An anonymous commentator on the previous post on massive subsidies to the cotton industry wants to know why Wonks Anonymous hates American workers.

Actually there are very few American workers involved in this boondoggle. Cotton has been heavily mechanized since the Southern landowners evicted the tenant farmers in the 1930's. The one thing that you do not see in the cotton areas of the San Joaquin is people and Wonks Anonymous is fairly confident that this pattern repeats in the other cotton growing districts of the country.

In fact the cotton subsidies go to large landowners who have very small labor requirements. If we want to help US agricultural workers we are better off moving production to fruits, vegetables, olives and other crops that require larger amount of labor.

Tariffs do not always protect workers in fact it is a reasonable bet that a tariff in this country must protect some interest other than workers. This is why most US protectionism is devoted to large scale staple crops like sugar, cotton and corn.