On a Sugar High: could welfare payments to Florida's billionaire sugar barons end in 2012? by gimleteye

Every time the Farm Bill comes up in Congress as it will next year, I wonder-- will the billionaire sugar polluters finally lose their protected status by US government farm policy? Never happens. The only ones who get shafted are American consumers. A study just arrived from the liberal, left-leaning American Enterprise Institute, "American Boondogle: Fixing the 2012 Farm Bill". Did I say, "liberal left-leaning"? I meant, conservative free market.

Irrespective, the forms of corporate welfare in the Farm Bill that make sugar billionaires wealthier are an egregious form of political corruption providing the foundation for Florida's future: more pollution, more lobbyists, more destruction of Florida's quality of life and Everglades.

Now the AEI economists chime in: "In the end... there is little evidence that the majority of programs in the Farm Bill address actual market failures or lead to improved societal welfare. Rather, farm program benefits are best viewed as rents that result from effective lobbying efforts that are intended to benefit a politically powerful and relatively well-off segment of the US economy." Snap!

"Simply put, there are no persuasive arguments for income inequity, market failure, or excessive risk to justify farm subsidies. Moreover, the farm programs that do transfer incomes to farmers provide benefits roughly in proportion to production and inevitably subsidize larger and more successful commercial farms. These programs are simply unrelated to any antipoverty goals: they pay more to farms that are bigger and wealthier and they are intended to do so." To the Fanjul billionaires, that is just so harsh! (Calling, Joe Klock!)

Big Sugar gets all heated up, when critics call the farm program, "subsidies". Oh Sugar Rants And Raves. Here is what AEI says: "... direct payments have accounted for the largest share of subsidies paid to farmers under the 2008 legislation. Direct payments are essentially income transfers or gifts made on the basis of historical acreage and yields (“base”), and they do not require that any specific crop be produced— or that farmers engage in any agricultural enterprise, for that matter—as long as the land is maintained in “good agricultural use." Gifts! OMG. But then, AEI expands: "The sugar program does not transfer money from taxpayers to sugar producers. It does raise US sugar prices well above world prices in most years, typically increasing domestic prices paid for sugar by almost 100 percent. In a typical year, the sugar program increases sugar expenditures by domestic consumers by about $2.4 billion and generates about $1.4 billion in extra income for sugar producers."

The sugar program does not transfer money from taxpayers to sugar producers. Let me clarify: it transfers democracy from taxpayers and voters to sugar producers. What surprises is how little of those excess millions it takes to buy the Florida Legislature. Maybe it is all those freebie junkets to the Dominican Republic.

"The program achieves these transfers through import quotas that are binding when world prices fall below the support price. In 2010 and 2011, world sugar prices were well above support levels for the first time in about thirty years, and so impacts of the sugar program have recently been negligible. In most years, however, the sugar program benefits the relatively wealthy few at the expense of almost all consumers. As the figures quoted above indicate, the sugar program is an expensive way to transfer income— wasting $1 billion to transfer $1.4 billion. That is, the program costs about $0.66 for every $1 received by cane or beet farmers, or sugar processors. The sugar program has depressed world sugar prices, lowering incomes for some of the world’s poorest farmers who raise cane sugar in tropical climates. Given that current world sugar prices are well above the price-support level and the industry is especially healthy, this would be an ideal time to end the program." And, AEI might have added: now that the industry is especially healthy and has polluted the Everglades Agricultural Area and public lands of irreplaceable value, this would be an ideal time to end the program.

I have some advice for the sugar billionaires: find some liberal, left-leaning foundation to counter the American Enterprise Institute. Or, you could always hire a Tea Party rent-a-crowd to sit on the AEI doorstep.