Owing to the Common Agricultural Policy, every cow in France gets $2.00 a day in subsidies (you read it right – – $2.00). Indeed, the OECD gives $350 billion dollars in subsidies to farmers and gives a magnificent $50 billion dollars in aid to developing countries. The hypocrisy needs no comment from me.
This being the case, the Epicurean Garden is just fine, but you should grow (subsidized) vegetables and rear (subsidized) cows to achieve true happiness.
(Figures come from Patrick Macrory, an expert on world trade)
The real hypocrisy is that the “subsidizer” (the french taxpayer) has no say so in how his/her hard earned money is spent by the govt; True happiness is achieved when the individual is free to choose how to spend his/her money, or not.Short of spending tax money to protect life, liberty, and property, there is no other reason a govt should collect revenues.
Well, he can vote the fellows out after five years (I think it is five), just as he can vote the fellows out in the United States, that is, if the voting machines work. The fact is that the vast majority of French people actually support successive governments in wanting to keep farmers on farms in their beautiful countryside. They feel closer to the soil than most Westerners, and a great many Parisians have kept old family farms. But in the process of all this you are right in pointing out that the taxpayer gets a raw deal. He does, too, in the US , where the subsidies go to huge farming corporations. And of course the subsidies have a disastrous effect of developing countries dependent on agriculture.