Why do we pay farm subsidies and what do they do to the prices of certain goods?
In: Economics
Politician says to the farmer “Hey vote for me I’ll give you money.” Farmer says to the politician “Yeah okay.” City boy says to the farmer and the politician “Hey what the fuck?” Farmer says “You don’t want to starve, do you?”
City boy is concerned that he’s being taken for a ride, but he doesn’t know enough about farming to know if that’s true. Plus there are way more farmers than city boys, and they’re super poor while city boy is super rich. So he lets the politician take his money and give it to the farmer, so that the farmer won’t grow food, so that the city boy… won’t starve…
Flash forward a hundred years or so. The politician is taking the city boy’s money and transferring it to an agricultural corporation now. The city boy is sure this isn’t helping him avoid starvation, since other countries like Australian eliminated farm subsidies and it didn’t do dip to their food supply. But now when the city boy’s politician says “Hey let’s eliminate this welfare for corporations,” the rural guy’s politician says “If you want to cut welfare, let’s start with the welfare that goes to poor people.” City boy says “You’re crazy, those guys actually need it.” And so the status quo is maintained.
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