Yesterday’s 1000 word front page headline story in the Asbury Park Press reporting the amazing growth and profound virtues of alpaca farming neglects to mention one critical fact: The only reason all these people are raising these smelly beasts is because you and I are paying them to. As part of some dopey government scheme to promote family farming these wealthy alpaca growers get huge tax breaks. (Tax breaks on money earned doing productive work, not alpaca farming.) The press calls them alpaca farmers. I call them tax dodgers.
John Stossel wrote a great article about this scam a few months ago. Apparently nobody at the Press read it. You can read it here.
As the Press points out, the price of an alpaca currently runs from tens of thousands of dollars to even a hundred thousand. If the government ends the subsidy, the price will drop to close to zero. The value is not in the animal. It is in the tax loophole. It was, in my opinion, journalistic neglect for the Press not to mention the true reason for the alpaca boom.
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