The $5 billion food tax
As one grocery shopper told a Post-Dispatch reporter recently, “Things have gotten really expensive” at the supermarket. Food prices rose 4.9 percent last year, partly because of our thirst for corn-based ethanol and partly because of rising demand around the world, especially in places like China.
High food prices are also partly a result of government policy, a new Cato Institute study reminds us:
Consumers paid an implicit food tax of $5 billion in 2006, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, because the federal government supports some farmers by maintaining price floors for their products. The U.S. government also constrains supply by paying farmers to leave land idle as part of its Conservation Reserve Program.
That doesn’t count tens of billions of dollars worth of ethanol subsidies, or the cost of import quotas and tariffs. Cato analyst Sallie James closes with a timely recommendation:
Politicians especially keen to “stimulate” the economy by putting more money in the hands of consumers should start by reducing the taxes on imported dairy products, sugar, rice, and ethanol.
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David Nicklaus has covered St. Louis business for more than 25 years. His column appears three days a week on the Post-Dispatch business page. 
I guess it is too much to expect a simple description of a “think tank” like the Cato Institute, although I bet some educator in one of your journalism classes, way back when, would have chided you all for consistenly failing to do so. The Cato Institute is a rightwing, Chicago School of Economics-biased research and advocacy group, which is to say, pretty similar to rich-boy Sinquefield’s Show-Me Institute, locally. I am not saying that all of their points or arguments are incorrect, but your readers deserve to know more about your sources, David. Shame on you!