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No mention of corn and petroleum subsidies.
by jchrisa 14y ago
No mention of corn and petroleum subsidies.
- lostlogin 14y agoPlease could you expand on that. I'm mystified.
- wtn 14y agoGrain subsidies indirectly subsidize high–calorie, low–nutrition foods like bread, cookies, crackers, soda drinks (corn syrup), and other stuff that is terrible for you. Fuel policy promotes more driving, less walking. It is an interesting question as to where to draw the line between personal responsibility and governmental responsibility. Of course most people in the US can afford to buy quality food, if they really wanted to, and some Americans are doing well. But Americans clearly aren't doing well at keeping up their health, and gov policy is making obesity worse. I saw some data point recently that suggested we may have passed an inflection point (for the better), hopefully it turns out to be true in the long run.
- DanBC 14y agoI'm guessing that corn subsidies in the US mean a glut of high fructose corn syrup. Too much cheap sugar in the diet is bad. (And then there's some extra stuff about too much fructose over other sugars.) Oil subsidies mean people drive everywhere rather than cycling or walking.
- cma 14y agoThe bulk of corn subsidies are for ethanol, which should result in prices of i.e. HFCS going up, not down, right?
- roc 14y agoOnly if we assume that absent ethanol, that farmland would be used to grow corn for food/HFCS. Which isn't true. We also subsidize not farming. So much of the land used for ethanol would be otherwise left fallow.