Hacker News Reader

Comment by gruez | Hacker News Reader

As always, a party's political beliefs are more complicated than being pro-[thing] or anti-[thing]. To steelman the GOP, I'd say that they're against welfare for individuals because for the most part they're transfer payments that don't require any "work" to obtain (short of filling out some forms). They think that's bad because it encourages laziness. To my knowledge farm subsidies aren't implemented that way. They're implemented as price supports or loan programs, so you still need to actually produce something to get that government money.

View on HN

> To my knowledge farm subsidies aren't implemented that way.

You'd be wrong. Farm subsidies exist in several forms, but one is for letting fields that could produce x lying unused. Some "farmers" just sign up for that program every year and havent planted anything since they inherited the farm.

Paying someone to do something destructive in order to produce something you don't want isn't very smart, even if it keeps them busy in a way that fools them I to feeling productive. If we all did that it would be worse than doing nothing.

>to do something destructive

is growing corn a destructive activity on net? If it is, then we shouldn't just be cutting subsidies, we should be banning it outright. As it relates to this discussion (ie. "are republicans hypocrites because they're anti individual welfare but pro agricultural welfare"), we can safely assume that republicans don't think that and therefore aren't hypocrites. This is not to say whether growing corn is actually destructive or not, only that the republican view is at least self-consistent.

> you still need to actually produce something to get that government money

This farmer faked his paperwork and got $1.6 million in illegal farm subsidies.

https://thecounter.org/man-found-guilty-stealing-1-3-million...

I'm not sure what your point is? Obviously they didn't intend for people to defraud the system. It's like asking "how can democrats be for welfare programs for the poor when fraud causes some of that to be diverted to non-poor criminals?"

Also the US is terrible at transitions. When manufacturing went overseas, we left the factory workers high and dry. We can end the corn subsidies while providing income and support for farmers to transition to other crops, but that starts to look more like traditional welfare.

That kinda sounds like the planned economy of the USSR. Just produce anything to spruce up the propaganda statistics regardless if the market wants it.

you could argue those corn farmers are too lazy to figure out a crop that is actually beneficial to society and are comfortable resting in their subsidized bubble.

I mean, you could also come up with plenty of other uncharitable explanations for why democrats/republicans endorse certain policies, but that's not helpful if your objective is to understand the other side.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com