Mark Horne | On January 29, 2013

The New York Time’s webpage title is, “Milk Prices Could Double As Farm Bill Stalls.” The article itself warns of a gallon of milk costing six to eight dollars.

First, of all, that is not going to happen in any long-term way. I don’t care what the cause is, there is no way that milk or other dairy prices can afford to shoot up that high. This is basic economics: If a gallon of milk goes up that high, then no one buys it. If no one buys it, then producers have a perishable good that they will leave them with a 100 percent loss. When facing 100 percent loss, sellers are going to slash prices to get something for their milk rather than simply pouring it out onto the ground.

Secondly, there is a case to be made that American’s consume too much dairy. I normally don’t worry about such dietary advice, but I think it at least means that we could all live without dairy if we had to. In fact, by cutting out dairy altogether, I know that my household budget for other goods and services would see a real increase. Milk is already painfully expensive and if this is what freed my family from the taste, then that might be a good result.

So this isn’t a real crisis, not compared to the economic collapse we are facing because we keep spending. Of course, Democrats are blasting the Republicans for holding up food stamps and pretending that food stamps are to “help” the people. If by “help” you mean, seduce into slavery, then that is true. But, otherwise, the vast majority of the welfare is corporate welfare:

“With the farm bill on the table this year, companies and organizations across the country have pulled out their big guns to lobby on the SNAP program. Seventy-one groups ranging from Wal-Mart Stores to Cornell University to Arch Coal are lobbying on the subject, more than in any other year since 2006, when OpenSecrets.org began keeping data according to issues lobbied. ”

What no one wants to admit is that this “Farm Bill” is really an Agriculture/Food stimulus bill of almost a trillion dollars for the next decade. But Congress has attempted to rig it with an economic explosive to hurt anyone who simply opposes it on principle. The “explosive” is a much worse 1949 law. As the NY Times article explains,

“Without last-minute Congressional action, the government would have to follow an antiquated 1949 farm law that would force Washington to buy milk at wildly inflated prices, creating higher prices in the dairy case… Higher prices would be based on what dairy farm production costs were in 1949, when milk production was almost all done by hand. Because of adjustments for inflation and other technical formulas, the government would be forced by law to buy milk at roughly twice the current market prices to maintain a stable milk market.”

So, by never bothering to simply repeal the 1949 law, it has been used to threaten and scare the public into allowing Congress to spend boatloads of money and debt for farm stimulus. In fact, our entire agricultural industry, rather than being any result of the free market, has always been bloated soviet monster perpetually riding on the backs of the American people.

Here is how a lobbyist for Land O’ Lakes put it:

“’Congress needs to pass a comprehensive farm bill that helps farmers continue to feed the world, keeps food prices affordable and provides farmers some financial stability in the very unpredictable profession of farming,’ said Rebecca Lentz, a company spokeswoman.”

No Rebecca: what we need is for you to work in the same market environment that I work in, without my work taxed to give you “stability.” I’ve wanted stability all my life. The difference is I pray for it and work at it. I don’t make up self-serving lies, and pay off elected criminals, to shake down the rest of the country to give me what I want.

We need this Farm Bill to fail. We need to put the fear of God in farmers (mostly: corporations!) as they see their milk market go through the floor, and then we need to abolish the 1949 piece of Soviet trash posing as an American law. Every bit of it needs to be put out of our misery.

We need freedom, and that means we must halt the government’s practice of loading us down with taxing, spending, and borrowing.

Mark Horne

Mark Horne has been studying the intersection of ethics and the economy since high school. He was raised in Liberia, West Africa and Kwajalein, Marshall Islands, as well as on the Atlantic coast of Florida. He graduated from Houghton College in 1989 and from Covenant Theological Seminary in 1998. He was ordained in the Presbyterian Church in America and has pastored churches in Washington state and Oklahoma, as well as serving as an assistant pastor in St. Louis.