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."...
