Posted on 09/20/2007 7:06:29 PM PDT by Eric Blair 2084
Friedman is known for his work as a Monetarist. I doubt there is even one time Friedman applied the term "supply side school" to himself or his own work.
Great find. Just goes to show that markets DO work best without interference from ANY level of gubmint... Do I hear a second to the motion to abolish Department of Agriculture????
They drew welfare for decades, didn’t they? That equates to welfare queen in most books I’m aware of... but then getting kicked OFF welfare seems to have done them a whole world of good, hasn’t it? I think we need to do this to ALL farmers and farm corporations... for ALL products, from dairy to corn to hemp or whatever... markets DO work.
I am sure they are there. Someone once told me that if I knew what were in cigarettes I wouldn't smoke. I just lost a very good friend to lung & throat cancer who never smoked a day in his life.
I’d like someone, anyone, to provide documentation showing the number of times (years) that the federal government actually paid out subsidy money to tobacco growers; how many times the market price was low enough to trigger subsidy payments. I’m inclined to believe such occasions were very few.
The morality of authorizing a subsidy program for tobacco growers is one matter, tobacco being a non-essential commodity, and I will not defend it, but as a practical matter the federal government raked in far, far more, by orders of magnitude, in tobacco product excise taxes than it paid out in subsidy payments over all the years that the subsidy program existed.
Remember the expression “40 acres and a mule” that a US Army officer was proposing in the post-civil war years should be the compensation to freed slaves?
The notion of making a living with only 40 acres and a mule came from tobacco farming. If you raise 40 acres of tobacco, you’re going to do *quite* well.
BTW — you’re right about tobacco in colonial times. It was even used as a currency. Without tobacco, there wouldn’t be a United States today.
Hhahaaaaa! Yeah, it's been nuts around here starting about six weeks ago. I roll my own. Found a place out in Hesperia that sells 16 oz bags of "single stick" for 10.99.
Mr.Owl posts on a herpologist site, and keeps having his posts deleted regarding Kalifornia raising the stamp tax for hunting reptiles. The site is probably loaded with Democrats. These idiots don't realize that the increased revenue will just go towards Nanny Pelosi's next face lift!
I've always enjoyed this Patrick Henry story:
but his surpassing powers as an orator were not discovered till, in December, 1763, he argued what is known as the "Parson's cause." This was a suit brought by a minister of the established church in Virginia to recover his salary, which had been fixed at 16,000 pounds of tobacco. A short crop had caused a great advance in its market price, and induced the colonial legislature to pass an act commuting the salaries of the ministers into money at the rate of two pence for a pound of tobacco, which was its former price
I like the American Spirit tobacco as much as the next guy but I was under the impression it was grown in New Mexico, where AS is located. It’s my understanding they buy it from North Carolina. Great stuff but why do I need to pay for NC tobacco to be shipped to NM, then shipped to my retailer?
Under the supply and demand theory, Tobacco then makes food crops cost more by reducing the amount of farmland available. Unless it creates land for farming that otherwise would not be productive.
Eggsssactly! *chuckle*
The thing that concerns me the most....it that these "health risk" associated statistics are run by bean counters....who....for the most part are trying to help the insurance companies find ways to raise their premiums with less payouts.
I see people send their kids off to school with a candy bar in one hand and a coke in the other...all the time. I'll lay odds junior will be more of a challenge to the insurance companies than a smoker ever couid be.
Wait til the anti’s try to establish a tobacco growers tax and the WTO tries to get their teeth in to because we are selling a dangerous product to Europe....when the word gets out that huge money is being made in American tobacco, heck even the UN will try to get its teeth into it!(sarcasm)
You are both right and wrong. A profitable tobacco crop takes up far less space than food crops of any type, and yes it can often be grown where others crops would not be productive.
Why do you suppose America is so fat now?
Just wait till they find out your actually making money. They will want "their" share.
King Charles did his damndest to ban tobacco ... even then people knew it was unhealthy. But then, so is daily bathing.
That IMHO is exactly the problem with something like Gubmint subsidies for Ethanol production. It bastardizes the free market...
And the resulting symptoms are higher corn and beef prices.
Than King George went and pissed off our founding fathers too. We know how that story ended.
Today, the previously free people just bend over and let Gubmint take their stuff for the greater good.
mo money! mo money! mo money!
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