Ever wonder why 2/3rds of America's farms were bought at bargain prices during the great depression—besides the obvious interest of big business to move the labor force into urban factories—one word: SUBSIDIES. This new deal policy introduced by FDR in 1932 to help ailing farmers actually helped the big food companies who bought all the farms. Now, this government ploy to make big food companies richer is so out of control that many farmers get paid not to plant food. A recent side story found numerous 'millionaire' farmers still receiving subsidies—including a number who make more than $2.5mil a year, the cut off for subsidies. But under the corrupt Bush Regime, these wealthy farmers, many of them from the Texas-Arkansas rice belt, still got subsidies as the national debt continued to swell.

 

Watch Bill Moyers story on farm subsidies at the link above

and check out the food price charts below

 

These government subsidies are also the very thing that allows big american food companies to go into poor countries—after they'v been forced to sign some sort of free market pact by the IMF—and undercut local farmers on prices. Local farmers in extremely poor countries like Haiti and Mexico have been nearly obliterated by the low cost of subsidized US imports. Get it? The free market freaks use free trade as an excuse to break into foreign markets, then they use government subsidized products to undercut prices, decimate local economies and create economic slaves out of their citizens. Its so bad that countries like this end up importing a large majority of their food. Get it? The subsidies are so high that the big american companies can export food to a poor country like Haiti more cheaply than local farmers can grow it. And Haiti is a one of the poorest, cheapest countries in the world. In the end, most local farmers abandon their trade, move to the cities and try to find work as quasi-slaves in foreign owned sweat shops. Haiti's agriculture industry has been so badly hit by 'free trade' that they dont even have enuf farmers left to grow enuf sustenance food to feed their population. They are forced to import food from abroad at terms set by foreign companies. Its a highly organized and intentional practice of the US government that's been going on for years—a subtle form of economic imperialism that allows the US to take control of whole countries without most people in the world even noticing. NAFTA is a perfect example of this economic carnage. The irony of the whole thing is that it is usually the free marketing republicans who push such legislation thru congress and ram it down the world's throat. But government subsidies have no place in a free market system. It is one of the most blatant forms of government intervention in the markets. The right wing free marketeers who force poorer countries into free market reforms dominate one of the least free markets in the world—rife with government subsidies, crony capitalist no-bid contracts and taxpayer bailouts. The U.S. economy is anything but free. The illusion that it is, is only created to pry open other markets in preperation for U.S. invasions of the economic, rather than military, variety...