That’s the economic wisdom behind an op-ed piece in today’s NYT by Victor Davis Hanson, a former classics professor and current columnist for the National Review (where he extolled the “humane treatment” of Guantanamo inmates in a recent offering). Far be it from me to defend the current level and especially pattern of subsidies, which go largely to the wrong people for growing the wrong things in the wrong way, but I’d love to see the economic model that shows how agricultural subsidies lower food output in a hungry world.