Reason #36: Cornfed - Big Business’s ‘Socialist’ System

The former chairman of agriculture giant Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) once quipped that “the only place you see a free market is in the speeches of politicians … this is a socialist country.” We rarely get to hear our corporate or political leaders speak so candidly about the way our so-called capitalist system works these days.

Family farmers and small businesses in this country still have to play by the rules of the market. They try to make an honest profit on the crops they grow and the goods and services they sell. But for big business, the rules are different. It’s all about fertilizing politicians with enough campaign cash so that they’ll yield a bumper crop of public contracts and government subsidies. And no business out there reaps more from its elected officials than ADM.

Like pharmaceutical manufacturers and mortgage brokers, ADM pours cash on both Democrats and Republicans. From 2000-2005, it gave over $3 million, split almost evenly between the two parties. This largesse buys the company an endless revenue stream from the federal government for one of the biggest wastes of taxpayer money in our history: ethanol. Even though a gallon of ethanol made from corn barely yields more energy than it takes to make it, Washington throws billions of dollars in subsidies at ADM to make the stuff. Politicians have also protected ADM’s market share by slapping huge tariffs on foreign competition like cheaper, and cleaner, ethanol from Brazil.

ADM and the politicians who support it like to bill ethanol as some kind of environmentally sound solution to our energy needs. But that’s a crock. Ethanol is a red herring, a sham. And yet our leaders continue to use our tax dollars to subsidize it.

NEXT: Reason #37: The Corporate Media - Seeing No Evil, Hearing No Evil, Speaking No Evil