In the US
almost ¾ (three quarters!) of dairy farmers’ expenses were paid by government during
the 2005 – 20015 period BEFORE Trump’s additional massive increase of subsidies
pushed it above 80%. (https://www.realagriculture.com/2018/02/u-s-dairy-subsidies-equal-73-percent-of-producer-returns-says-new-report/)
In Canada
dairy farmers restrict supply to match a formula for anticipated demand.
Farmers bid for quota amounts, competing with each other on price. No
subsidies, none, zero, are paid to farmers by the Canadian government.
American
dairy GOP “conservatives” are hard-core socialists when they are on the
receiving end, but believe in sink-or-swim unregulated capitalism for others.
Both Democrats and Republicans pander to the fantasy that there is some
infinite market for dairy out there. Pump those cows full of hormones! Open up
another facility! Vote for me!
I have just
been listening to your podcast saying that there are principled intellectual
disagreements in the conservative movement about a free market economy as if
one had existed in Wisconsin prior to Trump.
Heath Mayo nods
to truth by calling out Trumpist pandering to Appalachian white labourers, but
carefully avoids naming either local Wisconsin dairy or the vast make-work
project that is the American military. You, Charlie, use “conservative” as a
synonym for membership in the Republican party.
Republican
dairy farmers are subsidized more heavily than dairy farmers in the European
countries you blithely call socialist for goodness sake. Your own use of the
term “conservative” is clearly not connected to any kind of capitalism.
Mayo warns
of philosophical erosion “once conservatism starts catering to interest groups”
Starts? Starts!? This did not start with Trump. He doesn’t bother with the inane
“Atlas Shrugged” fig-leaf, but the intellectual void that is Trumpism simply reflects
back the same set of beliefs and attitudes that they found in the GOP.
The Republican
party during my lifetime has been about nothing more than the fantasy that
having European roots automatically makes you smarter and more industrious.
This supposedly explains your own financial position relative to disadvantaged
Americans and excuses you from any need to change the system. You wonder why
anything other than blind team loyalty upsets “conservatives” so much. It is
because what they want to conserve is not capitalism; It is the playing field
tilted in their own favour.
