A Not So Sweet Taste in Your Mouth

Here's a perfect example of why the government shouldn't try and orchestrate the economy. According to the new book by Wayne Leighton and Edward Lopez, "Madmen, Intellectuals, And Academic Scribblers", the federal government fritters away through tariffs and subsidies $2 billion a year to support 61,000 full-time equivalent sugar growers. Bad enough, you say? Yeah, well, get a load of this, that same policy is also creating a a $4 billion a year LOSS to approximately 1,000,000 full-time equivalent employees in the sugar USING industry (not to mention the higher cost to consumers) and so, yeah, the overall dead-weight loss to the American economy is $2 billion (at least) a year. Does that make any sense at all, people?..................................................................................P.S. The predominant theory as to why this type of bad policy persists is called Public Choice Theory. It tends to happen whenever the benefits of something are concentrated (61,000 people in the case of sugar growers) and the costs of it are dispersed (a million people plus in the case of sugar users), and it of course involves politicians getting their palms greased mightily.