10 Right Wing Economic Misconceptions
Farm Subsidies
What the Right believes: Farmers are the backbone of this country. They should be supported. Less farms means less food, we have to subsidize them to ensure they survive.
The Truth is: Demand for food will always continue to keep farmers in business. Subsidies really only make prices cheaper for the consumer, however they have adverse effects. Consider corn, which the US government heavily subsidizes, creating an artificially low market price. The artificially cheap corn then floods Mexican markets, where Mexican farmers cannot compete with the subsidized prices and end up going out of business. The increase in unemployment in Mexico leads to greater illegal immigration to the US, which the Right is opposed to. But they will continue to advocate for the dolling out of taxpayer money to US farmers, if for nothing else than political support.
It also leads to an abundance of corn that we really don’t know what to do with. So we’ve born the inferior sweetener, High Fructose Corn Syrup, and mandated corn based fuel additives.
Learn Liberty: Why is the Corn in Your Coke
[youtube height=”HEIGHT” width=”WIDTH”]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGOj8kBpsD4[/youtube]
