boost GDP by +2%. (Compliance time for tax filing will be cut in half releasing the equivalent of 2M highly productive people.) BUT a flat tax is a political loser. (Rich pay the same as the poor.)
A UBI will make the tax code effectively progressive without affecting collection. For the poor, a UBI will replace welfare and other safety-net payments and will reduce disincentives to earn. For middle class, a UBI will replace deductions, plus a little boost in net income from the UBI. For the wealthy, a UBI will not fully replace deductions; but the marginal rate will be reduced and growth in income will more than make up for extra taxes. WIN-WIN-WIN
A UBI (based on family size) will be the same for all citizens. This will be fair to all. Rather than subsidies to special groups, we will subsidize all citizens, as part of a new tax code.
This change will also shrink government by 1M (from federal welfare and the IRS) bureaucrats.
A UBI is a CONSERVATIVE FIX TO FEDERAL WELFARE AND OUR AWFUL TAX CODE. By itself a flat tax has no shot.
I’d be happy to see the word ‘farmer’ banished from the political lexicon. There are people who work on farms and landowners who own them and they are often different people. Without the clarification of who the farmer is, it’s never clear who is being talked about.
Calling group of deserving people farmers is basically an appeal to emotions based on a nostalgia for when the landowner and workers were the same.
There are also horticulturalists and urban crop growers, usually unsubsidised.
Good article.
Growing up in farm country I knew farmers and how they operated, but living there they were called customers. It was bad enough when it was the family farm, but the giant agribusinesses are using the same dippers into the government coffers. It is sad.
David Lias dlias2@comcast.net
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