Originally posted by Vulcan Protectionism is import tarrifs on competitive products, our beef products into the US get heavily tarrifed, this money goes into the goverment coffees but not necessarily back to US beef farmers. Subsidies is taking your taxes and giving them to the farmers as a sort of social-welfare system. Its still socialism comrade funked.
Originally posted by Tarmac Protectionism is retarded from a strictly economic point of view, but from a national security point of view it makes sense. Outsourcing our manufacturing capability is retarded enough (see steel). I'm usually quick to ***** about government subsidies and how they undermine the free market (and our entire political system), but I look at farm subsidies as national security spending. Outsourcing our food production could be disasterous in wartime.
