Farming the Subsidy Instead of the Land

Deroy Murdock envisions a speech by President McCain:

“My friends,” McCain might declare before some Mid-Western barn, “when it rains, you cry for flood relief, and it cascades in. When the skies are cloudless, you scream for drought assistance, and it arrives. When your prices are low, you demand help, and the checks soon follow. Since last January, corn prices have climbed 123 percent. Soy beans are up 176 percent, and spring wheat has risen 274 percent. And yet Washington stands ready to grant your howls for $286 billion in yet another farm-welfare bonanza. Enough already. Please stop farming the government and go till your fields. The party is over. The trough is empty. Goodbye.”

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The Daily Digest

Belize, 2005

I'm always skeptical when someone says that Saudi Arabia is modernizing, just slowly. (I guess it depends on whether your definition of "slowly" means at the pace of a snail or turtle.) And yet, an op-ed in yesterday's Christian Science Monitor, which argues that King Abdullah is "sidelining the traditional clergy in favor of the merchant classes and more progressive religious voices," merits consideration.

Any libertarian can tell you why farm subsidies are egregious, but few do it so plainly, so concisely and so cogently as John Stossel.

Karl Rove once said that the press is "less liberal than it is oppositional." Exactly.

Reason's Jacob Sullum concretizes the McCain-DeMint consensus about Congress's recent ethics reform: "If a pickpocket becomes a mugger, he becomes more open and honest, but that doesn't make him more admirable."

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The Daily Digest

We all know about Web 2.0. Yesterday came Google 2.0, or Google Universal Search. Described by one analyst as Google's "most radical change" ever, GUS integrates links from Google's news, video, images, local and book search engines with those from its main engine.

Joe Klein trains his invariably insightful political mind on the second GOP debate. "I thought Mitt Romney won the first debate because he was smooth and lost the second because he was slick. Rudy Giuliani won the second because he seemed forceful, after appearing uncertain in the first. John McCain was a presence in both—a mostly honorable presence, I might add. . . . So, Rudy McRomney: Rudy, tough; Romney, smooth; McCain, courageous."

"[O]ur 70-year experiment of government micromanaging the agriculture industry has failed[,] and it is time for Congress to plow them under."

As the Beltway awaits the next shoe to drop in the DC madam case, Deroy broaches the question that dare not rear its ugly head: why "does trading cash for intimacy merit handcuffs and indictments?" Reason's Cathy Young adds, "As with other victimless crimes, the criminalization of prostitution creates a vast breeding ground for corruption, hypocrisy, and morally dubious law enforcement tactics."

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Why Foreign Aid Doesn't Work

Steve Chapman points out the supremely counterproductive policies behind foreign aid:

Affluent nations often make it impossible for Third World exporters to participate in the world economy. Third World producers trying to export to rich countries face tariffs averaging nearly 13 percent, nearly four times higher than the duties encountered by producers from rich countries.

Poor countries that might sell agricultural commodities in the West also face another hurdle—government subsidies to farmers in rich countries, which amount to $1 billion a day and serve to discourage imports. Textiles and apparel, where poor countries often excel, are still tightly restricted in the United States and other advanced economies. We want developing nations to compete in the world economy—but without inconveniencing our own producers, thank you. All these barriers cost poor countries about $100 billion a year, which is twice as much as they get in assistance.

"The biggest request we are making of Western countries is to open their markets," Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said recently. "Debt relief has saved us some money, but the real money will come from trade. Give us the opportunities, and we will compete."

Of course, Africans aren't exactly helping themselves either. As Nick Kristof points out, the staggering amount and complexity of red tape only perpetuates economic stagnation and dependence on handouts:

[O]f the 20 countries in the world where it is most difficult to do business, 17 are African, according to the [World Bank] study, "Doing Business in 2006." Niger ranks 150th, followed by Sudan, Chad, Central African Republic, Burkina Faso and—the very worst place to try to do business—Congo.

Take a simple construction project—building a warehouse for books. In Niger, obtaining the necessary licenses would involve 27 procedures over half a year. And in either Nigeria or Zimbabwe, the licenses would take nearly a year and a half to obtain. . . .

The minimum wage is set at $35 a month in Niger, higher than the local market level. Employees are allowed to work no more than nine hours a day, weekend work is basically prohibited, and women are not allowed to work evenings at all. Layoffs are usually not allowed.

How does any of this relate to the war on terror? Tom Friedman connects the dots:

Wouldn't it have been wise for the U.S. to take the initiative at Cancún, and offer to reduce our farm subsidies and textile tariffs, so some of the poorest countries, like Pakistan and Egypt, could raise their standards of living and sense of dignity, and also become better customers for U.S. goods? Yes, but that would be bad politics. It would mean asking U.S. farmers to sacrifice the ridiculous subsidies they get from our federal government ($3 billion a year for 25,000 cotton farmers) that make it impossible for foreign farmers to sell here. . . .

The Pakistani farmer we've put out of business with our farm subsidies then sends his sons to the Wahhabi school because it is tuition-free and offers a hot lunch. His sons grow up getting only a Koranic education, so they are totally unprepared for modernity, but they are taught one thing: that America is the source of all their troubles. One of the farmer's sons joins al Qaeda and is killed in Afghanistan by U.S. Special Forces.

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