Elizabeth Warren may deserve a hearty bipartisan applause if she leads a serious effort to eliminate farm subsidies but will she receive bipartisan support. Bipartisan anything has been surely lacking in past congresses. Agribusiness will be fighting her every step of the way. Just nit picking, but bananas grown in the US? I few tons in Hawaii perhaps.

We should also consider scaling back the SNAP (aka food stamps) program.  During the recession, the Obama White House expanded the SNAP program dramatically despite meagre evidence of widespread hunger in the US.  In fact, a high and growing fraction of poor people are obese.  Obesity among the poor has various causes but one is that calories in this country are very cheap and heavily subsidized by the federal government.  Family farming is nearly dead in this country and poor people are overweight, not emaciated.  It's time to scale back the USDA budget dramatically.

Farm subsidies helped save family farms during the depression, kept the farm sector from disaster, and probably paved the way for the incredibly productive and profitable agriculture of today.  The problem is that the solution lasted well beyond the problem, and gradually began to be exploited. 

So, I don't agree that there are no government interventions, even subsidies, that can be of great benefit to the whole country, but subsidies do tend to outlast their usefulness, and then become simply the siphon taking ordinary folks' money and giving it to corporations that Mr. Jacoby quite reasonably deplores.  Oil subsidies like the oil depletion allowance has been at the top of my list for years, not only costing us billions, but artificially maintaining lower fuel costs in the market here, and therefore discouraging the production of more efficient vehicles, and of alternative energy sources, which has then required yet more interventions and subsidies to encourage. (It has been obvious for decades, for instance, that more efficient vehicles were going to come from places like Japan where fuel costs were not artificially low...)

So, Mr. Jacoby does, happily, point to some possible common ground between liberals and conservatives here.  Perhaps we can get together on sundowning old programs, even those that benefit the rich and powerful, and requiring evidence that subsidies that we do agree to are likely to produce long-term benefits for the taxpayers that will be worth the cost to them. 

You hit the nail on this one. And don't forget the corporate welfare given to big oil -- another prodigious waste of tax payer money. Eliminating unnecessary subsidies is something both parties should agree on. I believe that Warren will follow through in her efforts. But whether she can take her policies from aspirational to operational, via a very beholden Beltway, will be where the rubber meets the road. But I remain hopeful in her integrity and her ability.

trying to sound liberal??  any column that can interchange the words millionaire and needy is nothing other than confused.  Jacoby is now against corporate welfare?  oil companies?  

and what about the industrialization of protein and carb production?  Jeff makes it sound like he is a friend to the small business of family farms.  really??  does that include the New Deal subsidies for small farmers, Jeff?  

at the outset, Jeff makes the pedestrian point that it is easy for those from the 44th state in farm production to propose reforms.  

Jeff: you have to understand the modern production of food stuffs for a mostly urban population that has little to offer farmers BUT money.  not like we can trade them more stuff.  awaiting you next foray into political economy.  actually funny,  which makes sense since you were right there, in the middle of the Republican Clown Car this last election cycle.  Right in the middle, right to the bitter end, pulling no punches and no ends ruled out to win.  when IS the Globe going to pink slip the Staff John Bircher??

"Government can only help some by hurting others."  What sort of Zero-sum nonsensene is that?  Useful as a polemical stance perhaps, but useless as a decision making philosophy.  Isn't it also just plain false based on JJ's oft-proclaimed libertarianism? I thought he believes the best thing we can do for people is cut off all support and teach them to to be more self-reliant?  The reality is, some groups (argribusiness, oil industry) need no assistance, despite their well funded lobbying to the contrary, while others (many of the young, the old) need governmental assistance to ensure we all live out our days in a humane society, that we can be proud to be a part of.

Good points -- let's work on removing the farm subsidies which set up artificial economics. Let's also remove the tax deduction for home mortgages, another government mechanism to establish an artificial market, which has resulted in big bucks for the banks and real estate agents. Finally, a comment about the really bad Republican campaign in this last election: while deploring the so-called 47% of Americans for taking and not paying taxes, the reality in America is that the deeper the pockets the bigger the handouts. In addition to non partison cooperation, America needs the Republican Party to return to honest economics.

To those made uncomfortable by my earlier criticism of the SNAP program and its contribution to obesity among the poor, here is a thought.  How about reallocating federal dollars from subsidizing food consumption to giving school vouchers to children in poor households?  In the long run, that's a better anti-poverty program.

Way to go, Liz !!

"Most varieties of food grown in America aren’t subsidized, as ABC’s report noted. There’s no apple subsidy, no banana subsidy..." WHAT?!! Bananas are grown in America? Other than a few thousand tons in Hawaii, I don't think this is true. And I'm not even sure Hawaii is strictly "in America". My understanding is it's part of Kenya.

No more money for Israel!

Agricultural grants are are controversial, but some have served important purposes in the past. For instance, farmers were paid to allow fields to fallow to prevent dust storms. There's been some recent criticism that the plains are being over-cultivated again, and the Ogallala Aquifer is being drained too rapidly.

The advantage of being a liberal is that often you can advocate for or against things that more doctrinaire people wouldn't expect. You can also be for or against certain parts of a program without be against all of it. I think Warren's approach to agricultural subsidies might be much more nuanced than Jacoby could possibly understand. He's always yea or nay -- never maybe.

Warren hasn't even taken office yet and the Globe wants to make her a hero.  Warren wants to raise federal revenues? Please, she should be more concerned about controlling Obama's out of control spending. Warren is such an embarrassment for Massachusetts same as Barney Frank, John Tierney, Mike Capuano, John Kerry, Nikki Tsongas, Ed Markey, Joe Kennedy II and III, and a host of other clueless Liberals this state has sent to Washington.