How U.S. farm policy makes us fatter and sicker
“For most of history, after all, the poor have typically suffered from a shortage of calories, not a surfeit. So how is it that today the people with the least amount of money to spend on food are the ones most likely to be overweight?”
A good article, except:
“The devil is in the details, no doubt. Simply eliminating support for farmers won’t solve these problems; overproduction has afflicted agriculture since long before modern subsidies.”
I wonder why we don’t have a plague of “overproduction” of iPods, staplers, or cars? Perhaps it’s because their prices are set by the market, not bureaucrats.
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My guess is that food production can be really volatile on account of weather. Plus, if there’s a shortfall in the production of iPods or cars, you can just jack up the price as a rationing mechanism and some people will just have to wait until next year. In the old days, I guess that would mean pricing poor people out of the food market. Nowadays, I guess it means McDonalds instead of Wendy’s.