Big business, big government, 'Big Ripoff'
The Big Ripoff: How Big Business and Big Government Steal Your Money
By Timothy P. Carney
Wiley, $24.95
Reading Timothy P. Carney's description of the sweet deal South Florida's sugar-farming Fanjul family enjoys at the expense of American taxpayers and consumers is enough to leave a bad taste in your mouth.
In his new book, ``The Big Ripoff," Carney calls the sugar industry the nation's best example of corporate welfare and labels the Fanjuls the ``First Family" of that phenomenon.
``Their wealth comes from their sugar business, a business that relies on protectionist trade policies, low-interest loans from the government, and government-made-and-maintained drainage and infrastructure," he writes.
The Fanjuls, says Carney, control about one-third of Florida's sugar production and, together with US Sugar Corp., own a majority of the cane fields in South Florida. Carney then adds that those big corporations owe their existence to their cozy relationships with the government.
Americans, Carney asserts, are ripped off big-time by the Fanjuls and other sugar growers because of quotas imposed to keep other countries' sugar from being imported.
``This drives up not only the price of a bag of sugar but also of candy bars, soda, and any other food that contains sugar. Recent government estimates hold that American consumers pay $1.9 billion more for food per year because of these import quotas. The government's watchdog agency also estimated that almost half of that money goes to large sugar growers, such as the Fanjuls," Carney writes.
The big sugar growers, Carney points out, show their gratitude to big government with generous contributions to politicians' campaign chests. Alfie Fanjul is the heavy contributor to Democrats, Pepe Fanjul favors the Republicans, and brothers Alexander and Andres Fanjul are equal-opportunity donors.
Between 1979 and 1994, he says, Florida sugar industry corporations, PACs, relatives, and executives contributed $2.6 million to political candidates, and since then the Fanjuls alone have contributed $1 million more.
Were it not for the mutual back-scratching between the sugar interests and the politicians, Carney suggests, it's probable that no sugar would be grown in the United States.
The association between big government and big sugar is one of many examples offered by Carney in ``The Big Ripoff" of politicians and big businesses working in concert to further their mutual interests to the detriment of competitors, consumers, and taxpayers. Carney looks at favors afforded to Boeing, Philip Morris, General Electric, General Motors, Wal-Mart, Unocal, Enron, Monsanto, and Archer Daniels Midland.
The author, a contributing editor to the conservative weekly magazine Human Events and a member of the Competitive Enterprise Institute's panel of experts, goes into great detail to show how the big corporations lobby for and even help write regulations to eliminate or hobble competition.
``The Big Ripoff" covers most of same territory that Martin Fridson explores in the recently published ``Unwarranted Intrusions: The Case Against Government Intervention in the Marketplace." Each author makes a good case that the American people might be better served with less taxpayer subsidization and governmental protection of big business. 