Yes, There Are Millionaire Welfare Farmers
November 10, 2008
This look at how millionaire farmers get welfare is the third
in my series on wealth redistribution from the poor and middle
class to the rich. It’s one of the more offensive examples
of some rich people getting richer off the backs of working people.
By the way, if you missed the first two posts in this series,
you can find them here: How The Rich Get Richer and A Bailout
For The Rich. Also, I am collecting all posts and pages on this
topic here: The Redistribution Of Wealth To The Wealthy.
The U.S. government doles out about 18 billion per year in
farm subsidies (it varies from year to year). When President
Bush tried to limit the subsidies to those who made less than
$200,000 per year, Mary Kay Thatcher, a lobbyist with the American
Farm Bureau Federation, complained that the new law would affect
75,000 farmers. Notice that this means 75,000 farmers are making
more than $200,000 and still getting handouts from the rest of
us.
They use every sort of excuse for these programs, but lets
forget those for the moment (The reasons are mostly bogus, but
would take another post or two to refute). Let’s look at
the actual effects. Millions of citizens who make less than $200,000
annually are taxed to enrich those who make more than them. This
is wealth redistribution, a reverse-robin hood scheme.
But the poor who are the most hurt by this scam are not found
in this country. They are the poor farmers in other countries
whose livelihood is destroyed by the depressed prices resulting
from subsidized agriculture in wealthy countries. For years India
has had a suicide epidemic among farmers, and especially among
cotton growers who are going bankrupt. The huge subsidies here
that lower cotton prices are one of the reasons for this. Cotton
growers here are second after grain farmers in terms of money
doled out to them, receiving an average of $156,000 each in 2006.
In some countries cheaper subsidized grain has left the poor
almost entirely dependent on food from outsiders. It isn’t
hard to understand. Any industry in any country can be destroyed
if a wealthier government shovels enough money into driving down
the price of the products in that industry. Why would a country’s
people buy corn from local farmers if U.S. corn is cheaper? And
when the corn growers there are gone and the U.S. encourages
bio-fuels that result in a tripling of the price of corn, what
choice do those people have but to pay that price?
The sad thing is that agriculture is one key area where developing
countries can normally compete with wealthier countries, due
to cheaper land and labor. Unfortunately low crop prices resulting
from subsidies encourage them to be dependent buyers of food
from wealthy countries. So we take from the working class in
the U.S. to enrich wealthy farmers who then destroy poor farmers
in other countries. Remember, this has nothing to do with free
and fair trade. It is the use of political power to transfer
wealth from poor to rich. And you thought Republicans weren’t
redistributionists?
Of course some of this agricultural welfare goes to average
farmers too (although the richest 1 per cent of farmers got 72
per cent of the government payouts in one recent survey). The
average farm household makes over $75,000 though. To suicidal
farmers in India whose businesses are being destroyed, that’s
wealthy. Even most of the people who pay for those farmers’
welfare checks make less than that.
Millionaire welfare farmers are one more example of how money
becomes political power which is then used to redistribute wealth
from poor and middle class to the rich. The rich become richer,
and sometimes it isn’t by honest efforts. If we don’t
stop this nonsense the people will someday revolt and almost
certainly ask for more socialist policies to correct the obvious
corruption they see. That would be tragic, because it is free
markets and honest capitalism that can end poverty.
Note: This is part of a series. You can find all of
the pages listed and linked to here:
The Redistribution
of Wealth to the Wealthy
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