THESE IGNORANT FOREIGNERS
Mears, Helen
These Ignorant Foreigners By Helen Mears THE OTHER day as I was browsing through The New York Times I came across a disturbing statement. A Times correspondent, reporting from Iran, said that...
...A lot of it is given to foreign countries on some one of our foreign-aid programs...
...Then of course a lot of it spoils and has to be destroyed, but we expect that...
...I was beginning to understand why the Voice of America has so much trouble trying to implant our economic ideology abroad...
...Yes...
...Your American system seems too wasteful for us...
...Yet since today yon are eating only half as much as, say, fifteen years ago, it can be supposed that if the price were lower you would once more buy it to eat...
...About half of the butter is sold by regular marketing procedures...
...Nor do you produce in order to gain a profit from having produced something useful...
...The former Secretary of Agriculture, Mr...
...he asked...
...If I understand it, your system is to create an artificial scarcity by 'aking butter out of the market, so that the price is always high...
...he urged me on...
...Very ingenious...
...Our problems seem very different from yours...
...Quite clear, isn't it...
...Aruminian thanked me and departed, carrying his New York Times with him...
...I see...
...Once to the government as taxes, and once to whoever buys the butter from the government...
...Does the government break eggs also...
...Why is it necessary for the government to keep the price of butter so high...
...We still eat a lot of butter...
...Here was an opportunity made to order...
...You are buying millions of pounds of butter you don't eat...
...Aruminian, who also had with him a copy of The Times...
...Eggs...
...and many people buy cheaper butter substitutes...
...So why doesn't the government sell the butter it buys directly to the people at a fixed low price...
...Let the price drop until people will use it generously again...
...I have here," he said, "an article about the American economic system which I cannot understand...
...It says here—in The Times article—that last year Americans ate only half as much butter as they ate back in 1935-39...
...Your economic system is managed by the government...
...It would interfere with the free market...
...You do not produce simply for use...
...At least we don't approve of other governments having government-managed economic systems...
...It all seems clear and straightforward to me...
...It says here American taxpayers bought 20 million pounds of butter in the first twenty days of January...
...Under this system the farmer sells his butter in the market, but if the price falls below what the government decides is a fair price, then the government begins to buy butter at a higher price decided on by government statisticians...
...Omelets...
...Don't tell them that...
...The Republicans call the part of the program where the government buys the butter with tax funds 'creeping socialism.' But the part where the government sells to commercial markets, and the people buy it from these markets—that's free enterprise...
...Can't disappoint the farmers, or annoy the margarine interests...
...Were we not discussing butter...
...Yes, but Americans also are buying butter...
...Well, so that the farmers who produce the butter can get enough money from selling it to buy the things they need—things like tractors, radios, automobiles, gas and oil, and so on...
...Politics, you know...
...You must of course have butter to fry eggs...
...A lot of it is given away to worthy domestic programs like school lunches...
...Can't make omelets without breaking eggs, you know...
...We bought it to help support our farmers...
...But might I ask you another question about this butter situation...
...What does the government do with the butter it buys...
...Besides, many Americans would rather eat a cheap substitute and save up toward a TV set...
...I'm not sure I've ever heard this threshed out, but I suppose that the part of the program where the government gives butter away so as not to compete with private enterprise is an integration of creeping socialism with free enterprise...
...The rest you understand...
...At least if they get it, they must buy it and pay market prices...
...I fear I still do not understand...
...Why don't the American people buy and eat that butter...
...Its purpose is to try to give everybody a profit so that everybody can buy everything he wants and also pay high taxes so the government can give everybody an income high enough to buy whatever he wants and also pay high taxes...
...I was just about to ask...
...Mr...
...Yes, I see...
...But naturally you understand that under our free-enterprise system it is necessary to have some profit...
...We do not have a choice between TV sets and butter...
...The new Secretary of Agriculture must decide what price level must be maintained...
...Well, since you don't like government interference, why not let butter take its chance in the free market...
...No...
...The government disposes of the butter...
...Yes, of course...
...Ah, now I see...
...We have a real scarcity of everything, and our problem is how to produce more and how to get enough foreign exchange so that we can buy abroad the necessary things we cannot produce...
...Brannan, I believe, tried to work out some modification of such a plan but it was rejected as too much like socialism...
...As I was wondering what could be done to improve this situation, a knock sounded on my door and, by a happy coincidence, in walked my Iranian friend, Mr...
...Is this whole program part of the free-enterprise system we try to understand...
...But...
...Now, of course, a new Administration has come in...
...I believe I see...
...Even for yourselves this butter system seems extravagant...
...HELEN MEARS has lived abroad a great deal, mostly in China and Japan, and has written extensively for a variety of publications, including Harper's, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, and The Saturday Evening Post...
...Well, the Republicans thought of doing that, but they changed their minds...
...She is the author of two books, "Year of the Wild Boar" and "Mirror for Americans...
...Well, no," I cried...
...I am afraid your system is too advanced for my backward country...
...We Americans don't approve of government-managed economic systems...
...In a nutshell, the Democratic Administration had a policy of keeping farm-production prices high...
...What don't you understand...
...The chief reason is that butter has become so expensive that restaurants are stingy about serving it...
...Oh, thank you for explaining that...
...I said that I should be delighted...
...So Americans who buy this butter pay for it twice...
...Yes, of course, but we did not buy this butter to ear...
...Let's skip the omelet" I said, hastily...
...I shall tell my fellow countrymen of this method...
...I think I understand...
...The headline over the puzzling story: "Butter Glut Poses Problem for Republicans price lag forces u.s...
...Do the Americans whose tax money bought the butter get any of the butter...
...There's some debate about that...
...My people cannot even buy enough food to eat...
...to keep buying-benson must rule on parity percentage soon" "Well," I said brightly, "what seems to be wrong...
...Why is that...
...Sorry I brought it up...
...These foreigners are nice people, but they need a lot of guidance and education before they will be able to understand our American system...
...They are buying millions of pounds of butter...
...You produce primarily for profit—that is, to keep people employed, and whether what you produce is used or destroyed doesn't matter...
...Well, no...
...A Times correspondent, reporting from Iran, said that "those who have made a study of communism in Iran say that one of the reasons it is so well-entrenched is that Britain and the United States have not implanted their own ideologies here...
...They could not afford to pay for food they did not eat just to help support our farmers...
...Oh, I understand...
...It is not because your farmers are not producing enough butter, because The Times also says that if the government keeps on buying butter at the current rate, by the end of March the government may have 100 million pounds of butter in storage...
...Then the total cost of butter to the people would be cheaper than now, and the butter would be eaten...
...You Americans Tiave evolved a very advanced sort of economic theory...
...and, of course, enough to pay their taxes, which are high these days...
...The Times article explains that rather well...
...Will you not explain it so that when I return to Iran I can help implant American economic ideology in my backward country...
...And I'm sorry to say that sometimes the people who buy it from the government buy it cheap and sell it high...
Vol. 17 • April 1953 • No. 4
