While you guys throw tariffs on food here and cut subsidies are any of you aware that for some 10% of American's having food on the table is not a given?

Now I'm not saying that subsidising farmers to produce huge crops of the same 3 crops is the best way of continuing to ensure no one goes hungry, it self evidently doesn't work given the current status quo.

However, to talk about making huge changes to these systems without stopping to consider what impact it will have on that part of society is an incredibly rose tinted view of the world.

That is due to extreme levels of inequality in the US and one of the stingiest welfare systems in the whole developed world. It is not due to food prices. If that was the deciding factor then Norwegians and Japanese would be starving.

A lot of the low food prices in the US also contribute to this poverty. The low prices come at the back of people in the food industry doing long days for shitty pay. If the “solution” to people not getting food on the table was to keep pushing food prices down then one easily end up in a situation arguing against minimum wage and workers rights.

One has to look at the whole system and not just a tiny sliver of it.

Japanese people are maybe not starving, but because of high COL cause by tariffs a few years ago Taiwan became a richer country by PPP per capita.

> While you guys throw tariffs on food here and cut subsidies are any of you aware that for some 10% of American's having food on the table is not a given?

So let's funnel that 25% import tarif or money we save from not subsidizing the meat industry into the federal food stamps program.

You're missing the part where those government subsidies are being issued to growers who provide products certified for the SNAP and WIC programs. You remove the subsidies and mess with the tariffs too much and now you're into a whole other problem of growers now refusing to participate in either program.

Why would a grower refuse to participate in either program? They wouldn't get the option to not not-get subsidies. Their incentive to participate in getting their products certified for SNAP and WIC is that their costs are now higher so they have to raise their prices, and so then it'd be more important for them to get their products certified so that SNAP and WIC recipients can purchase them (thus expanding/retaining their customer base).

I'm skeptical about tariffs and I'm not necessarily opposed to subsidies (although I do kind of question whether they are actually an efficient way to help income-challenged Americans) -- but we could still distribute those subsidies differently in order to cheapen healthier food that's in our better interest to encourage. We could also, if we're getting rid of subsidies, consider giving income-challenged people money directly, which may or may not be comparatively cost-effective to working directly with the industry.

So there's a lot of avenues that we could take, and yeah, eliminating food subsidies entirely and not giving any other kinds of aid would probably be a mistake. I'm not disagreeing with you. It's just... there's a lot of things we could change or try that wouldn't leave people to starve. Recognizing that meat is subsidized opens up doors for us to talk about whether our current system is efficient, about what behaviors our current system incentivizes. If nothing else it at least acknowledges that we are currently messing with the market, that meat prices aren't naturally low, and that we if we're comfortable with that kind of intervention, then we could at least mess with the market in different ways to promote more diverse foods.

Right now, we are artificially boosting a few segments of the food industry to frankly unhealthy levels of consumption (at least in most of the US) in order to help people afford food. It is worth considering if it is possible to help those people without propping up industries that are at least indirectly responsible for a nontrivial number of health risks and environmental challenges in the US. I don't think most people here are saying we should leave income-strapped Americans to starve (or at least I'm not), but like you said, the current status quo isn't really working, and it has some some pretty big downsides.

Even if you don't want to touch subsidies at all, at the least we could talk about stuff like checkoff programs. I find it much harder to argue that government intervention into how food is advertised is for the benefit of low-income Americans, and I think the advertising that comes from that forced tax on food is responsible for some increase in consumption.

Aren't we talking mainly about meat subsidise and not food in general?

So the consequences would be poorer people would eat less meat, while the rich continue to eat unchanged.

That is the case with anything you want more expensive. The poor people would be the ones having less of it.

If you remove subsidies you got more money to spare for other things. As a general rule, and policy affecting consumer prices should look at its effect on consumers and combine such changes with other measures.

Money saved one place can be spent other places. Instead of spending it on more tax breaks for the rich it could be spent on the poor providing a net gain for them.

Thank you for pointing this out.

The moment I see any mention of price increase to curb spending is probably as naive as it is dangerous.

It is not naive. What is naive is to leave to market to its own devices and assume everything will work themselves out beautifully.

You always make a proper analysis and do multiple changes money earned on price increases on one category of foods could be spent to reduce another category of food.

You could e.g. tax sugar and junk food and use those earning to subsidize healthier foods , making healthier food more accessible to poor people.

I think the game is that you also want to convince countries to not do that to US exports

Same reason everything else that is imported is imported - comparative advantage.

Take the logic of "grow all your food at home" too seriously and you end up like this guy:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/making-sandwich-sc...

We import those products like garlic and broccoli from China as part of a trade deal where they import corn and other grains even though they can and do produce their own. They have many more mouths to feed, so on their end, getting all of this extra grain in exchange for shipping over a select variety of vegetables and fish is a net plus to them, and to us, it provides an established return on government provided grain subsidies that allow them to issue more grain subsidies.

Tariffs are a much worse idea than direct subsidies to farmers. If you want people to buy American garlic, pay US farmers to sell it for cheaper than the Chinese garlic. A tariff is a regressive tax that makes life harder for the poor.

Where do you think money for subsidies come from?

Money has to come from taxes or cuts somewhere else. Likewise a tariff gives money which could be spent elsewhere.

Hence a tariff one place could be used to create tax cuts or provide other benefits in another area.

In this case what matters is if you actually have a government which is trying to look out for the poor.

You assume the us needs to export food outside of North America.

America and/or North America is big enough of a domestic market to not need to export food.

Europe already has import tariffs on many American goods. Any broad import tariff actually benefits Americans more than it harms.

Because we’ve tried import tariffs before and they don’t work well?

Tariffs are complicated as fuck. Trump tried to half-ass it off the cuff and fucked up a lot of industries.

People import and export the weirdest shit with China. Even a small adjustment on tariffs might cause unseen ripple effect on businesses.