You assist a hardworking poor family with government policies and Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan pounce on you. You pay gazillions to subsidize and promote cheese, well, ...
Opining about the tripling of per capita cheese consumption in the US, Charles Lane wrote in the WaPo:
If people want more cheese, that’s between them and the free market, right?But, of course, we shall not discuss anything about real policies, but shall instead focus all our attention only on theatrical fluff. Oh well, the fatty price we pay for "democracy" :(
Well, no. The summation of individual choices can have big costs for everyone. Obese people cost health insurers $1,429 more per year than the non-obese do, according to the National Institutes of Health.
Also, the Golden Age of Cheese was not purely the result of individual choices. It reflects decades of pro-cheese U.S. agriculture policy. I am not making this up. The nation’s cheese binge is a case study in the broader dysfunctionality of federal farm legislation, the latest iteration of which is being debated in Congress.
Yes, there are real social trends at work, too. An aging population consumes less milk as fluid and more in solid form; a wealthier population can afford a richer diet, including cheesy dishes eaten at restaurants.
But the country’s appetite for cheese also reflects U.S. policy.
1 comment:
US Agricultural policy is a real funny one. The market is quite distorted by all sorts of subsidies and guess what - these are all the states which are in the red corner and yelling loudly at the government to get off their backs. Just goes to show that what anybody is really saying is , keep fattening me but don't fatten the other guy.
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