The Irate Nation Est. 2001

Guard the Borders Blogburst

Today's Blogburst is also available as a Podcast.

By Nancy Matthis at American Daughter  The Price of Lettuce Federal subsidies do not reduce the COST of food to the taxpayer. They increase it. Likewise, illegal immigration does not reduce the cost of food, or of any other goods and services, to the taxpayer. Illegal immigration also increases those costs. In fact, illegal immigration increases the citizen's financial burden in exactly the same ways and using the same types of governmental mechanisms as the inefficient and ill-conceived government subsidy programs. Let's just look at the numbers. The available data points come from different years, so our results will not be specific for any single year, but will be representative of the general problem. Note: This article responds to two comments made by liberals on earlier articles in our Illegal Immigration series.

1. Joe Budzinski referenced our report on The Crider Case on Nova Townhall Blog. Over there, they play host to a token liberal, Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. Stay Puft took it upon himself to publish a response, We Can't Ignore Agriculture, featuring Critique of American Daughter.
   

   "....farmers work on very tight profit margins. They can't pay more. If they paid higher rates, the cost of producing a crop would exceed its market value. The only way to increase wages in these sorts of jobs would be to increase government subsidies even more (make tax payers pay for the wage increases), or let food prices shoot up (make consumers pay) both of these options seem untenable. In the later case, the negative economic consequences could be more severe than anything brought on by the recent influx of immigrants.... We need this stuff, but in today's economy it isn't profitable without being propped up with tax dollars. Last year, we put over 16 billion dollars into these subsidies. "

2. The Word-Drum took a shot at our friend Doyle, when he cross-posted our article Illegals Deadlier Than War On Terror on his weblog A Cool Change. As you can see, the fellow who left the comment cannot spell any better than he can do math.
   

   "As a Vegitarian American (Democrat) I resent having to pay the kind of prices for lettuce that would occur if we did something about illegals. It's Bush's fault anyway."

Both of these fellows believe in the incorrect "manna from heaven" theory of government assistance. It is an item of religious faith with liberals that we will deconstruct in the following discussion. Update -- It is likely that the second comment was meant as a joke. The sad fact is that most liberals are so divorced from reality that it sounded like an authentic liberal response. And we are pretty certain that the first commenter really believes in his logic. As our contributor [Bad Moon Rising] likes to say, "They walk among us. And they vote."

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The average expenditure for food per person in the United States in 2005 was $3,452 (source). The average annual agricultural subsidy in the United States between 1996 and 2002 was $16 billion (source). The population of the United States recently passed the milestone of 300 million (source). So, if the value of the agricultural subsidy were applied to reduce the cost of food (it actually is not intended to do that and does not do that, but we'll get to that later) it would amount to a benefit of $53.34 per person. $16 billion divided by 300 million = $53.34 per person If the subsidy had the effect of benefiting the citizen, it would represent a savings of: $53.34 on $3,452 or 1.55% But wait just one minute! That $16 billion agricultural subsidy budget did not come, as liberals would have us believe, as manna from heaven. IT CAME OUT OF THAT SAME CITIZEN'S POCKET IN THE FIRST PLACE. Does that mean that he just broke even? No. Not even close. In order to implement an agricultural subsidy program, the government had to maintain pro rata segments of