The Unintended Consequences of Subsidies

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Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike: You know, the guy that called last, the smart-ass that called at the end of last segment, what was his name, AG? Was it Mark? Mark in Georgia.

AG: Yes.

Mike: Yeah, the smart feller that called at the [chuckling]

• Comment(s)

, there was a smart feller rearrange the words. The smart feller to, Well, what kind of guarantees can you give us out here that your stupid free market, you and your idiot friends, you and your Sanders and your Rockwell and your Tom Woods and your silly idols, your Rothbard and your Hayek and your Mises and your stupid idiot Adam Smith, eh? What kind of protections and guarantees can you give us that your free market wont be filled with greedy people and wont consume all the wealth? Well, then it wont be a market anymore, genius. Thats one guarantee that you could give, or one thing that you could say prevents this.

No one profits to the extent that the libtards think they profit when they are greedy because greed does not serve any function of a market. Greed is serving your own needs, not those of the marketplace. So the myth, the mythology of the greedy evil businessman is just that. Youre not going to be very good at business for very long in serving a needed, desired, maybe whats the word, not requisite, but required service in a free market. You are not going to be able to serve that for very long if you are greedy. And if you are greedy, and youre only serving greed meaning youre self-flagellating or whatever the case may be, youre serving your interests over that of the marketplace by charging too much or whatever the case may be, well, then, this is where competition comes in and nips this in the bud.

Now, let us get back to the case of ethanol here. Yesterday on Your World with Neil Cavuto, gentleman who is a turkey farmer named John Burkel, and hes from upstate Minnesota, was on the line with Neil, was on the telephone with Neil Cavuto, and Cavuto asked him why the price of turkeys was going up and what that had to do with corn subsidies. Listen. All right. So subsidizing ethanol, which all the greens seem to say, well, even that, well, hell, even Al Gore says its not such a good idea anymore, is now taking corn out of the mouths of hungry chickens and turkeys out there. And because its taking feed out of the mouth, the turkey farmer or the chicken grower has to find some other way to feed the birds. Now, if theyre going to use corn, then theyre going to have to compete.

What happens when the supply of anything is constricted? Well, the competition for the service or the product goes up, and so does the price. So what does this mean to you? This means a more expensive piece of chicken. This means a more expensive Thanksgiving turkey. It means more expenses when it comes to anything related to poultry. This is what is known as a law of unintended consequences. You start meddling in the market, now, the corn subsidy is totally unrelated from the chicken industry. But as you can see, and as was just demonstrated or proven to you, that doesnt matter. And this is why you try and steer clear of all this.

It doesnt matter where the subsidy is or what it is subsidizing. You know, there was a point, one point in time way, way back in the day when members of Congress and the state legislatures and statesmen just would resist the urge to subsidize, almost to a fault, because they knew that the unintended consequences of the subsidy can never be predicted and can never be felt until the subsidy actually goes into effect. And now you see this with the corn subsidy. And this happens with other subsidies. It does not matter what it is. But it does matter that it has a direct influence on the rest of the chain, the rest of the supply chain, as the turkey guy just said. 1-866-95-PATRIOT is the telephone number.

This is why the most wise prudent policy of all is to have no industrial policy, is to have no car manufacturing policy, is to have no agriculture policy. The problem isnt the difference between the Republican policy and the Dumbocrat policy. The problem is the policy, especially if it involves a subsidy. I know you people in Iowa dont like to hear it. Youre not taking my subsidy away. And I can understand the tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars, hell, maybe billions of dollars that have been spent in hardware to create ethanol. Well, you bought into this. You bought into the product being subsidized, knowing that in a free market you cant get rid of the stuff.

End Mike Church Show Transcript

TheKingDude

Host of the Mike Church Show on The Veritas Radio Network's CRUSADE Channel & Founder of the Veritas Radio Network. Formerly, of Sirius/XM's Patriot channel 125. The show began in March of 2003 exclusively on Sirius and remains "the longest running radio talk show in satellite radio history".

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