U.S. cracks down on Americans' intake of sugar, saturated fat

[jtuck004]

22. Tell people to slow down while taxing them for over $50 billion in sugar subsidy. No wonder

people think their tax money is being wasted and they have decreasing faith in "government". .

...The program that supports the American sugar industry has many facets. Most infamous is a subsidy program in which the U.S. Department of Agriculture gives loans to sugar farmers and allows them to repay those loans with raw sugar if sugar prices fall below 20.9 cents per pound. This program functions as an effective mass purchase of sugar, which drives up prices for consumers and thus doubly subsidizes the industry. The USDA then sells this sugar at a steeply discounted price to ethanol producers. Last year the USDA spent $53.3 million on the program. Including the loans that could not be repaid, the government spent $171.5 million.

The government also enforces a system of tariffs and quotas on imported sugar, limiting the supply of cheaper sugar that can be imported from abroad. This results in wide spreads between global and domestic sugar prices. In the absence of protection, consumers and sugar-using producers alike could save several cents a pound on sugar bought from other countries.
...

http://www.economics21.org/commentary/sugar-subsidies-are-bitter-deal-american-consumers


Ouf food stamp program invests about $70 billion a year into keeping people fed, and it's not enough. Let's remove the sugar subsidy and use it to lower the cost of fresh vegetables.

Or just keep being hypocrites.