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This and other equivalent programs are instituted for specific international reasons. Whether the details are executed properly is another story. Primary target of agricultural subsidies is France. France refused to make agriculture a free market industry. French farms are socialistic. For example, French farms are too small and inefficient because of government intervention. French national integrity, for reasons I don't understand, are tied to the land and the small farm. French routinely stifle sales of American agriculture behind bureaucratic hypocrisy. Also the reasons for a recent world wide banana war.
Victims of American agricultural subsidies include Canada and Australia. America so drove down wheat prices as to make farmers in those countries suffer. But then it is a global economy, no matter what terrorists and demonstrators at world economic councils 'feel' (usually without even basic knowledge of economics).
The topic of subsidies becomes even more complex as Charlie Rose once demonstrated in repeated interviews with multiple farm owner/families. But to pass judgement on what this web site demonstrates is to take a myopic viewpoint. The website may demonstrate how socialist programs make a less productive, socialist economy. But it does not address the bigger, more serious problem that created so many such programs.
If you think this program is rediculous, then just wait till Bush and Company start protecting USX (formally US Steel) using reasoning that only a naive MBA could appreciate.
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