Monday, November 19, 2012

Voting With Their Hooves: "Dairy Cows Flee California Seeking a Better Economic Climate for Themselves and their Calves"

From realClearMarkets:
It's not just millionaires and billionaires who are fleeing the economic madness in California. Even cows are starting to depart for greener pastures. That's right, 400 bovine refugees shuffled off to Kansas just this month, with more expected to follow as over 100 dairy farms in California close their doors.
Why are cows voting with their hooves?

It's hard to find a government program as insane as the complex web of price supports, market orders, direct payments, diversion programs, herd reductions, import barriers, export subsidies, and stacked-to-the-rafters cheese warehouses that characterize Uncle Sam's efforts to "rationally manage" the dairy market. If you really want to understand how crony capitalism works to create market conditions only a Soviet commissar could love, take a look at what happens when byzantine federal regulations collide with state interventions.

Around the time of the New Deal, guaranteeing the milk supply joined life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as one of the cardinal responsibilities of government. While this may be ascribed to a desire by politicians to always have enough babies to kiss, some suspect that buying the votes of dairy farmers had something to do with it.

And so, while presidents come and go and Congress regularly passes reform bills to correct distortions caused by prior reforms, dairy programs enjoy the closest thing to perpetual life that a lobbyist could hope for. The main task of these programs is to make sure that market forces will never be allowed to balance supply and demand....MORE
As we bid adieu to these intrepid bovines other climes extoll the virtues to be found in their jurisdictions:
...Two South Dakota dairy processors put up billboards in Tulare County, Calif., which has about 340,000 dairy cows, saying "All our cows in South Dakota are happy."...