dihard:

Ahh yes, the pending $288B Farm Bill. Subsidies to farmers were first proposed in the 1920s, but were shot down by President Coolidge who said “there is no reason why other industries – copper, coal, lumber, textiles, and others – in every occasional difficulty should not receive the same treatment by the Government. Such action would establish bureaucracy on such a scale as to dominate not only the economic life but the moral, social, and political future of our people.” If he could see us now.. 

 dihard has some great info on the farm bill up on her tumble (which is highly recommended). this should be a major political point & would be a far greater economic stimulus than the awesome rebate-check idea. of course, it would be an enormous, systemic change & there is entrenched interest against seeing it change, but… just imagine what all that free money could be used for…or, given back to us.  

i disagree with president coolidge’s complete disregard for farm aid, as the cyclic environmental patterns of farming are more disastrous & uncontrollable than in other industries, but… subsidies are certainly not the answer. i think government interaction with the market in the form of buying surplus, as they did prior to nixon or extending specific loans to farmers in times of scarcity would be enough to counteract the large-scale, natural fluctuations.  

michael pollan makes a compelling argument in his great book, the omnivore’s dilemma, that in a time of rising food-costs, the nixon administration changed the dynamics of the farm bill to incentivize the growing of corn @ all costs with the goal of persistently driving down the cost of corn consumption. As pollan lays out, this has had disastrous results for the american diet & i’d extend, the larger economy on the whole. (I definitely recommend Pollan’s book, with particular enthusiasm for the first few and last few chapters, where i found the best writing and most concise argumentation.)