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Farmer-Rick

(11,515 posts)
5. Mmmm, butter make it taste better
Thu Sep 22, 2022, 09:37 AM
Sep 2022

That's was a saying we had around the house when the kids were young.

Anyway the real problem is how to control the price of milk in a capitalist economy. When times are good dairy farmers starve, and when times are bad dairy farmers profit. Yet people still want milk and all the lovely products made from it.

A walk down the history of milk price controls is a lesson in what doesn't work in a capitalist economy. That insurance idea they had back in 2014 is what put a lot of dairy farmers out of business recently.

Free market capitalism doesn't work to keep milk prices stable. It does just the opposite. Since the 1930s America has been trying to have flourishing dairy farms and a free market capitalist market in milk. You can't do both.

The truth is agriculture has to be supported by the government or everyone will go do something else, except for factory and huge corporate farms. And they too get subsidies and guaranteed markets from the federal government. But that seems to be what the US wants. One giant corporation controlling your food, betting on it in commodities markets and selling it to you at very high prices. Works for the filthy rich.

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