If I ran the Washington Examiner, I would have an annual “Overrated Washington” issue, and the cover would be a picture of a cupcake. Cakelove and Georgetown Cupcake range from good to average, but the price and wait are worthy only of awesome — which they are not.
Does that mean they should be punished by protectionist trade policies which benefit a few politically connected big businesses? Just because these cupcake makers have fooled Washingtonians into paying $3 for a cupcake doesn’t mean the government should jack up their ingredient prices.
But the sugar lobby disagrees. The American Sugar Alliance, which lobbies to preserve import quotas that allow domestic sugar growers to charge higher prices for their sugar, thinks we should have no sympathy for CakeLove, writing in its latest newsletter:
It’s difficult to imagine a better setup for healthy profit margins. Charge more than $3 for a single cupcake and still have bustling stores full of eager and hungry customers.
That’s why it’s so hard to believe the owner of CakeLove, the swanky DC home of expensive gourmet cupcakes, when he went to Capitol Hill and complained that sugar policy is causing him financial harm despite their popular, premium-priced snacks.
His unexpected splash into the world of politics seemed a bit orchestrated and farfetched to us, so the American Sugar Alliance visited CakeLove’s location in the hip U Street corridor in Northwest Washington.
Well, you know what, I find it pretty easy “to imagine a better setup for healthy profit margins.” How about you get the U.S. government to place strict curbs on the ability of Americans to buy from your foreign competitors, while also getting the government to give you low-interest non-recourse loans that effectively serves as a minimum price for your product.
While you’re at it, why not get the government to import your labor force from Caribbean islands in an exploitive guest-worker program that allows you to deport any workers who complain about low wages, squalid living conditions, or unfair payment practices.
And as frosting, let’s have the U.S. taxpayers pay the Army Corps of Engineers to turn a unique habitat in Florida into land that’s just right for growing sugar.
That, it seems, is a pretty sweet recipe for some sickening profit-margins.
