Tuesday, July 16, 2024

'On the Front Porch' discussion on July 22 takes a look at the limits of government-sponsored support


The next 'On the Front Porch' conversation will be on July 22 at 4 p.m. E.T. Event hosts Tony Pipa and Brent Orrell will be joined by Kevin Kosar, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, who wrote the foreword for the new edition of Edward C. Banfield’s Government Project, which was first published in 1951.

Register here.

Banfield’s book explores the history and ultimate failure of Casa Grande Valley Farms, a 1937 New Deal farming cooperative established in Pinal County, Arizona, which aimed to help some of the poorest people in the country.

In his forward for the book, Kosar writes, "For five years, the farm succeeded. The revenues from the sale of its crops gave the Casa Grande settlers material comfort and wealth far beyond what they had ever possessed. But in the farm’s seventh year of operation, the inhabitants shuttered it and walked away with hardly anything, to the shock and dismay of the government officials overseeing it."

The discussion will center on what went wrong at Casa Grande and examine the complexities and challenges of government-sponsored social and economic development programs, especially in the context of rural America.

Registrants can submit pre-event questions to: Hunter.Dixon@aei.org

Previous On the Front Porch conversations can be found here.

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