She’s laughing out loud
And busy ’cause she’s minding somebody else’s blogwatch…

Jane Galt: Fish in foil!

And life after the farm dole, in New Zealand:

…Granted, twin-island New Zealand is only the size of Colorado with a population of 4 million, and represents a mere thimbleful of the world’s agriculture. But the evidence is there, its farmers say: Since the government’s momentous decision to abolish all 30 agricultural subsidies, their productivity has grown, farming’s share of gross domestic product has risen as has the rural population, and family farms have survived and are thriving. …

Nationally, going cold turkey was a group effort. The government used the state-owned Rural Bank to show commercial lenders the lead in debt restructuring, and encouraged them to go easy on mortgage defaulters. The banks, facing massive losses if farming collapsed, wrote off up to 40 percent of farmers’ debts. The worst-hit families were given welfare payments.

And the farmers learned to work harder and do with less.

“We were young, so we put our heads down and just worked the farm,” Ruth Rainey, now 46, recalled in an interview. “We didn’t buy anything basically for years.”

[clipped]

more (via the Club for Growth blog)