The Subsidy Scandal: How Governments Squander Public Money and Destroy the Environment

Subsidies are hailed by the governments as having vital and beneficial impacts on flagging sectors of the economy. Yet, in actual fact, the vast majority are perverse subsidies , bad for both the economy and the environment. The Subsidy Scandal is an account of how taxpayer’s money is used to wreak the environment. Stories, for example, such as the farmer who for several years recieved a $24000 subsidy to grow 100 tonnes of flax which he was then ordered, as a condition of the subsidy, to harvest and burn. This work is the result of extensive research around North America, from Alska to Florida, Newfoundland to New Mexico. It is part travelogue, part political expose. Analysis of the subsidy scandal is enlivened with interviews with the inidivduals and organizations that recieve subsideis or are fighting against them - loogers, environmentalists, fishermen, bureaucrats, and politicians. Pye-Smith reveals that the subsidies often go to those that least need them. In the concluding part, he presents a vision of a world without subsidies and he brings to task the pork-barrel politicans who maintain them and the special interest groups who plunder the public purse.