A Ukrainian soldier in Washington, DC told Insider he's using his break from the front lines of the war against Russia to educate US lawmakers.

A Ukrainian soldier in Washington, DC told Insider he’s using his break from the front lines of the war against Russia to educate US lawmakers.

  • @cyd
    5•1 year ago

    Jimmy Carter gave struggling dairy farmers money to encourage dairy production at a time when the costs of these products were rising like crazy. The government bought a bunch to spur production and decrease costs for the average family.

    This makes little sense. If the government makes big purchases of a product, the increase in demand raises, not lowers, prices. Also, if people aren’t interested in eating that much cheese that the government has trouble giving it away, “spurring production” is an insane objective. It only makes sense if, as OP said, the whole point was a giveaway to farmers.

    • @money_loo
      5•1 year ago

      I’m no economist, I apologize, it went like this:

      During the 1970s, as Americans sat in long gas lines and watched the economy tank, they faced another crisis: an unprecedented shortage of dairy products. In 1973, dairy prices shot up 30 percent as the price of other foods inflated. When the government tried to intervene, prices fell so low that the dairy industry balked. Then, in 1977, under President Jimmy Carter, the government set a new subsidy policy that poured $2 billion into the dairy industry in just four years.

      Suddenly, dairy farmers who had been hurting were flush with cash—and producing as much milk as they could in order to take advantage of government support. The government purchased the milk dairy farmers couldn’t sell and began to process it into cheese, butter and dehydrated milk powder.

      So they were struggling due to inflation, and the government was buying their products to prop them up for the time.

      • @cyd
        2•1 year ago

        If the policy was simply meant to address a shortage of dairy products in the market, the government should not have ended up with mountains of cheese that had to be given away.

        • @money_loo
          1•1 year ago

          You’re correct, I updated the post with better info. Thank you for keeping it accurate.