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Krugman, Economics and the Next Civil War | 5 comments (5 topical)

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sorry, i was in (none / 0) (#2)
by cpinva on Wed Oct 10, 2007 at 08:00:39 AM EST
minneapolis all last week, teaching, so i missed this.

ok, who is this guy, and what has he done with the real jim? that sound you hear is ice cracking in hell, because jim and i are in agreement.

peaches, if the small family farm had actually been a self-sustaining enterprise, the compulsion to leave wouldn't have existed. it wasn't, because the top soil had been blown away, hence, the term "dust bowl".

even before the economic disaster of the 30's, the small farm had already started giving way to larger, non-family operations; with the industrialization of farming, economies of scale made the large operation far more cost efficient than the small farm could possibly hope to ever be. when dealing with fungible goods, cost efficiency is what makes profit.

the only reason so many small farms continued to exist is government handouts; take away the farm subsidies, and the small, family run farm will almost certainly cease to exist, because it isn't economically viable otherwise.

Krugman, Economics and the Next Civil War | 5 comments (5 topical)

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