{"id":12262,"date":"2023-11-24T14:23:59","date_gmt":"2023-11-24T14:23:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=12262"},"modified":"2023-11-24T14:23:59","modified_gmt":"2023-11-24T14:23:59","slug":"why-is-halloween-candy-so-expensive-sugar-protectionism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=12262","title":{"rendered":"Why Is Halloween Candy So Expensive? Sugar Protectionism."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>\n\n&#8220;The series of subsidies and tariffs that the federal government uses to artificially inflate sugar prices in the United States cost consumers between $2.5 billion and $3.5 billion every year, according to a timely Government Accountability Office (GAO)&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.gao.gov\/products\/gao-24-106144\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">report released today<\/a>. Those protectionist policies aren&#8217;t the cause of the recent spike in sugar or candy prices, of course, but prices would absolutely be lower without them.&#8221;<br>&#8230;<br>&#8220;Those higher prices get baked\u2014quite literally\u2014into the cost of everything from Milky Ways to Sour Patch Kids. And, as the GAO also points out, this is&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/reason.com\/podcasts\/nice-things\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">a classic case<\/a>&nbsp;of&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/reason.com\/2019\/02\/27\/sugar-subsidies-are-welfare-for-the-rich\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">concentrated benefits for a special interest<\/a>&nbsp;that results in huge, but very diffused, costs for everyone else: &#8220;Because the program guarantees relatively high prices for domestic sugar, sugar farmers benefit significantly, and sugar farms are substantially more profitable per acre than other U.S. farms.&#8221;&#8221;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-wordpress wp-block-embed is-type-wp-embed is-provider-reason-com\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"wp-embedded-content\" data-secret=\"001f4uNSue\"><a href=\"https:\/\/reason.com\/2023\/10\/31\/why-is-halloween-candy-so-expensive-sugar-protectionism\/\">Why Is Halloween Candy So Expensive? Sugar Protectionism.<\/a><\/blockquote><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-embedded-content\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts\" security=\"restricted\" style=\"position: absolute; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);\" title=\"&#8220;Why Is Halloween Candy So Expensive? Sugar Protectionism.&#8221; &#8212; Reason.com\" src=\"https:\/\/reason.com\/2023\/10\/31\/why-is-halloween-candy-so-expensive-sugar-protectionism\/embed\/#?secret=lTLhk11pgr#?secret=001f4uNSue\" data-secret=\"001f4uNSue\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;The series of subsidies and tariffs that the federal government uses to artificially inflate sugar prices in the United States cost consumers between $2.5 billion and $3.5 billion every year, according to a timely Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released today. Those protectionist policies aren&#8217;t the cause of the recent spike in sugar or candy prices, of course, but prices would absolutely be lower without them.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Those higher prices get baked\u2014quite literally\u2014into the cost of everything from Milky Ways to Sour Patch Kids. And, as the GAO also points out, this is a classic case of concentrated benefits for a special interest that results in huge, but very diffused, costs for everyone else: &#8220;Because the program guarantees relatively high prices for domestic sugar, sugar farmers benefit significantly, and sugar farms are substantially more profitable per acre than other U.S. farms.&#8221;&#8221;  <\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/reason.com\/2023\/10\/31\/why-is-halloween-candy-so-expensive-sugar-protectionism\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[217,165,1469,1407,216,238,208],"class_list":["post-12262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-economics","tag-economy","tag-government-intervention","tag-prices","tag-protectionism","tag-subsidies","tag-tariffs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12262"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12262\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12263,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12262\/revisions\/12263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}