Now I'm of the belief that people should be self-reliant (hence, my past legislative efforts to diminish
dependency on welfare). I think a phased gradual withdrawal of subsidies would be a fair compromise then something so sudden as the President has proposed
Of course, there are a range of options. Would it, for example, be by 10% over 10 years, 20% over five years or 25% over four years?
However, the effects of subsidy withdrawal could have a negative impact on the living standards of many farmers and their families. While I suspect many would be able to weather such fall-out in that subsidy cuts may just have a negligible impact, others may genuinely face hardship. So I would be favorable to a proportion of each phased cut being allocated to a Hardship Fund to help farmers with the transition from having subsidies to having no subsidies. Perhaps 25% of the proceeds from the cut, which could be used to provide transitional relief to those farmers and, indeed, farming communities worst affected
Naturally, we should be looking at ways to curb 'excessive' expenditure given theat we have more money going out than we have coming in but I really don't think we should be considering anything too radical that could have a potentially devastating impact on farming communities, which is why I favor the phased withdrawal of subsidies and provision of transitional relief
There is much to be said for doing things slowly and painlessly
Of course, in the long run, should a phased withdrawal of federal subsidies to Atlasian farmers have a positive impact on farmers in the Third World that too will be of benefit to both us and them. It encourages self-reliance on their part and reduces dependency on us whether through government aid or charitable giving
Furthermore, I think Atlasian farmers should be encouraged to rear goats
because for Atlasia to contribute to assisiting Third World families by providing them with goats would be much more effective then handing over dollars to their corrupt rulers in the war on global poverty
'Hawk'