Existing economic theories are based on scarcity, but a lot of scarcity of key needs are imposed by powerful actors and are not an inherent part of the world. There’s enough food for everyone. There’s enough healthcare resources and home-builders to provide for everyone. But, these goods are based on profits and profits are best maximized not by providing for everyone, but by tailoring services to those with money.
Israel is preventing baby formula from being brought into Gaza.
Why does Jubilee bring so many openly fascist and anti-democracy people to debate? Do they want a debate about serious policy or about overthrowing democracy? Are such people really fair representations of MAGA and the right?
The supply of eggs only dropped a little bit, yet, the cost of eggs and the profits of big egg producing companies grew a lot. They took advantage of the situation to tell a story about an egg shortage, and made it more expensive for people to eat eggs.
“Forcing states to cover some of the cost of food stamps would be a big change for how the program operates, and one that is long overdue. “The federal government pays for 100 percent of the benefits, so state administrators have little incentive to crack down on theft,” Chris Edwards, chair of fiscal policy for the Cato Institute, and a longtime advocate of food stamp reform, tells Reason. While most states are not swindling federal taxpayers as often as Alaska does, more than $1 in every $10 spent through the food stamp program last year was paid out in error.
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to get Murkowski and Sullivan on board with the bill, the Senate added a sweetener: Any state with a food stamp error rate of more than 13.3 percent will be exempt from the federal-state cost-sharing measure for two years.
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Imagine that you’re administering the food stamp program in a state like Delaware, which last year had an error rate of 12.37 percent. If the Senate version of the tax bill becomes law, you’d have a pretty strong incentive to simply let that error rate rise a bit for the rest of this year, thus buying you two more years of a fully federally funded SNAP program with no mandatory state spending.”
“Without fixing H-2A, tougher immigration enforcement is a recipe for empty fields, higher food prices, and failing farms.”
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“Without a legal path to hiring the workers they need, mass deportations will gut the agricultural workforce with no backup plan, hurting farms, driving up grocery prices, and weakening America’s food security. If Washington ignores the warnings from farmers, the real harvest this fall will be shortages and higher costs for everyone.”
Not enough aid is reaching Gazans. A record number of UN employees have died trying to get aid to Gazans. What is Israel’s goal here? Why won’t Hamas surrender?
“Several former Republican governors in the Senate have sounded alarms over a controversial House GOP plan to help pay for the Trump megabill by pushing billions in federal food aid costs to states.
Now there’s a would-be governor raising similar concerns. Behind the scenes in recent days, Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama raised issues over the provision with GOP leaders and pushed for the plan to be scaled back, according to three Republicans granted anonymity to describe the conversations.”
“Wednesday’s announcement elevated tariffs on three of America’s five largest agricultural trading partners—China (34 percent), the European Union (20 percent), and Japan (24 percent). Mexico and Canada, which are America’s two largest trading partners, were exempt from the list but have faced 25 percent duties on certain products since March.
Together, these five markets account for more than 60 percent of American agricultural exports and retaliatory tariffs have already been enacted by some. China has implemented a 10 percent to 15 percent tariff on American soybeans, cotton, pork, and poultry. In March, Canada announced retaliatory tariffs on a number of American goods, including $5.8 billion worth of agricultural products. The European Union, meanwhile, is considering a suite of tariffs that will impact the agricultural sector.
As these tariffs make it harder for American farmers to access foreign markets, thus decreasing revenue, they could also increase production costs and the price of fertilizer, which is one of the largest expenses involved in farming. Imports of the three most commonly used nutrients in fertilizers—potassium (potash), nitrogen, and phosphorus—topped $10 billion in 2023, $5 billion of which came from Canada. Potash, which “is an irreplaceable component of modern agricultural production,” according to the Fertilizer Institute, is sourced predominantly from Canada. Nitrogen, meanwhile, is imported mainly from Canada (the country meets 10 percent of American nitrogen needs), Russia, and Trinidad and Tobago (10 percent tariff).”
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“The damage that this policy will cause is not lost on the Trump administration. On Monday, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins told the Des Moines Register that her agency is ready to make farmers affected by tariffs “whole” through cash assistance programs. Under the first Trump administration, the Agriculture Department also hedged against its poor trade policy by issuing $28 billion in bailouts to farmers.
Monetary compensation may provide farmers a reprieve, but it will be at the expense of taxpayers, who are going to have to pay more for their favorite products because of Trump’s trade war.”