The Dairy Cliff in America: An Alice in Wonderland of the Planned.

A journalist from the land of fiat money and central banking sat down this week and, no doubt with a straight face, wrote the following about the American ‘dairy cliff’:

As if the “fiscal cliff” and the long-suffering farm bill weren’t enough, Iowans may soon face a new dilemma — a “dairy cliff.”

If Congress fails to act in the handful of weeks it has left in its lame-duck session before adjourning for Christmas recess, the nation’s dairy programs for farmers will expire Jan. 1.

The effects won’t be limited to the dairy industry — retail prices for all sorts of dairy-related products could soar. U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack has predicted the price of milk could rise to $6 a gallon, just as almost all Americans’ income taxes are scheduled to increase …

“That’s why the dairy cliff is similar to the fiscal cliff, because if nothing is done, in January the USDA’s price support level could be so high that the price the government will offer for things like cheese and butter will be about double what the current market price is,” Galen told The Gazette. “So if you wanted to buy cheese for your pizza company or a large supermarket chain, you’d be competing with the government.”

Roll the Laughing Policeman song. 

A theme of this blog is how our Western planned economies derive from Soviet styled planned economies, dependent as they are on planned lives: not capitalism. One person in two in America receives some form of State benefit: it’s the biggest welfare state in the world. The West is now so far from laissez-faire capitalism no one in the Fortress of Legislation knows what it is anymore; it’s a myth they were told to be scared of by the progressives who stand at the front of our school rooms. The only opinion I might be changing, slightly, from reading the above, is rather than referring to the West as semi-police states of forced altruism, I’m starting to think the mob has voted in a world approximating more a childish version of Alice in Wonderland, and we are all living in a Politician’s tantrum. The consumers of Iowa are being financially gutted by their politicians: what in the wonderland are those politicians thinking.

Oh silly. Thinking, of course not: policies like this don’t come from thinking; they come from emoting. That’s the problem.  And while on rural matters, don't forget this post.