Norman Rockwell imagery aside, farm subsidies are America's largest corporate welfare program.
By purposeful design, most farm welfare goes to the largest 10 percent of farms - the commercial farms whose owners report a median household income of $200,000 and a median household net worth of $2.8 million.
Farmers' incomes still far exceed the national average, the farmer poverty rate is just 2 percent, and farm debt-to-asset ratios are healthier than those in most industries.
Farm subsidies today are distributed to large agribusinesses, celebrity hobby farmers, members of Congress, and even wealthy Beverly Hills and Manhattan families who passively own farmland elsewhere.
Next, defenders argue that farm subsidies allow the farm economy to produce cheap, domestic food.
When the case for farm subsidies collapses, defenders typically offer the final justification that $20 billion in farm welfare is less than 1 percent of the $4 trillion federal budget, and thus not worth the trouble of eliminating.
With 83 percent of all federal spending going to Social Security, Medicare, antipoverty programs, defense, veterans' benefits, and interest on the debt - and with the costs of these top-priority programs rising - farm subsidies provide low-hanging fruit for savings within the remaining 17 percent of the budget.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/11/farm-bill-bipartisan-support-congress-corporate-welfare/
By purposeful design, most farm welfare goes to the largest 10 percent of farms - the commercial farms whose owners report a median household income of $200,000 and a median household net worth of $2.8 million.
Farmers' incomes still far exceed the national average, the farmer poverty rate is just 2 percent, and farm debt-to-asset ratios are healthier than those in most industries.
Farm subsidies today are distributed to large agribusinesses, celebrity hobby farmers, members of Congress, and even wealthy Beverly Hills and Manhattan families who passively own farmland elsewhere.
Next, defenders argue that farm subsidies allow the farm economy to produce cheap, domestic food.
When the case for farm subsidies collapses, defenders typically offer the final justification that $20 billion in farm welfare is less than 1 percent of the $4 trillion federal budget, and thus not worth the trouble of eliminating.
With 83 percent of all federal spending going to Social Security, Medicare, antipoverty programs, defense, veterans' benefits, and interest on the debt - and with the costs of these top-priority programs rising - farm subsidies provide low-hanging fruit for savings within the remaining 17 percent of the budget.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/11/farm-bill-bipartisan-support-congress-corporate-welfare/
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