Kill Welfare With Free Food For All

Uncle Sam is getting panicky about a mountain of butter that is starting to melt but keeps growing at a rate of 10 million pounds a week.

It is just the latest in a long series of surplus commodity headaches which began with potatoes and pigs during the Great Depression of the 30s.  In those dismal times - when many Americans actually were starving - our government planners tackled the problem by dousing potatoes with kerosene and killing baby pigs before they could grow into hams and bacon.

Since then we have refined the technique of managing our food supply.  Now we pay farmers to raise food we don't need and then store it for several years before we dump it.  Those who don't know where the money for all this comes from may go to the foot of the class.

The present problem regarding butter is an enlightening example.  The hang-up is not expense - money being the least of Congressional worries - but simply that we have run out of refrigerator space.

According to a recent tally, the U.S. buys half the butter produced for about $1.50 per pound and has 260 million pounds in rented cold storage.  In addition, 621 million pounds of cheese and 1.2 billion pounds of dried milk are stashed away.  To make room for more dairy surplus, the Agriculture Department offers the stuff to foreign buyers, at $1.05 per pound.  Unfortunately there are no takers.  The European Common market countries have their own glut and can't find buyers for butter at 70 cents a pound.

I must have been asleep when the Economics 101 professor explained the logic of taxing American citizens $1.50 a pound for 70-cent butter so consumers can be charged another $2.10 per pound at the supermarket.

It is passing strange that Congress currently is agonizing over food surpluses and the plight of 35 million Americans alleged to live below the "poverty level."  The irony is that our lawmakers cannot see a mutually supporting solution.  The Potomac mists must curdle the brains of our representatives when they reach Washington, D.C.

Congress, in a frenzy of compassion, this spring held the dairy price support program at its existing level.  Farm lobbies had pressured for another 7 ½ cent subsidy on a gallon of milk and 10 cents on butter and cheese.  Please note that these emoluments apply before the $1.50 buy-back.

The tragedy of the whole thing is that dairy farmers are not getting rich on subsidies.  Neither are consumers, who pay to create an artificial shortage and high prices.

The long-range solution is to let farm products compete in a free market.  Efficient farmers will make a decent return on their labor and investment.  Marginal farmers will turn to something more scarce and hence more profitable.

Having little faith that Congress will act sensibly for long-range benefits, let us suggest an immediate and simple solution: make available to Americans, rich and poor alike, an unlimited free supply of flour, beans and butter.  

Uncle Sam would buy these three basic foods at a fair price and deliver them to regular, wholesale distributors.  Every grocery store would keep these on their shelves without charge.  Just help yourself.  Distributors and markets each would receive a cent a pound for handling - about their usual profit.

Dieticians say these three foods combined are completely nutritious and health sustaining.

No more food stamps, welfare investigations, farm subsidies, bureaucratic administration or social stigma.  The cost of providing this free food is surprisingly low - an estimated $5 billion, which is one-third the present food stamp outlay.

Of course, a steady diet of bread, butter and beans is hardly the American standard of diet.  However, our problem beyond this would be one of providing variety instead of filling bellies.

Other foods that become surplus because of generous subsidies - cheese and dried milk come to mind - or favorable growing conditions also could be channeled through state welfare systems.

Coincident with a free food program, there should be a "pinch penny" cookbook to teach us once more how to make bread at home and 20 ways to prepare beans.  A special section would give instructions for growing onions and tomatoes in a tenement window box and for gathering edible wild plants such as dandelion leaves and cat-tail roots.

The free food program here suggested would not solve all the problems of the poor, or even all their nutrition needs.  But it would go a long way in stabilizing food prices while helping farmers and low-income households.

The most efficient disposer of that mountain of butter is the American appetite - a secret weapon in the war against poverty, budget deficits and inflation.

Home