Famine, Corn Laws, and Ethanol

According to The Daily Beast, Paul Ryan supports the free-market policies they imagine contributed to the famine in Ireland in the 1840s. The famine was aggravated by export of grain to England even during the famine. That, in turn, was due to the Corn Laws that kept England from importing grain from elsewhere. The Corn Laws were based on the idea that being independent of foreign resources was more important than feeding people.

The present-day equivalent of that policy is the corn ethanol mandate. Paul Ryan opposes it. Maybe it's the Irish in him.

I can hardly wait for Megan McArdle to get back to work.