Word: aid
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Ever since the 1980s, when a wave of foreclosures inspired those iconic Farm Aid concerts, the media's sporadic reports from farm country have tended to focus on floods, droughts and other disasters. But the farm crisis is as over as Barbara Mandrell. Farm incomes are at an all-time high. The median farmer enjoys five times the net worth of the median nonfarmer household. Crop prices have soared--thanks largely to the Federal Government's promotion of corn ethanol over more efficient renewable energies--and yet subsidies have as well...
Nevertheless, Congress is finalizing a $286 billion farm bill that will continue our basic farm policies, which means it will keep funneling money to farmers and pseudo farmers through a bewildering array of loans, price supports, subsidized insurance, disaster aid and money-for-nothing handouts that arrive when times are tough--or not tough. "What a joke," grumbles Congressman Ron Kind, a Wisconsin Democrat who led a failed bipartisan reform effort in the House. "You're eligible as long as you're breathing." Actually, that's not quite true. Since the vast majority of the cash goes to five...
Franklin Roosevelt's Administration started farm aid in response to the Dust Bowl and the Depression, calling it "a temporary solution to deal with an emergency." But in Washington, the emergency has never ended. The government still gives farmers your money--more than ever over the past decade--along with research projects to expand their yields, restoration projects to clean up their messes, flood-control and irrigation projects to protect and enhance their land, visa programs to supply them with cheap labor, ethanol mandates and tariffs to boost their prices, and tax breaks by the bushel...
Jefferson's "cultivators of the earth" didn't have genetically engineered seeds or 530-horsepower tractors. They had 1-horsepower horses. And they didn't have subsidies either. In fact, most antebellum farmers opposed all federal aid to private enterprise, assuming it would just enrich manufacturing élites. The lesson of Husker Harvest Days is that modern farmers--at least the ones with most of the land and subsidies--are a new manufacturing élite. They just happen to be manufacturing food and fiber. Production agriculture is a high-tech, globalized business with economies of scale...
...University of Virginia and Princeton, colleges that also ended their early admissions programs. The Office is relying on the research of recently departed professor of economics Caroline M. Hoxby ’88 and professor of public policy Christopher N. Avery ’88 which analyzed financial aid and admissions data in order to provide a more refined way to target schools and regions for recruitment of students who would not otherwise think of applying to Harvard. The change was also intended to make the college admissions process simpler and fairer for high school seniors, especially for students from...