Posted by
Andrews on Wednesday, November 05, 2008 1:50:09 PM
I was reading comments when I saw the
most absurd claim I have ever run across:
Since the new deal was passed very few people starve, and those that do
generally do for medical reasons that interfere with eating.
Of
course before the government stepped in we did have people starving,
But not anymore. So I guess while Stossel is right about that narrow
point he is pretty wrong about his larger point.
Apparently, according to this poster, until FDR stepped in with farm subsidies there was massive starvation, but thanks to the wonderful government, no more.
This is just absurd. But then again, almost
all government rhetoric about farming is absurd, so I guess that shouldn't surprise me.
First, farm price supports don't cure starvation, they make food
MORE expensive, which would increase starvation. They cause prices to rise by reducing production, so they did nothing to increase our food supply, nor to make food cheaper for buyers. So, in that respect I can't see how they helped end starvation.
Of course, the argument is that, without price supports, farms would go out of business and people would starve. That this goes against all economic understanding and thousands of years of experience of farming does not matter. People believe that an essential good would go wanting precisely because the government didn't drive up prices. Of course, the truth is, if prices at production level X will support farms, then what would happen without farm prices supports is that marginal farms would go out of business until that production level were reached, and we would have those same prices,a ll without spending a dime of government money. Yes, some farmers would have to find other jobs, but otherwise the market would produce the same solution.
So how does the government stop starvation again?
The truth is, there was no real starvation int he US prior to FDR either. In fact, we have had very little in the way of famines in our history. During the colonial period there were periods of famine for individual colonies, and later there were times of bad harvest, but being a largely agricultural rather than urban nation, with relatively well developed transportation and being a net exporter of agricultural goods, we just did not have the history of famine the more urban states of Europe did.
And following the industrial revolution, the expansion of transportation and growth of industrialized farming led to the disappearance of famine.
Even on a personal level, there was very little starvation if any prior to FDR. The commenter may believe the stories of the starving masses prior to the New Deal, but the truth is most states had poor laws (the old name for welfare) long before FDR, and private charity was also a reality. Skid Row in most cities was not an arbitrary choice, but the region with flop houses and soup kitchens, which suggests even the poor prior to FDR were not starving in the streets.
I am not saying no one starved during the depression, but it was an isolated event, not a common occurrence, and, contrary to what our poster says, was not resolved by FDR. And certainly not by his farm price supports. Those supports may have kept marginal farms in business, and later subsidized argibusiness, but they did nothing to keep people from starving.
The truth is, food is produced by farmers, not by the government. At best the government can get out of the way and let businesses handle their own affairs, otherwise the government tends to create distortions and make things worse. Which makes it absurd to credit the government with saving us from starvation. The government creates nothing, they simply impede creation.
Or to answer as I did the original post: Do you think the government really creates more hours of daylight with daylight savings time?