Corn. It's what's for breakfast, lunch, dinner, cars, and economics. That is Keynesian economics.
While there are several good and valid points in Friedman's excerpt (neoliberal economics) such as, developments in the transportation and communication industries (123), work stoppages (125), and my personal favorite "the federal government has become essentially the only purchaser of the products of many enterprises and whole industries." (125) The only point that holds true and real in accordance with The Omnivore's Dilemma is the last where the government is purchasing (all) the corn. Friedman's example of limiting the number of days wells produce oil in order to control prices (126) will not work with corn. Farmers can't grow corn one day and not the next. While they can alternate year to year there is no guarantee that the following year will be successful (at all). So why would farmers not plant corn, push their land to the limit, and get what money the can for their crop, even if it is less than the year before (it's still money, right)? But one hard and true fact that makes me completely abandon neoliberal economics is the fact that the economy in America is not a free market economy (in the classic sense).
Enter Keynesian economics. The excerpt we read indirectly discusses subsidies it says "a comparatively small increment of investment will lead to full employment... it may require a large increment of investment to produce full employment." This is exactly what was seen in the agricultural industry after the New Deal. Today we have reached a time when "any attempt to increase investment still further will set up a tendency in money-prices to rise without limit, irrespective of the marginal propensity to consume: ie we shall have reached a state of true inflation." This idea reflects the economic reality of agriculture in/and the US. The further we invest in corn, the more the prices will increase, leading farmers to make more for much, much less.
While there are several good and valid points in Friedman's excerpt (neoliberal economics) such as, developments in the transportation and communication industries (123), work stoppages (125), and my personal favorite "the federal government has become essentially the only purchaser of the products of many enterprises and whole industries." (125) The only point that holds true and real in accordance with The Omnivore's Dilemma is the last where the government is purchasing (all) the corn. Friedman's example of limiting the number of days wells produce oil in order to control prices (126) will not work with corn. Farmers can't grow corn one day and not the next. While they can alternate year to year there is no guarantee that the following year will be successful (at all). So why would farmers not plant corn, push their land to the limit, and get what money the can for their crop, even if it is less than the year before (it's still money, right)? But one hard and true fact that makes me completely abandon neoliberal economics is the fact that the economy in America is not a free market economy (in the classic sense).
Enter Keynesian economics. The excerpt we read indirectly discusses subsidies it says "a comparatively small increment of investment will lead to full employment... it may require a large increment of investment to produce full employment." This is exactly what was seen in the agricultural industry after the New Deal. Today we have reached a time when "any attempt to increase investment still further will set up a tendency in money-prices to rise without limit, irrespective of the marginal propensity to consume: ie we shall have reached a state of true inflation." This idea reflects the economic reality of agriculture in/and the US. The further we invest in corn, the more the prices will increase, leading farmers to make more for much, much less.
New Deal is pure Keynes--advised by him. But the question of whether any ostensibly 'free' market is ever free is hard to support--as your good examples pretty much nail.
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