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Title: The Big Handout
Subtitle: How Government Subsidies and Corporate Welfare Corrupt the World We Live In and Wreak Havoc on Our Food Bills
Author: Thomas M. Kostigen
Narrator: Bronson Pinchot
Format: Unabridged
Length: 7 hrs and 28 mins
Language: English
Release date: 07-01-14
Publisher: Audible Studios
Genres: Business, Commerce & Economy
Publisher's Summary:
A riveting exposé of how a little-understood government policy perverts our way of living, making us fatter, poorer, and more unhealthy.
Did you know that subsidized goods often cost us more than we'd pay for them in the free market? In fact, we sometimes pay for goods that will never exist at all. It turns out that the free market in America is anything but. How did a system designed to safeguard American farmers turn into the nation's biggest scam?Most of us don't know what subsidies are and don't think they affect us directly, so we tune out. But they have an enormous impact on all of us. Put simply, a subsidy is a grant by the government to a private business. Cotton, wheat, corn, soy, and oil are the most subsidized commodities in the United States. The Big Handout exposes how artificially lowering the prices of these commodities hurts us and people around the world. Behind the troubling news about fiscal, environmental, and foreign policies is a story about just one thing: subsidies.
In this eye-opening book, New York Times best-selling author Thomas M. Kostigen explores government policies that cost taxpayers $200 billion per year - more than $1,500 per household. He persuasively shows that subsidies are at the root of our most pressing problems as a country - our foreign policy, our health, our food supply, even our money troubles and our expanding waistlines. Revealing just how toxic America's subsidy system has become, The Big Handout is a wake-up call that empowers us to demand change.
Members Reviews:
Lots of facts but absent and misleading conclusions
I picked up Mr. Kostigen's book from the New York Public Library yesterday, figuring the freak October snowstorm would be a good opportunity to catch up on some reading. I have a strong interest in macroeconomic policy and although the title suggests a politicized view of US agriculture subsidization, I figured the book would be somewhat informative and at the very least entertaining.
The latter it was. Mr. Kostigen combines a large array of facts and an incriminating, at times comical writing style which does a good job making the reader view Big Agriculture and the US government's farm programs in a very negative light.
Where the book falls far short is in making any sort of coherent, logical, and fact-based argument as to what degree US subsidization policies make the US consumer worse off, as is Mr. Kostigen's premise. He talks about how consumers experience more expensive imports, and how US companies export less agricultural product as a result of farm subsidies. But he never presents a macro summary of how these factors offset the benefits of subsidies to the US consumer in the aggregate - leaving the reader to wonder if in fact the consumer is better off with existing government policies.