Farm Subsidies

Matthew Yglesias looks at whether farm subsidies are progressive:

In short: No, they’re not, largely because the largest subsidies go to the biggest, richest farmers. But even if they didn’t, Sallie James observes that farmers in general are richer than most people:

Farmers are wealthier (second graph from the bottom) and earn higher incomes (fourth graph from the bottom) than the average U.S. household. Their average debt-to-asset ratio is about 12 percent (third graph from the bottom), very low relative to the average U.S. household. Those should be the relevant data for any progressivity test.

The last three years have been great for farmers, and right now it is hard to justify the subsidies.  But a few years ago, the LDP payments made up almost half of farm income around here.  In the end, almost all of the direct payments go directly to landlords in higher cash rent.