Kish and I are up in northern Michigan for a vacation. The other day we went to visit “Fishtown,” which is a part of Leland, Michigan.
“Fishtown” is an area that used to be used by commercial fishermen on Lake Michigan. There is still a functioning smokehouse there and lots of fishing vessels that you can charter, as well as a boat you can take over to some nearby islands, but most of the structures are occupied by gift shops, t-shirt emporiums, restaurants, bars, and other businesses that cater to the tourist trade.
Fishtown is small in size, but is still a real treat for the senses. The structures are wooden and weathered and gray with age. There are some unusual objects here and there, like a rack used for drying nets, a metal fish windsock, and various nautical items. The smells are the kind of smells you associate with the waterfront, like the smell of fish and of decaying plants, intermingled with the very enticing smell of whitefish being smoked. And the sound is the gentle slap of the water against the pilings of the pier and the occasional cry of a seagull.
Fishtown is a good example of the kind of pleasant and interesting surprises you often find when you travel through America and are willing to go off the beaten path.
What the Post editorial does not say is that these kinds of subsidies, and other government programs that seek to encourage or discourage other forms of economic activity, distort the market and have a much broader ripple effect than Congress typically intends. If government subsidies encourage a farmer to grow corn when he otherwise would grow something else, the result will be an outflow of government money and, because the farmer is not growing the other crop, less competition and therefore higher prices in the market for that other crop. If the subsidy encourages maximum production of corn, the farmer may use special fertilizers and other forms of chemicals to increase yield that may have an unexpected environmental impact. The farmer may buy otherwise unnecessary types of equipment and build otherwise unnecessary silos or other structures, thereby making him and his farm economically dependent on the continuation of the subsidy and increasing the risk of an unsustainable debt burden and foreclosure if the subsidy is ended.
