Sweet Deal for Big Sugar Is Sour for Consumers ; Government Interference Costs Billions in Higher Prices and Lost Jobs

Summary

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The collapse of communism brought an end to many of the world's command-and-control economic systems and central planning by government bureaucrats. But a notable exception is the United States government's sugar program. A complicated system of marketing allotments, price supports, purchase guarantees, quotas and tariffs that only a Soviet apparatchik could love, the U.S. sugar program has actually lasted longer than the Soviet Union itself.

It imposes a hidden tax of billions of dollars annually on consumers and businesses and has destroyed thousands of U.S. manufacturing jobs. It substitutes the federal government for the private sector in basic decisions about buying and selling, supply and price.

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Sweet Deal for Big Sugar Is Sour for Consumers ; Government Interference Costs Billions in Higher Prices and Lost Jobs

I first voted against this job-killing, market-distorting monstrosity in 1977. I have made repeated efforts since to abolish it. Today, given our fragile national recovery and the clear ne...

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