5 ms·

> particularly notable is that the biggest 10% of farms take 90% of the subsidy This is the real problem. I wish somebody would come up with a simple mechanis

• tastyfreeze 5y ago
  Just stop subsidies altogether. Subsidies distort the market and encourage farmers to grow crops the market doesnt actually want.
  • landemva 5y ago
    Start with removing corn subsidy. There is so much corn ovrrproduction that it gets processed into a bit of sweet and blended in to packaged foods like ketchup. And blended into gasoline. Corn subsidy is massive economic distortion which leads to monocrop farming and lack of diversity.
  • etempleton 5y ago
    The problem is that the whole farming industry is proped up on subsidies and if you ended it tomorrow almost every small to medium farm would fold and get bought by a large farm or sold to build a housing development.
    • AnthonyMouse 5y ago
      That isn't consistent with 10% of the farms taking 90% of the subsidy. The subsidy argument is a scam anyway. It's a commodity market. The margins will be razor thin, the end. If you subsidize production, prices go down. It will eat the whole subsidy and leave the margins razor thin. The only way the subsidy helps you is if you get more of it than your competitors. Now who do you think that applies to, the family farm or the huge corporation with lots of lobbyists?
      • klyrs 5y ago
        Lower food prices are good for the consumer. Exclusively focusing on the supply side is a mistake.
        • AnthonyMouse 5y ago
          The consumer is the one paying the taxes that fund the subsidies. That isn't helping them.
          • theptip 5y ago
            I get the general point you're making, but in a progressive tax regime like the US, the poor (who benefit most from lower food prices) are paying proportionately less of their income as tax than the rich, so this is helping them. Many US families paid no tax in 2020 due to tax credits, so they won't pay for the subsidies. I would definitely argue that there are simpler ways of helping low-income families to afford food though, if that is your goal... just lower their taxes further, or give them negative tax / UBI if they are already paying no taxes, rather than adding lots of complex gears to distort the economy to try and affect the same outcome. Or more food stamps if you don't like the idea of poor people spending their tax rebate dollars on non-food items that they prefer.
            • AnthonyMouse 5y ago
              > I get the general point you're making, but in a progressive tax regime like the US, the poor (who benefit most from lower food prices) are paying proportionately less of their income as tax than the rich, so this is helping them. That's assuming that you would lower taxes uniformly instead of e.g. lowering them for the lowest tax bracket, which is in no way required.
            • listenallyall 5y ago
              Income tax may be progressive (before deductions, of course). But payroll taxes definitely are not, and if you earn under 50, 60k or so, your payroll tax burden is going to be higher than income tax. Sales tax and gasoline taxes aren't progressive either.
  • willvarfar 5y ago
    Subsidies can be about ensuring crops are produced in-country instead of imported from cheaper countries. This is not the same as saying there is no market for the produce.
    • simonh 5y ago
      Who cares where it’s produced? If farmers in a developing country can get off aid and earn a living, good for them. I do care how it’s produced.
      • azinman2 5y ago
        So many reasons why this is bad, but the most obvious reason right now is the supply chain crisis. It’s one thing if you can’t get a new car. It’s another if you can’t get new food.
      • PeterisP 5y ago
        There are two main aspects. One is long-term food security - even if global trade is mostly fine right now despite the current hiccups, there's no telling how it's going to be in a decade or two, and it's hard to ramp up production (due to lack of skillset, machinery and infrastructure) if you suddenly need it; so it makes all sense to pay some fraction of a percent of your GDP to ensure long-term strategic security of your food supply, especially if it looks like global tensions will eventually rise due to climate change. The second aspect is that even in the current circumstances we're seeing rapid urbanization and depopulation of the countryside, which is generally seen as a problem for many areas. In a "natural" regime without rural subsidies this would happen even faster.
      • AussieWog93 5y ago
        Relying on imports for food makes your country a sitting duck in times of war. All the enemy needs to do is blockade you and then you can be starved into submission.
      • ineedasername 5y ago
        Given the global logistics mess at the moment, I would think it's pretty obvious why the location of food production matters.
  • AngryData 5y ago
    Subsidies are an alternative to having massive granary stores to supply an entire nation. If you don't guarantee overproduction, you will soon find yourself having shortages as crop yields can vary up to 30% each year. Without subsidies farms will optimize towards producing only barely enough to satisfy demand so they don't waste money on crops they can't sell, profit margins are usually 1% or less so there is very little room for overproduction. Once everyone is trying to thread that thin line, a single bad month of weather or a large wind or hail storm would turn you from a food exporting nation to a food importing nation overnight, and crop prices will swing wildly in either direction from it. Subsidies certainly are poorly applied and could use some serious work fixing them, but just getting rid of them outright is foolish.
  • vkou 5y ago
    Given the choice between a free market plus bread riots every time there's a bad growing year, versus subsidies and no bread riots, I'm going to have to swing towards subsidies. As I understand it, during a bread riot, free marketeers get eaten first.
• hn_version_0023 5y ago
  I’d say that this is a real problem, but there’s a larger issue: lying — which includes not just outright falsehoods, but the spin applied to facts to make them more widely palatable. When I look into nearly anything I find some distortion of the truth in service of profits. The problem is that we’re entirely comfortable with lying, and have done so much of it the truth of everything is obscured by the spin. This I feel is at the heart of what ails the USA and the world. As a European friend told me once over beers: ”All you Americans are always selling something, and doing it badly, by lying until you get the sale”
• JoeAltmaier 5y ago
  I'm not sure our economy could handle that. Industry depends on the products coming from those farms. It's always more nuanced than "stop that crazy thing we're doing!"