Why isn't perpetual high unemployment inevitable?

[Crazymann]

scottie said:

Crazymann said:

spurgeonryan said:
People in Farming or agricultural jobs these days are making bank, at least in America they are. Corn being used for everything, soy, etc is just driving prices!

If you truely believe that, then you have obviously not grown up, worked or seen most non-corporate farming operations.  For your average, family-run operation, farming is a yearly gamble with your entire livelyhood.  Equipment prices are outrageous.... a quality combine harvester costs more than the houses of most people... so you have to take loans.  If the crops fail (heat, drought, disease etc.) then you have steep bills to pay with little means to do so.  Profit on range lands isn't much better.

Large corporate farming operations are another matter, but (even in that case) it certainly isn't the workers who are getting rich.  The shareholders and board of the company are.  Lowly workers are not getting paid any more than workers in any other sector. 

The reason that most farms have been consolidated and purchased by big business is exactly because it is so risky and most farmers (in the sense that they have existed for the vast majority of the history of the USA) can no longer afford the gamble.

 

Don't be so quick to assume ignorance in anyone who disagrees with you. I grew up on a hobby farm, and we frequently had holidays to an actual farm. The guy who ran the place hated government subsidies, was making bank (as the phrase goes) without them. He paid his workers well (most were family, the rest became like family, my dad worked there for a year, and I grew close enough to consider this guy as an uncle)

 

If you are making a loss in the agriculture sector, you are farming wrong. Here's a checklist of things you might be doing

1) Overloading your fields - sure, you can squeeze 10% more now but you will fuck up your land and thus your future. If you consider farming to be risky, this is certainly what you are doing wrong.

2) Planting the wrong thing. If you grow rice in Australia you are a moron.

3) Using outdated and inefficient methods.

Perhaps you should take your own advise concerning assumptions and consider that your experience does not exptrapolate well to all farming operations.  What if you are growing properly, rotating crops as you should etc. but then a hail storm decimates your crop, but you still have bills to pay?  Insurance does not cover it all.  What about smut (assuming you know what that is) because some idiot down the road was not careful.  You cannot tell what the weather will do, and it IS a gamble.  Now, hopefully you have enough finanaces in reserve to weather the storm (pun intended), but that only goes so far. 

Also, if you know even half as much as you claim to, then you know how expensive modern farming equipment can be.  Those are some heavy bills to pay in hard times, and not all farms are even large enough to hire and pay workers. 

So kindly stop acting as if you know everything about agriculture.  Not all struggling farmers are doing so because they broke one your overly simplified rules.  Sometimes, luck and nature do fall into the equation.