No bailout for small business, fishing industry
The last in the United States is closing. The plant closing will force the 130 plant workers to find employment elsewhere.
The plant鈥檚 owner, Bumble Bee Foods, blames the closure on drastically lower limits on the amount of herring that regional fishermen are allowed to catch. The New England Fishery Management Council (an intergovernmental entity controlled by both state and federal government) slashed the quota in half from the 180,000 metric tons allowed in 2004 to today鈥檚 90,000.
Consumer demand for sardines is insufficient for the price increases needed to offset the increased costs imposed by the government鈥檚 stringent quota.
Meanwhile, the government is busy creating havoc in the dairy industry. While sardine canning industry was destroyed by government intervention and regulation, the dairy industry is coping with soviet style price fixing. Dairy farmers across the nation are bemoaning the prices set by the government and demanding even greater subsidies and interventions.
Various price floors set by the government, such as the have been distorting U.S. dairy markets for decades. The situation was made far worse by the (MILC) which pays farmers nationwide every month in which milk prices in Boston fall below the minimum price. Even the White House has of these programs. , and most of the 鈥渞eforms鈥� being proposed, will soon put the milk industry in the same condition as the sardine industry. Unfortunately, when the disaster reaches its peak, politicians will likely be all too happy to buy votes with another massive bailout rather than truly solving the problem by getting the government out of the milk business.
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