You are correct about supply and demand but you are mistaken about the government’s role in some of those things. The dairymen pouring the milk on the ground was a public relations gimmick to get an increase in government subsidies. The politicians willingly complied. After that the government would then buy the excess milk, reduce it to cheese and butter fat, or dry it, and spend billions of dollars a year storying it in warehouses. They do the same with wheat, corn, and other agricultural products.
When we send tons of food to starving people or to disaster areas in other lands you don’t think they magically grow it overnight, do you, or that they buy it on the open market? What would that do to the market? They simply take it out of warehouses where they have been storing it, or more correctly, paying someone else to store it. Eventually, much of it is destroyed.
Since some have talked about LBJ, he was involved in another famous murder, that of a Dept. of Agriculture inspector who was out looking for grain silos supposedly owned by LBJ’s friend and fellow Texan, Billie Sol Estes. The problem was the silos did not exist. Estes was getting millions of dollars a year from the government to store grain but he wasn’t storing any.
If that was discovered it would lead directly back to LBJ so he had the inspector killed while he was out in the brush looking for the non-existent silos. When his body was discovered it was found that the inspector had been shot six times in the back with a bolt action rifle. The rifle was still on the scene. The coroner, a part of the Democrat political circle, ruled the death a suicide. See, there was a precedent for Slick Willie’s tactics.
Even now there is price fixing for milk. I have asked store managers at supermarkets in several states why, considering what it takes to produce each, the price of milk is higher than that of gasoline, usually. They generally say something along the lines of the state won’t let them sell below a certain price. That is supposedly to help the little grocers and keep the big boys from undercutting them. Sounds compassionate, doesn’t it?
Like all other government welfare programs the compassionate thing to do is let the market work. In this case the poor people are protected with government food stamps and we know about the many abuses there, and the milk producers’ profits are protected. So, we the taxpayer, get to pay more in increased taxes and as consumers in the increase in the price of milk.
Lovely little scheme. Just not for us.
Thank you for the correction regarding the dairymen. I was remembering TV reports from my childhood and failed to do my homework before posting.
I remember that there was a scandal involving Billy Sol Estes, but would have been hard pressed to explain it. Regarding the “suicide”, there was also the story of the NM coroner who declared a death to be suicide under similar bolt-action multi-round circumstances.
The whole issue of farm subsidies has always bothered me. It has appeared to be a thinly disguised welfare system, but I am willing to listen to anyone that can provide a cogent argument to the contrary. [”They need the money” is not a valid argument. I need money, too.] It is interesting that Eisenhower’s Sec’y of Agriculture argued against them.