Thoughts on Harvest Boxes

  1.  It is my understanding that the trend in Third World countries (most notably India) that subsidize food is to move away from in-kind benefits to cash payments.  This is because experience shows the in-kind approach damages markets and leads to widespread corruption and waste.
  2.  The Harvest Box approach is completely inconsistent with that trend.
  3.  The GOP professes to be the party of maximum consumer choice, free markets, and the primacy of the private sector.  The Harvest Box idea flies in the face of all three of these ideas.
  4.  The people behind this concept, therefore, are either complete hypocrites, or they have an agenda which overrides notions of efficiency and ideological consistency.
  5.  The correct choice is B.  Grinding the faces of the poor (the real goal of the Harvest Box) makes the Reactionary faction of the GOP happy.  The nanny state is perfectly OK as long as it only operates on people you dislike.