No innuendo here—we're actually talking about government cheese.
Sour Milk
Americans have a knack for efficiency. Motivated by freedom, the free-market, love for fellow man, or a little bit of cheddar from the government, Americans will get the job done.
Since the Great Depression, agricultural industries have relied heavily on government subsidies to stay afloat. It's often assumed that government operated agricultural and food assistance programs were enacted to aid the poor and impoverished. While that is true, it's only a small part of the picture. In the early twentieth century nearly one quarter of the US population was in agriculture and they were certainly among the poorest. Government food programs were not enacted to feed them; they had plenty of food. Rather, it was a strategic government initiative to fund the farmer's unsustainable models and fuel America's global superiority that depended on the US remaining a net exporter of agricultural commodities (i.e. a "bread basket" nation)
One of the earliest examples of this were policies of parity directed at the dairy industry. An industry which, despite producing one of the most basic, heavily adopted, and versatile agricultural products in the world, was never quite sure if they could keep the barn lights on another month. These policies ensured that if the market price of milk dropped below the cost to produce, the government would step in and pay the difference. Policies and legislation like this continued through the twentieth century.
Stacks of Cheddar
Let's take a brief detour and learn a lesson from French colonial Vietnam in the early 1900s. Hanoi had a rat problem. Despite improvements in infrastructure, sewers, and sanitation, they couldn't shake their rodent infestation. In response they placed a bounty on the rats. It started out as a success. But, after becoming over encumbered with the burden of mounting rat carcasses, the bounty hunters were instructed to only submit rat tails in order to collect their pay (this next part will bring a tear of sadistic joy to your government-hating anarcho-capitalist cousin's eye). So, the bounty hunters started to capture the rats, harvest their tails, and breed the little nubby-nudnicks. Wash, rinse, repeat. Illegal rodent farms popped up all over the city. The program ended only a few years later.
President Jimmy Carter, like all good occupants of the office, maintained a posture submissive to lobbyists and special interest groups. He allocated $2 billion in support for the dairy industry that made it highly profitable to produce milk. As you can imagine, we overproduced with no regard to the market; of course, that didn't matter because the fix was in. The US government issued a guarantee to purchase non-fat dry milk, butter, and processed cheddar cheese at fixed rates. The government was dictating production to privately owned industry (there's an F-word for that).
The rat tails began to pile up.
What do you do with all of this government owned dairy product? The eventual solution for the powdered milk was to export it to impoverished nations to establish dependency under the guise of humanitarian altruism. Unsurprisingly, the influx of free milk products to underdeveloped nations led to the collapse of the native dairy industries. The cheese product, however, had to stay stateside since it would not travel well. We started stockpiling it in a series of caves in Kansas City, MO. Sweeping the problem under the rug seemed to be an effective solution until a news story broke out that the government had stockpiled over 1.2 Billion pounds of processed American cheese. By this point it was Reagan's mess to clean up. Despite having just rolled back a large portion of food assistance programs, he agreed to distribute the cheese out to the American people. Those who qualified for food stamps, senior citizens, and schools were the recipients of the cheese for the next decade.
It should not surprise the reader that this was never a bail-out for the American poor and lower-middle classes. It was a bail-out for industrialized agri-oligarchs, dairy associations, co-ops, and commercial farms with bad business practices. Neither should it surprise the reader that this has never really stopped. The government continues to prop up the industry through maintaining subsidies that prevent your gallon of milk of reflecting its true cost of $8 per gallon, push dairy products to school lunch programs, utilize tax-funded propaganda efforts like "Got Milk?", and strategically place USDA bureaucrats inside of major fast food corporations like Dominos and Taco Bell to develop and push cheese-heavy products to market (that F-word I mentioned earlier is "Fascism" by the way). Lastly, it might surprise the reader to know that our cheese stockpiles are no longer 1.2 billion pounds. They've grown by 15% and sit somewhere around 1.4 billion today.
God Hates Government Cheese
All good and well, right? Well, no—we're talking about the federal government after all. The government cannot own things. The government cannot create things. It can only threaten, consume, and steal. All of which are conveniently achieved through excessive taxation. The government stole from your neighbors and force-fed you the goods. Tyrants made you an accessory to their theft. They've done it to your grandparents and parents, and they'll continue to do it to your children and their children for generations to come.
God hates theft. God hates government cheese.
America has been blessed with abundance. We have no need to forcibly take from one to feed another. There exists within this nation another nation full of citizens of heaven. We know that the Lord loves a generous spirit. Resist this tyranny by feeding your neighbors yourself. Grow a garden and raise some egg-laying chickens then share the spoils with those around you. Negotiate a grocery coop within your church, stockpile a pantry, and open it up to your community. Gather together all the grannies in your congregation, make hot meals for the homeless, and hand them out on the street (this one is criminal in most cities, so operate under the cover of night as your fellow miscreants do). Resist tyrants, be generous.
