I have a question: rothbard, says that the farming industry was both subsidized for production (lowering price) and subsidized for waste (raising price). So my question is, how can a single market have two prices at the same time?
They don’t have two prices. Its like what if I payed you a ton of money to bake cookies all day, and then paid you an additional sum to throw half of them away.
My employer gave me a 10% raise for being employer of the year. Then he gave everyone a 10% wage reduction because the company had less turnover.
That doesn’t give me two wage prices.
Oh, I see.
Is this more a time problem (raise AND THEN a reduction) because surely, it is impossible for a thing to be valued in 2 ways at once?
It doesn’t seem like a problem from time to time (although I don’t know the specifics of the government intervention). It is just two continuous factors in the price structure.
“two continuous factors in the price structure”
As in, “this egg is larger and rounder but it doesn’t have the right texture (these qualities being factors) so I won’t eat more of it.” (and this determination to not eat being the price).
I believe I am familiar with the topic you are referencing.
What they did was subsidize it in different ways.
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Pay them not to farm on all of their land, that is pay them to leave some of their fields unused..
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Pay them to use more intensive farming methods (not sure which ones got subsidized but things like irrigation and fertilizer)
But paradoxically, wouldn’t this last subsidy drive prices down by boosting output?