Cash for Clunkers Program Is Like Burying a Pregnant Cow

Authors

Robert M. Hardaway, University of Denver Sturm College of LawFollow

Publication Date

8-7-2009

Document Type

Article

Organizational Units

Sturm College of Law

Keywords

Cash for Clunkers, Great Depression, Farm subsidies

Abstract

In 1933, the U.S. government implemented a Depression-era policy of “keeping prices high” by not only requiring that that farmers be paid not to grow food, but mandating the destruction of existing crops, the plowing up of cotton, and the killing of pigs and pregnant cows-all at a time when millions of Americans were going hungry.

Such misguided depression-era policies so alarmed the concern of British economist John Maynard Keynes that he wrote a letter to President Roosevelt pleading that Roosevelt adopt a policy of increasing demand rather than a populist agenda of reducing supply.

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Recommended Citation

Robert Hardaway, Opinion, Cash for Clunkers Program Is Like Burying a Pregnant Cow, Denv. Post (Aug. 7, 2009), https://www.denverpost.com/2009/08/07/cash-for-clunkers-program-is-like-burying-a-pregnant-cow/.