[jkepler]

> Workers are being squeezed on one end and small farmers are being squeezed on the other, and the gains go somewhere else entirely while small communities fall into despair and die out.

This seems to have all started when we turned the dollar into a melting iceberg jn 1913 (created the Federal Reserve, which is basicaly a cabal of private banksters with a veneer of government), and it intensified when we decided to make dollars our primary national export product in 1971 (when Nixon closed the gold convertibility window for foreign central banks). Since then, workers are squeezed for working hard and trying to save for the future, but not understanding that if they're saying in dollars they'll never get ahead.

My guess specific to farming is that federal subsidies for corn and energy have driven prices up in ways that price smaller-scale farms out of the market.

[koheripbal]

This comment has a very biased tone and lacks an understanding of basic economics

[Akronymus]

Could you elaborate on how it is wrong?

[tomrod]

First, a typo "jn" for in.

Second, the Federal Reserve is not a cabal, let alone a shadowy one.

Third, it's existence is to ameliorate recessions. Your great-great grandparents, if in the US at the time, were very much in favor of it.

Fourth, the US doesn't allow for sovereign banks, so a private Federal Reserve is already the classical liberal/libertarian solution (anarcho-capitalists are typically the ones calling for abolishing the Federal Reserve/returning to commodity as a standard).

Fifth, a lender of last resort is a fantastic backstop allowing more investment and risk taking, which has pushed the US' investment dominance for over a century.

[eigenmeister]

Federal subsidies may contribute, but average farm size has increased, and employment decreased, over a much longer scale - century plus - than any farm program I'm aware of. It's a massive secular trend longer than the monetary items mentioned as well.

Technology/automation is a commonly cited cause, although in this context you'll see references to mechanization.

[Arn_Thor]

If you look at the US’s richest (or the world’s for that matter) they’re not usually bankers, which raises a few questions about your hypothesis