Oh dear, farming again! My mind instantly flew back to that sassy reporter and the equally stubborn cotton farmers he was interviewing.
Here Wheelan discusses mohair farmers and how they have received nearly 40 years of subsidies from the government. Okay, before this book, I had never even HEARD of mohair. I mean really, I'm fine with just wool, thank you very much.
So the question raised here, as well as that interview with the cotton farmers, is why is the government subsidizing seemingly insignificant products? Why can't that money go to education funding or more all-incomposing health care? Well, these insignificant products, as Wheelan states, cost insignificant amounts of taxpayer's money. But the idea still stands: why does the government pay for things that seem to be economic drains for well earned money to just swirl down into? Why is it that economists are so smart and yet hit brick walls when trying to push through their intelligent ideas?
The answer, however slightly vague, can be found in Nobel Prize winner Gary Becker's seminal paper. "When it comes to interest group politics, it pays to be small." What Becker was essentially saying is that all equally small and well organized groups were most successful in politics and their process because the costs of the favors they get from the system are spread out over a large part of the population. I guess meaning that the government decides to pay small groups, no matter how insignificant they seem (cough cough mohair cough) in order to spread that money beyond to the greater population.
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