Over the last few months, the concept of “bailing out” failing businesses and industries has become pervasive. First it’s the banks failing due to their own greed and an excess of government intervention in the lending process. Next is the auto industry staggering under its own weight and failure to innovate. Most recently it’s the newspapers, finally falling prey to the inevitable death of the old media from the unstoppable pressure of the internet. The concept of the bailout is not a new one. For decades we’ve been sustaining, in what essentially is a long term bailout, the entire farming industry.
The problem with bailouts, however is that they are simply not American.