Pay up or bread will cost $.10

Note: Given the politically charged atmosphere in the United States, it seems important to mention that the following is from the HUMOR section of my writing. I understand that there is some poor economic justification for subsidies.

People like me often say the government can't be trusted with anything; it's a wonder there isn't more people who think like this. Just consider the following case: In the United States, farmers are paid by the government not to farm. Now when you charge someone money not to do something we tend to call that extortion. Like protection money, the gang won't trash your store if you pay.

Now the problem lies here: when paying for extortion the other side needs to be threatening you somehow. Now I know the heavy agricultural states tend to be 2nd-Amendment-loving and Republican-voting, but the government's guns are bigger. Farming isn't that lucrative of an employment; the government has billions to spend on missiles, bombs and tanks. In a fight between a hundred farmers with 22s and 12-gauges vs an air force pilot in an A-10 which side do you see winning? (Hint: the A-10 is the one that's a flying armory and has a gun that alternates between barrels to prevent overheating)

And next you kind of want the 'or else' part of the extortion to be something bad. Why if we don't pay off these farmers, they might *gasp* grow food! Can you believe how terrible that would be? All those soup kitchens out of business, all those government employees no longer needed to distribute food stamps, just terrible. Who knows? we might have so much we'll have to give away even more to starving developing nations.

So why? Well it could be to stop obesity, but we keep on hearing that those numbers are going up. Or maybe we're trying to keep foreigners from leaving their subsistence farms and working in factories, except capitalism continues to spread to developing nations. Maybe it's one of those self-esteem boosting projects! That fancy dinner just wouldn't seem fancy if you only paid $20 for it.