04 July 2007

Subsidies to the rich

It's not just the UK that the transfers funds from the poor to the rich via farm subsidies. It's painful reading but you can read here about how the US fails to look after the members of its military who suffer Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome:
The PTSD label is not only stigmatizing, but its symptoms are often mistaken for personality disorders and are blamed for behavioral problems like insubordination and substance abuse, resulting in a one-way ticket out of the military with no retirement pay or benefits.
And here, about Maurice Wilder, "newly crowned king of the subsidies":
He received $2.5 million in farm handouts from 2003 to 2005 ...making him the single biggest single recipient. Even the Bush administration is becoming embarrassed by the welfare state created for farmers. The president is thinking of limiting handouts to farmers to an adjusted $200,000 per household.

1 comment:

Harald Korneliussen said...

That the military fails to look after their people who aquire mental illnesses, is unfortunately nothing new. Quite a few shell-shocked soldiers in WW1 were accused of merely being cowards.