Are Farm Subsidies socialism?

www.newsweek.com...

"If this trade uncertainty lingers, we will certainly be looking to the Trump Administration for another round of market facilitation payments. Farmers continue to bear the brunt of the trade wars."

We all know they are. It is welfare, it is exactly like welfare.
Farm subsidies are actually the perfect example of socialism. I'm am against them 100%. If farms/farmers fail, let them fail.

What I'm confused about is why some people are so quick to call many things socialism, and be completely against it, but then be perfectly OK with farm subsidies.

No. Farm subsidies are to regulate the prices and game the futures market.

originally posted by: JAGStorm
What I'm confused about is why some people are so quick to call many things socialism, and be completely against it, but then be perfectly OK with farm subsidies.

You know what they say about looking a gift horse in the mouth?

a reply to: JAGStorm

The truth is our economy like almost all others is a mix of free markets and government intervention

Yes, subsidies are government intervention

Ideally they would be eliminated

However, we also have massive regulations on farmers which hurt small farmers more than large ones

So subsidies help keep those small farmers afloat is some cases

But your broader point seems to me to be that many people proclaim to be against government intervention until it can benefit them

And I agree with that

a reply to: JAGStorm

Depends what the subsidy is for but farmers are important to your country so protective measures in the form of subsidies are important , American farmers seem to be the victims of political stupidity so no it's nothing like welfare.

a reply to: JAGStorm

Socialist is a little bit of a leap on this one, hear me out.

Usually socialist countries while propping up an industry will use propaganda or indoctrination so people play ball.

It's not like the department of agriculture has gotten schools to tell generations of kids to eat mostly grains each day. lol.

a reply to: JAGStorm


Yes. All subsidies are a form of socialism.

You are only looking at the issue from one side.
Consider a farmers.

You plant a crop.
Pray for rain, but not to much.
You hope for the best.
You harvest with a $250k machine that you use 3 weeks out of the year.
Then somebody else tells you what you are going to get paid.


Cut the subsidies if you want but dont bitch about $8 gallons of milk.
$16 pounds of cheese.
Etc...

The US dollar failed fifty years ago, as it was designed to.

Farms no longer operate within the free market- but then neither to banks, hospitals, fire departments, law enforcement and any business built around catering to any of them.

Without the printing press to keep the farms going, the only ones who would manage to not go out of business would be the massive industrial scale ones- with million dollar tractors driven by minimum wage employees. They don't care about the quality of the food, just the profit it brings.

I don't like farm subsidies either- but they're needed to keep the food on the table for the working class. Last week I bought chicken fir 99 cents a pound. Go on youtube and look at the problems faced by small to medium scale chicken farmers- the rules and regulations they're forced to follow were written for massive scale chicken farms, and make nearly no sense for a small to medium scale business... yet they have to follow them. Half a million dollars to follow the regulations for setting up a coup for a thousand chickens in some places! You'd need $25 a chicken per year over 20 years to recover the cost of the building, before the increased yearly taxes you'd pay... and not including the food.

Without free money for farms, they'd collapse and we'd starve.
Want to eliminate subsidy money for farmers? Start by eliminating the ridiculous legal constraints squeezing them to death.
Scrapping the failed monetary system we use entirely and going to barter would solve that problem overnight- Food is cheap in this country because tax dollars pay for most of it. (Which is why I'm all for welfare/child support reform... my taxes already pay for most of that food!)

I'm losing focus, but my point is this- farm subsidies are a symptom of our failure, not the cause.

a reply to: JAGStorm

Are Farm Subsidies socialism?

No they are a commutation of Rhineland Capitalism , which shields some aspects of economic life from the more savage realities of the free market .
You've heard of Champagne Socialism ? It's a similar thing , dish out the goods between your friends - in this , important case - it's fellow landowners . We can't have the hoi peloi simply buying up small plots of (unsubsidised) land and living the good life for themselves , now can we ? That'd be far too green a development , not suitable for the corporate . We need a proper clamp upon those greenie meanies who might irrigating and growing their own .

originally posted by: gortex
a reply to: JAGStorm

Depends what the subsidy is for but farmers are important to your country so protective measures in the form of subsidies are important , American farmers seem to be the victims of political stupidity so no it's nothing like welfare.

While socialism is a tad hyperbolic (I use it in this context often though because it's fun and a popular hip word lately), the level our government is involved in the farming industry is pretty vast.

It makes sense because it's an energy sector (fuel for our meat vehicles), but in the US, we also heavily (I believe we've started diversifying a bit more) subsidize corn as it can serve two rolls, food, ethanol. We cut our gas with 15% ethanol.

It could be argued that this topic isn't a mirror image of socialism, I think we could all agree that it's not a free market either.

a reply to: JAGStorm

Socialism is the government taking over the farm.

Subsidies are a form of welfarism which is a product of capitalism, not socialism.

originally posted by: AugustusMasonicus
a reply to: JAGStorm


Yes. All subsidies are a form of socialism.

Average kid.

Vitamin enriched grains in milk soup for breakfast.

Sandwich lightly laced with a little protein and green water leaf with a side of chips.

Decent dinner.

Rinse and repeat = health.

a reply to: JAGStorm

Because you want a national food supply to fall back on when the imports are not available for some reason, like a war. If you let them go bancrupt and Putin decides to test the US on the Iran issue, or China starts it's offensive, or whatever and trade breaks down, you starve.
There is a very good reason for that "socialism" like for example self preservation.

a reply to: Grambler

So subsidies help keep those small farmers afloat is some cases

I'd actually be OK if it were actually helping small farmers. I think that is how they pull on our heartstrings. They give us this image that it is our local small farmer. I don't think that is reality.
I'd be surprised if the little farmers actually see anything. My guess is it benefits the Mega farmers/corporations more than anything.

a reply to: JAGStorm

Or if the program was intended to help keep food diversity alive rather than propping up the grain market (which is essential but it has a role to play as do others.

Grains are great for keeping energy from the warmer months to carry over to winter.

Also, teaching kids that eating mostly grains is a bit of a reach.

There are going to be unintended consequences of loading the deck in this fashion. For instance, some of these subsidies are only provided if you use more resilient seeds (GMO with built in pesticides). We're seeing vast amounts of bees being wiped out, and many are pointing to farming practices. If the bees take a big enough blow, so will we.

Gee, let’s keep growing field corn and soybeans, over and over, since we all know there’s a huge supply stockpiled and low prices with bumper crops each year, keep growing our hole in the ground. Not my fault they go that route. Last time I’ve eaten field corn or soybeans was never. Then let’s pay these same farmers billions so we can punish other countries for putting tariffs on our exports, makes sense to me!

"Socialism is a range of economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production and workers' self-management,[10] as well as the political theories and movements associated with them."

Source

Not a single word about subsidiaries.
But hey, its not turbo-capitalism so it must be socialism, because there are only these two things in the world, right?

originally posted by: CriticalStinker
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Average kid.

Vitamin enriched grains in milk soup for breakfast.

Sandwich lightly laced with a little protein and green water leaf with a side of chips.

Decent dinner.

Rinse and repeat = health.

I love that my tax dollars go to support this crap.

a reply to: Bluntone22

Cut the subsidies if you want but dont bitch about $8 gallons of milk. $16 pounds of cheese.

I would be the last one complaining. I garden extensively, I know what it takes to produce.
I'm happy to support farmers markets and small growers. I would pay more for real food any day of the week.

If my tax dollars weren't used for foods I don't even eat, or aren't healthy for Americans, that would be even better.