Government subsidies can have strange, unintended consequences.
Milk-price supports resulted in such a large federal buy of moo juice that it had to be stored as American cheese in the caves of northern Kansas. Eventually it went out of date, and there was so much of it that the feds literally could not give it away. With most subsidies, the government pays someone to produce something that no one wants to buy. That may be the case with the president s proposal to provide tax incentives for the purchase of hybrid gas-electric vehicles. These sophisticated machines employ a computer-managed combination of gasoline and electric engines in a fashion that results in impressive fuel efficiency.