• Mikina@programming.dev
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    8 days ago

    “Farms are becoming economically unviable even while driving up prices” is a pretty scary sentence. I wonder if they will get massive goverment bailouts, but I have a feeling that won’t happen because it’s not a trendy new billion-dollar buzzword, just “some farmers”.

    I mean, you reap what you sow. The rest of my life will probably massively suck, but the fact that the people who are archetypally climate-change deniers and voted the people unwilling to start doing anything about it into office are both a) prone to anger that consumes their whole life and b) lower income, so it will hit them first, is a little bit of shadenfreude solace.

    Not much, though, I’m not that unempathic. But a tiiiiny little bit.

    • artifex@piefed.social
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      8 days ago

      If there’s one area where I don’t mind government bailouts, it’s domestic food production.

      What I DO mind is bailouts where the giant megafarmcorps are still allowed to keep their profits, give out dividends, do share buybacks, etc and then not lower prices (and probably ask for another bailout)

      • Mikina@programming.dev
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        8 days ago

        Oh, definitely agree with that. But for some reason I just feel like that’s unlikely to happen, I just can’t imagine a goverment doing something like this. It’s just doesn’t feel like something plausible, for some reason.

        But yeah, even if it did happen, it’s probably going to be the second option you mentioned at this point.

        • artifex@piefed.social
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          8 days ago

          It’ll depend on how much they think they can count on getting those heartland voters, I suppose. Also whether people will be too hungry to riot or not.

    • Talcosis@lemmy.zip
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      8 days ago

      Dude, the average US farmer sits comfortably in the top few percent. Something about having millions, if not tens of millions, of dollars in assets makes you not poor.

      Plus, there’s always crop insurance fraud to help make ends meet. Just gotta go to the store, buy some ice, and have someone walk through the fields and chuck ice cubes at plants. Boom, hailstorm just killed your crop.