Keeping Perspective
31 October 2006
Editor, The Boston Globe
Dear Editor:
You rightly demand that Uncle Sam stop subsidizing cotton growers ("Cotton-picking subsidies," October 31). But you mistakenly suppose that ending these subsidies will noticeably improve the lives of ordinary people in cotton-growing African countries.
The four African countries whose representatives recently met with U.S. officials to plead for an end to our subsidies - Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, and Mali - are among the most poorly governed and least-free nations on earth. Each of these governments inflict on their own citizens trade and other economic burdens whose ill effects swamp those of Uncle Sam's agricultural policies.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
Editor, The Boston Globe
Dear Editor:
You rightly demand that Uncle Sam stop subsidizing cotton growers ("Cotton-picking subsidies," October 31). But you mistakenly suppose that ending these subsidies will noticeably improve the lives of ordinary people in cotton-growing African countries.
The four African countries whose representatives recently met with U.S. officials to plead for an end to our subsidies - Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, and Mali - are among the most poorly governed and least-free nations on earth. Each of these governments inflict on their own citizens trade and other economic burdens whose ill effects swamp those of Uncle Sam's agricultural policies.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
Posted by Don Boudreaux on
Monday June 11, 2007 at 8:35pm