Someone who is determined to disbelieve something can manage to disregard an Everest of evidence for it.
So Barack Obama will not temper his enthusiasm for increased equality with lucidity about the government’s role in exacerbating inequality.In the movie “Animal House,” Otter, incensed by the expulsion of his fraternity, says: “I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture.”
Such thinking gives us minimum-wage increases that do very little for very few.
Meanwhile, there arefarm bills, like the one Obama signed last month at Michigan State University.
MSU was one of the models for the land-grant colleges created under the 1862 Morrill Act, whose primary purpose was to apply learning to agriculture.
Today, we apply crony capitalism to agriculture.
The legislation Obama lavishly praised redistributes wealth upward by raising prices consumers pay.
Vincent Smith of Montana State University says small non-farm businesses are almost 30 times more likely to fail than farms, partly because the$956 billion farm legislation continues agriculture’s thick safety net.
The geyser of subsidies assures that farm households will continue to be 53 percent more affluent than average households.
Certain payments are, however, restricted.
People making more than $900,000 annually are ineligible.
Seventy percent of Agriculture Department spending funds food services.
Nearly 48 million people — almost as many live on the West Coast (in California, Oregon and Washington) — receive food stamps.
This dependency, inimical to upward mobility, is assiduously cultivated by government through “outreach initiatives” to “increase awareness” and “streamline the application process.”
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