Farm subsidies transfer income upwards

By Chris Edwards of Cato. Excerpt:

"Despite the lower crop prices of recent years, USDA data show that farm household incomes were still 32 percent higher than average U.S. household incomes in 2017. That data is for all farm households, but most subsidies go to the richest farmers. About 60 percent of crop subsidies from the three main farm programs go to the largest 10 percent of farms. In recent decades, the high-end concentration of farm subsidies has increased.

Democrats worried about inequality should also know that farm subsidies are not really subsidies to farmers, but mainly subsidies to landowners, and those are often different people because half of all U.S. cropland is rented. Farm subsidies inflate cropland prices because expected future subsidies are likely “capitalized” or reflected in prices today.

Even aside from that landowner effect, many farm payments go to people who don’t even live on farms because of loopholes in the system. EWG’s Scott Faber estimates that about 20,000 “city slickers” are getting payments from Trump’s current farm bailout package.

Finally, Democrats may be interested that many farm businesses pay very little income tax. If farmers paid a lot of tax, they might argue they were covering the costs of the subsidies they receive. But that is not the case."