Poll: 57 Percent Support Ponies for All

Jim Harper at the Cato blog is psyched by a poll showing that "54 percent of the 1,013 adults polled said they thought [the government] was trying to do too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses." The good news for libertarianism as a political movement is that polls almost always show that. The bad news for libertarianism as a political movement is that, um, polls almost always show that. Meanwhile, polls don't show any serious support for cutting spending on anything in particular, which makes it very hard to cut spending.

Comments

Is this a case of voters wanting "big government for me but not for thee" or is this merely a vague individualist streak in the national psyche? It seems to me that the former would bode well for libertarians cynical enough to carve out coalitions just long enough to do away with individual programs (e.g. welfare reform). For example, couldn't the right sort of candidate get enough votes from an Yglesias-Sullivan coalition to get rid of farm subsidies?

Posted by WillieStyle | October 30, 2006 2:16 PM

For example, couldn't the right sort of candidate get enough votes from an Yglesias-Sullivan coalition to get rid of farm subsidies?

No. Because it's not a matter of getting enough people votes, but of enough House and Senate votes, and the way the Senate is set up and the states that rely on farm subsidies, plus big agribusiness' lobbying power make this virtually impossible. Neither Matt Yglesias nor Andrew Sullivan is a Senator.

Posted by flippantangel | October 30, 2006 2:20 PM

Because it's not a matter of getting enough people votes, but of enough House and Senate votes, and the way the Senate is set up and the states that rely on farm subsidies, plus big agribusiness' lobbying power make this virtually impossible.

It's worse than that! Bills about farm subsidies need to get through the agriculture committees. And guess who sits on the agricultural committees -- subsidy-hungry legislators representing farming communities.

I could imagine a bill passing that improves our agriculture policy, but the only way to accomplish it would be to buy farmers off by increasing overall spending. You could convert the subsidies, for example, to land-stewardship subsidies handed out on a per-acre basis rather than production subsidies. To have any chance of making that fly, though, it would need to involve a non-trivial rise in spending, or else there's no reason the farmers would go for it.

Posted by Matthew Yglesias | October 30, 2006 2:45 PM

Neither Matt Yglesias nor Andrew Sullivan is a Senator.

Ah, but what a Senate THAT would be!

Posted by right | October 30, 2006 3:35 PM

Of course, the only way farm subsidies would be slashed would come in the form of some kind of big trade treaty...

Posted by Petey | October 30, 2006 3:49 PM

Do you guys think you could give "non-trivial" a rest? That'd be great if you did.

Posted by Wade | October 30, 2006 4:22 PM

I've never understood why folks devote as much attention to it as they do.

It's less a question of the amount of money spent than the amount of harm done by the money to developing world economies.

Posted by Matthew Yglesias | October 30, 2006 4:25 PM

I'm guessing none of you are farmers...

Posted by sickles | October 30, 2006 4:32 PM

That's always the trouble: any particular bit of government waste matters a great deal to the beneficiary, but is trivial to everyone else. It makes it very hard to get rid of things once they are established, harder than it is to start new programs. They can add a dollar coin, but they can't take away the penny. They can shovel drugs out to seniors, but they can't touch social security. It's a one-way ratchet.

There's a similar situation with health coverage. Most people agree something should be done, but no one can agree where the money will come from. Coalitions of the discontented are by their very nature inable to take action, because they're all discontented about slightly different things.

Posted by Boring | October 30, 2006 4:59 PM

I'm guessing none of you are farmers...

Well, as a member of an Iowa family that used to farm, and as an aficionado of upstate New York farming, I can say that the current system of farm subsidies stinks. Why do you think agribusiness so agressively lobbies for continued subsidies? Because most of the money goes to enormous corporate farms. The larger you are, the more you get. Now, I would think that if the government were going to distort the free market anyway by intervening in farming, that it would be a better promotion of the general welfare to focus on smaller, family-owned and family-worked farms (Sorry, Senator Grassley, no more awarding subsidies to yourself). I would wager that helping to level out price fluctuations for the little guy, and rewarding sustainable farming practices would cost less than writing huge checks to Archer Daniels Midland. Farming is still a major pursuit in New York, on a small scale, and I know plenty of folks that would support reforming the current system, since their mostly-small cultivated plots don't get squat, but NBA players that decide to buy huge tracts of land get a big payoff.

Whew. Sorry, sickles, for being so long-winded. And for taking you seriously, since I presume that you're a drive-by troll who doesn't even know what a farm looks like.

Posted by mds | October 31, 2006 10:50 AM