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Comment by isaacimagine | Hacker News Reader

As someone who lived in a small city in the American Mountain West, the boom does have consequences. Sleepy farming towns are becoming endless suburbia, hiking up prices as developers spill over from the Lehi 'Silicon Slopes' area.

Midway, for instance, a town on the Wasatch back situated in a location that feels similar to Switzerland, has gone from about 150 diaries to 2, as expanding housing developments buy out the high-valued farmland.

You'd think with the influx of money, and reduction in competition, it'd be easier for the remaining diaries to compete. Not so: the price of milk has remained basically unchanged since the 70s, but the cost required to run a farm has kept increasing.

So why not cash out? (A few farmers in the area have actually cashed out and moved to Idaho, and they're pretty much set for life.) Long story short, Midway is a beautiful place to live, and the remaining diaries form a pillar of the community - it's just not something the remaining diary owners, who have been farming the land for generations, want to do.

To stay in business, the remaining diaries have pivoted to artisan cheese production, with plans to produce other high-valued products, like ice-cream. Tours and locally-sourced farm stores are an additional source of income.

Of course, these are just my own two cents. I don't mean to come off overly negative about the situation. As much as I'd love to work for a FAANG, retire early, and buy a large house in an idyllic mountain town, I'd hate for that same town to loose its historical roots and what makes it that special idyllic mountain town in the first place.

Source: I'm a software engineer who lived/worked as a cheese-maker for a dairy there.

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> As much as I'd love to work for a FAANG, retire early, and buy a large house in an idyllic mountain town, I'd hate for that same town to loose its historical roots and what makes it that special idyllic mountain town in the first place.

It's already arguably happened; fruit orchards and irrigation turns were big part of the milieu in Orem/Provo a few decades back, and they're all but absent now, and in general the Wasatch Front has taken a dramatic turn away from agriculture in the last 30 years.

It's easy to imagine the metro areas like the Bay and Los Angeles like they've always been that way, especially if you're younger than the internet. But if you look at early/mid-century maps or pictures you realize that there was still a great deal of open space and agriculture mixed in. It doesn't take a genius to realize similar changes are coming along regions like the I-15 corridor.

California problems follow California popularity.

I assume you know about the orchards of Silicon Valley? It's an interesting bit of history to me. I didn't realize the same thing was happening along the Wasatch Front, but it makes sense.

E: forgot the link https://www.growingproduce.com/fruits/the-last-of-his-kind-f...

And the orchards of Orange County, California.

Great article! I knew that orchards were part of SV's ag history, but I didn't know about Andy's and that'd be fun to visit.

The problem is the money firehose. Getting rich steadily is fine. Getting rich quickly because of outside factors is what provides perverse incentives, room for bad things to hide and screws everything up.

Using fat paychecks to lay waste to small towns is one of the few things tech yuppie and oil pipeline workers have in common.

Best (i.e. least worst) case scenario you end up as a rich people playground like Tahoe or Cape Cod where everyone without a conscience runs a business skimming easy money off the wealthy (or becomes a plumber and does it with an extra abstraction), everyone with ambition leaves and everyone else winds up with a substance abuse problem. Worst case the money leaves for good and you wind up like coal country.

I'm confused, how is owning a bar or cafe in a hot spot an immoral activity?

I think we've all seen a charming local dive bars with cheap, strong drinks get bought out, and turned into a soulless clean well-lit place that overcharges for gimmicky cocktails.

I don't personally think it's immoral at all: things change, and I'll always respect the entrepreneurial spirit. But I do view the situation with some sadness, and I can understand why a long-time local might view it as wrong.

The thing is--and I'm not saying you specifically--but worrying about a place losing "its historical roots and what makes it that special idyllic mountain town in the first place" inevitably has to go hand in hand with strong NIMBY policies. Which isn't even "wrong" in any absolute sense whatever the growth at all costs crowd here may want.

Though, really, not even that helps because towns can't actually (or really want to in general) arbitrarily prevent outsiders from moving in. So a desirable location just ends up with a different group of people with the money to purchase existing housing.

A lot of these people are really only moving into the interior mountain towns because places like coastal California where the economic activity is that allows them to pile up this kind of wealth has become prohibitively expensive due to their own NIMBY regimes.

NIMBY is just a symptom of the problem... The problem is development, wealth and consumption at all cost.

If people lived in normal houses, had normal job and lived normal lives where they didn't have to escape to feel normal, then we wouldn't seek out mountain towns as places to live, but rather places to explore.

Instead, we amass sheer amounts of wealth, property, exclusivity, we build so much of our society around celebrity and uniqueness and feeling special. We value huge houses with lots of rooms we'll probably never use and as long as "we win" - we don't care the cost.

Here in Austin - we're seeing the result of people leaving other cities. They look here and go "wow its cheap" but the people who have lived here - and lived here for EONS are going "wow, its getting expensive".

If you bought a house on fixed income and paid it off and worked a full life - we're getting to the point where your dream is no longer a dream. Sure, the house may have equity but its a tax liability - so you have to move..

Where do you move too that isn't being impacted? Where do you go to survive on fixed income and just live?

Is it NIMBY when you just want what you worked an entire life for or is it really something else?

There have always been people who wanted to live in remote mountain/beach towns. Ski/surf bums are not new. What is new is being able to work remotely through the Internet for a company located in some place where there is more economic activity or being able to pile up enough wealth in places like coastal California to move to a remote area and semi-retire at a youngish age.

If you're retired on a fixed income in Austin and own a house you can defer paying property taxes until you die so there's no reason this person should have to move.

I.e. using money to skip out of the part where you reap what you sow.

Metro California problems follow metro California popularity/growth.

Policies you're calling "NIMBY" are rarely the underlying cause. They're reactions. Some of them exacerbate certain problems, some of them attenuate others, but not the underlying cause.

The way I look at it is that every popular community does have to make decisions about what is / isn't going to be part of its yard (front or back), but that optimizing for either economic accessibility or quality of life can be hard, and going for both is considerably harder. Good policy is difficult (and rarely aligns with either simple economic ideology or social aesthetics).

That said, I can't help but wonder if it is possible to shape how people buy. For example, with the existing very limited housing stock being exacerbated with large capital chasing it, I'm inclined to think that there should be property taxes that are a function of housing one already owns in a given market and supply on the market. So... want to buy a new house and keep your old one to rent out? Want to buy a third in a market where there isn't two weeks of supply on the market? Maybe you'll pay a bit more, both on the transactions and yearly. Want to buy your twelfth or twentieth unit as part of a fund or trust in a market where there isn't a week of supply on the market? Maybe you're going to get hit hard, and you should try to find some other productive use for your capital.

It's bad for people to live in skyscrapers in the city, its bad for people to live in suburbs, where is it OK for people to live?

> California problems follow California popularity.

Apologies if this sounds exasperated, it’s a genuine question:

How is this a California thing?

Money flows out of cities. That’s globally true. Is this not happening everywhere on the planet?

California happens to have two massive cities, so it’s a major example of the phenomenon. But what is specific about California here, other than the random fact that California’s specific top industry happens to be the global top industry at the moment? As New York was in the 1980s, Detroit in the 1950s, etc.

It's not unusual for businesses to move up the value chain when their segment commoditizes. Dairies are actually a couple steps up the chain from the farmers who grow feed or hay. Cheese, ice cream, etc. are next up.

In some places it's grass to baskets to warehousing to shipping. In others it's grass to sheep to wool to textiles to fashion. Still others it's trees to lumber to paper to stationary.

Other industries have their own moves.

In areas that can't manage this move up tend to see the local industries consolidate until some final monster exists and either also eventually fails too (to external competition) or rent seeks its way to a zombified existence.

There's other alternatives to when vertical value growth isn't possible -- like in developing countries, the businesses all coexist together, but tend to price each other into nearly unsupportable levels. Strong regulations tend to kill this alternative off leaving an up or out path one of the few viable ones available.

You can always move to mountain towns in Appalachia. The population has been stagnate or shrinking over the past decades with the mills and mines shutting down.

Same with rural communities here in the Midwest. We would love to have FAANG refugees move here.

YMMV on this one. In my part of the midwest, home and land prices have almost doubled in the last year, and went up about 6x since we built our house (about 8 years ago).

Two reasons:

(What used to be called) Yuppies moving out here and working remotely to 'get more in touch with nature' (read: start a blog or something about sustainable living that is really only possible if one of you has a 100k+ salary) and investors from out of the area are purchasing land as an investment. Both of these things drive the cost WAY out of the range of what is (a) reasonable, or (b) attainable.

I'm over the whole thing. In an area where the median family income is around 55k/year, anyone that makes double that as a single individual can live like a king. Consequence: none of us that live here can afford the increase in taxes, home values, or property values anymore.

This is the pure definition of NIMBYism. You built a house there eight years ago that has increased 6x in value. Now others are trying to do the same thing and you demonize them for it. You should be complaining about state policy, not the people seeking a better life for themselves.

What state policy would address these issues?

It's possible he's a local. That could also mean he didn't move there with a 2x salary. So it's not really the same thing.

While there's nothing wrong with people moving for a better life, there's also nothing wrong with someone lamenting fundamental changes in their community that they see as detrimental.

>You built a house there eight years ago

Sorry, I should've been more clear. I grew up here as well. I've lived here for my entire life (outside of the 6 years I was at college/grad school, and even then I was back to work on the farm on the weekends). It's not NIMBY. I don't care who lives here. That's actually what I like the most about rural living - for the most part if you leave people alone, they'll leave you alone. What I do care about is that the people I grew up with literally cannot afford their taxes anymore. Their kids can't stay here because they can't afford to buy a house. The community is dying.

My point about my home price is that, that increase in value/cost is not realistic. It's neither realistic in actual value or in attainability should I choose to sell it. Very few locals can afford housing around us now, and they're leaving. That's actually led to an increase in young people leaving the area. New young people move in, but for every one of them, it seems like three of us have to move somewhere else!

>You should be complaining about state policy

What possible state policy could there be to help in this situation?

>not the people seeking a better life for themselves.

That's the thing. They're not (I guess by my definition). They're either using the property solely as an investment with zero intent to ever live on/use the land, or as a pad for their homestead/van life/other nature centered blog and influencing scheme. I wouldn't have a problem if these folks tried at all to integrate into the community. But they do not. For the investors - they don't even know what the property is or where it is. They just know they can pay cheap labor to put up extremely tall fences and security systems (for what reason I don't understand). The Yuppies mostly live here Monday through Thursday, to take nice shots of themselves 'working on the farm' and then spend all weekend in the closest urban area. They do not shop in our local shops. They do not work with our local businesses. They're like tourists in their own lives. It's weird to me.

If a few wealthy people moving in has driven up housing prices so much, then the supply of housing is insufficient. The appropriate reaction to increased demand for housing is to meet it with increased supply. What local and state policies might be inhibiting this and harming these communities?

It sounds like it's more than just a few wealthy people.

"What local and state policies might be inhibiting this and harming these communities?"

Do you have any examples? It sounds to me like the policies have made it a nice place to live, enticing people from other places to move there, and that influx is causing the shortage. Should they impose some sort of moving tax or other policy to remove that demand?

In my experience, policy isn't the issue in rural areas. The people who live there and own the land don't want to sell the land to be developed on.

It's quite a number of people, not just a few wealthy people. The few wealthy investors are buying up huge tracts of land, but the people who actually move here are large in number as well as income. Again, the average income in the area for a family of 4 is around 55k. It doesn't take much money to upset that system. And it would be different if the folks moving here actually spent money in the local economy, or integrated into the community at all. They do neither of those things.

Also -

>What local and state policies might be inhibiting this and harming these communities?

Literally none. There are no housing policies regarding number or type of dwellings. There is no zoning, zoning restrictions, or any other type of restriction. It's very rural. Those things don't exist. There are no home inspections, there is no building code you must follow to get a mortgage approved or anything like that. In essence - if you can build it, you can live in it or rent it to someone.

I have no idea why people keep coming back to local and state policies. They don't exist.

> I don't care who lives here. That's actually what I like the most about rural living - for the most part if you leave people alone, they'll leave you alone. What I do care about is that the people I grew up with literally cannot afford their taxes anymore

Not meaning to pick on you, but this is almost exactly the rhetoric that got California into the situation it is in now.

* Taxes going up due to newcomers -> cap property taxes until sale/transfer

* Kids can't afford to inherit house -> make property tax assessment inheritable by children/grandchildren

* City can't fund more schools/sewers from limited property taxes -> put limits on new housing starts and encourage retail/commercial development

* Low property tax for life + high rents -> nobody ever sells a house, market goes up more

* Limited housing availability + need for people to fill those offices -> house prices really skyrocket

I just hope other places learn from California's mistake.

Why not base the the revenue on income taxes instead - charge the people making money instead of forcing people out of their home through taxes?

The main issues (in my opinion) with housing in the parts of CA that are always mentioned is just population density and desired living conditions. I don't see what the right fix is for that. If we're basically taking the policy that we'll raise taxes to make people want to live elsewhere, then why not take the policy to restrict the offices that draw them there in the first place? Spreading it out instead of concentrating it would provide relief.

> Why not base the the revenue on income taxes instead

Yup, California does that. That's why CA has a reputation as a high-tax state. Although total tax burden isn't that different from places like Austin, TX though (at least that's how the numbers come out when my friend or I have seriously looked into moving there).

> I don't see what the right fix is for that.

Ha. People have been shouting it from the rooftops. Build more houses! More specifically, just allow people to build more houses. Stop preventing people from building more houses.

Frankly, that's really the only solution. If you have n households in a country, you need approximately n homes to put them in. Be careful where you share this fact though, or you'll be labeled as part of the "growth at all costs" crowd.

> then why not take the policy to restrict the offices that draw them there in the first place?

Because the reality of the situation is that local governments need tax dollars to run services that taxpayers expect (roads, sewers, schools). There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. But voters hate paying higher income taxes. You've also capped property taxes on existing development. So the way local mayors and city councils fill the gap is by allowing development that requires relatively less city services: retail and commercial space.

Of course, now people need to commute to those retail and commercial developments, (because you have limited the amount of housing) so you just created a traffic problem (but, hey, term limits are a great and your successor can deal with it!).

> Spreading it out instead of concentrating it would provide relief.

Lol. Sure, but that's what this whole thread is about! People complaining when other people spread out to get relief, and how property taxes are going up and we need to Do Something to stop it god damn it!

And the cycle begins again...

"Ha. People have been shouting it from the rooftops. Build more houses! More specifically, just allow people to build more houses. Stop preventing people from building more houses.

Frankly, that's really the only solution. If you have n households in a country, you need approximately n homes to put them in."

The whole point I was getting at was distribution. Sure you have n households in the country, but nothing says that n/100 need to live in just one or two counties of that country. Even if you get the green light to build more, it will be very expensive to do so, and you will have population density/congestion issues.

"Sure, but that's what this whole thread is about! People complaining when other people spread out to get relief"

Not exactly. They are seeing influxes in some areas, but it's not an even distribution. They aren't really complaining about spreading out but more about the problems created when going against the established customs, or bringing the same problems with them (taxes, property values, etc), although the costs in that area will still be less than in SV.

> The whole point I was getting at was distribution. Sure you have n households in the country, but nothing says that n/10 need to live in just one or two counties of that country. Even if you get the green light to build more, it will be very expensive to do so, and you will have population density/congestion issues.

Nobody is forcing everyone to all live in one place. Some combination of lifestyle, economic opportunities, and other stuff makes people want to do that. Locals complain that housing is expensive in SV, but housing is expensive because of a vicious cycle, promulgated by locals, that made it that way.

A different set of policies would have prevented the vicious cycle and made housing cheaper and more abundant. In this alternate universe, with smarter housing policy, more people could be living in SV with less traffic congestion for less total cost. The only downside is that locals wouldn't have been able to sell their houses for 20x what they paid.

You can either: accept that an area is desirable and make accommodations for housing the people who want to come; or accept that housing is going to be expensive. Or I guess you can just kill all the newcomers and eat them. Normally, though, we like to at least pretend that we live in a civilized society. As a positive side-effect, being known for cannibalism does stand a good chance of reducing your locale's desirability on the lifestyle front! So maybe try that one first and let us know how it goes.

In other words, you can learn from California's example or your can make the same mistakes. Your choice.

> They are seeing influxes in some areas, but it's not an even distribution.

Sure, but it is making the distribution within the US as a whole more uniform.

> They aren't really complaining about spreading out but more about the problems created when going against the established customs, or bringing the same problems with them (taxes, property values, etc)

That's my point. They are not bringing the problems. They are coming, and locals are creating the problems by following the same bad policies that failed for locals in California. Yes, that does mean some things will change. You can't stop the change, but you do get to choose its character.

"A different set of policies would have prevented the vicious cycle and made housing cheaper and more abundant."

I think that's highly speculative. Many people in that area want single family homes or large homes. There's only so much surface area. It's not just that they want to live there, but also expect specific attributes with their housing.

"In other words, you can learn from California's example or your can make the same mistakes. Your choice."

If the policies work in other places, how can we determine that it's the policies causing the issues? Do you have a real world example of the alternate policies that won't cause those issues?

"Sure, but it is making the distribution within the US as a whole more uniform."

Not in any meaningful way. Over 50% of the US population lives in just 58 counties. They aren't moving to many rural locations, just to suburbs or smaller cities, which helps a little, but sometimes causes the same issues in those places.

"That's my point. They are not bringing the problems. They are coming, and locals are creating the problems by following the same bad policies that failed for locals in California. Yes, that does mean some things will change. You can't stop the change, but you do get to choose its character."

They do bring some of the problems when they go against established culture and force their views on others. This is pretty common. A classic example is people buying a house near an existing highway, then complaining about road noise and advocating for million dollar sound barriers.

Again, you mention policy as the problem, yet there's no example of the alternatives. Even the high level stuff mentioned previously sounds like a zero sum game - either existing owners get screwed or the new people do. I would like to see property tax eliminated and go strictly income based.

Yes, change happens, but it doesn't mean that the existing people need to roll over and not fight for their own opinions.

> Frankly, that's really the only solution. If you have n households in a country, you need approximately n homes to put them in.

But isn't it already the case? I believe that there are a bit more houses in US then there are households. So the problem is not lack of houses, it's that people don't want to live in some places where houses are abundant. They don't want to live there for the most part due to lack of good jobs. The solution then could be to even out the wage gap and job market capacity across the country.

I know that US situation is somewhat unique w.r.t. density due to suburbia and obviously this has to be addressed somehow. But it worries me a bit when people are saying "build more" as the only solution to housing prices. I live in a city which added 50% in population last 20 years, which means about 2.5 million new people. It looks like [1] and it's terrifying, the city is not suitable for living anymore, I'm now looking for somewhere to move from the place where I was born and was living for 35 years, where my friends and parent live. All this is the result of "we should build more housing". That, and corruption of course. The city which is UNESCO world heritage site is gone forever.

By the way, real estate prices still doubled last year, so even this crazy tempo doesn't help. It's akin to fighting traffic jams by building more and wider roads - it only attracts more cars.

I am aware about overly restrictive zoning rules in US and probably building more is a part of the solution, but I don't believe it's the whole solution. Be careful what you wish for.

[1] https://imgur.com/X5GrRfO

It sounds like your area had a major influx. I think it's partially a group-think issue. Once you get a few bloggers/influencers in your area, then it seems more follow because your area is now "on the map". Yet, they could spread out and choose to move to other areas, but I think al ot of it is just that they don't know of, or as much about, those other places.

I know of places where houses sit empty or are even demolished because they are no longer needed with the shrinking population.

But that's the thing. The individual property gets fixed. New houses get built. But the community doesn't benefit. The 'new' folks do not integrate into the area. They don't shop local. They don't send their kids to the local schools (and in many cases use their money to legally fight with the district about funding because their kids go to private school). They don't really 'live' out here. They just happen to stay here.

>It sounds like your area had a major influx.

And that was my point - the OP I was responding to said that s/he would welcome tech refugees. I was trying to point out that it's genuinely not all roses and gold. There are specific problems with that influx of people and money.

I know a lot of people who had to move away from rural areas to get tech jobs. I would guess that it wouldn't be so bad if it were those people moving back. Or just people who had a genuine interest in living there. Instead it sounds like it's mostly people who have always lived in the cities that have some idealized view of the country that doesn't actually match the local customs/culture, sort of like gentrification in the cities.

"and in many cases use their money to legally fight with the district about funding because their kids go to private school"

I'd be interested to learn more about this. I grew up in some rural areas and went to private schools but never heard of anything happen like that.

There is a huge push for school vouchers, with about half of our local school board being occupied by folks who have kids who attend the private schools in the closest urban area. These individuals want their property taxes to be given to them as a voucher to use where they please instead of straight to the schools from the state.

There are others who have taken a more direct approach and sue the local districts for 'access' complaints. They claim they should be able to benefit from extracurricular activities in their district (sports, test preparation, science clubs, that sort of thing), like home-school kids can; even though their kids go to private schools. The districts don't have the money to fight lawsuits.

Oh, vouchers in your area. We didnt have that. I guess that was before they were really a thing too.

"They claim they should be able to benefit from extracurricular activities in their district (sports, test preparation, science clubs, that sort of thing), like home-school kids can; even though their kids go to private schools."

If they are paying the money (no vouchers), then I don't see why that's a problem.

Our private school partnered with local public schools on some sports. One local school would send us their soccer players, we would send them our shooters. Another one would send us golf students and our tech students would go to their vo-tech program. You would take drivers ed in whatever district you lived in over the summer. It worked pretty well.

> I'm over the whole thing. In an area where the median family income is around 55k/year, anyone that makes double that as a single individual can live like a king. Consequence: none of us that live here can afford the increase in taxes, home values, or property values anymore.

This is a consequence of growing income/wealth gap, and governments having bet the farm on economic growth that is not materializing (partly assuming growth in population which is no longer there). Government has to keep devaluing dollar to keep making debt payments, and this devaluation exacerbated the income/wealth gap. The only winning move is to be pulling in more money and plowing it back into asset inflation.

Some of it is also local costs of living and remote work. Look at the recurring talk of SV salaries vs the rest of the country and how companies should value their remote workers. I've seen people on here claim that $200k-250k isn't enough to raise a family on, yet it's multiples of my salary. People come to expect that high salary even when they move to lower cost areas for remote work. Even if they take a 50% pay cut (almost unheard of) they are still in the top 10% of earners in many rural places. Just. a couple people like that won't move the dial much. But if you have an influx of people to a specific area, then I can certainly see that driving up the cost of living in that area regardless of the typical monetary or fiscal policies of the government.

If property values go up 5x, shouldn't the mill rate go down 5x, leaving property taxes the same? It's not like these towns have 5x more libraries, 5x more police officers, 5x more roads, etc. The level and number of services in the town isn't changing. It has the same number of street lights, and they all consume the same amount of electricity, and so forth.

In my state they leave the mills the same, then apply a common leveling ratio at the county level to try to equalize the property value and cost of living compared to other parts of the state. It's better than nothing.

Ssssshhhh, don't spill the beans. I need those towns to remain affordable for ~15-20 years, until I'm ready to cash-out my suburban home.

They aren't unknown now, they're less expensive because they are less desirable than less humid places with bigger mountains in the west.

Until water scarcity becomes more of a problem. Then some humidity will be looking good. (Even so, it's not nearly as humid in most of Appalachia as much of the deep south)

I'd hate for that same town to loose its historical roots and what makes it that special idyllic mountain town in the first place.

This is why housing prices in the Bay are so stupid. People don’t want it to lose it’s magic and their solution is to freeze practically all building. As a result, even the people there are forced out due to growing rents, increasing housing prices force kids to leave, commercial rents replace tattoo shops with skin spas.

And you lose the magic anyways.

Looks like a autocorrect problem there - "diaries" for "dairies" - took me a while to work this out and was busy researching what a diary was in this kind of context... :-)

Typed out on a phone, can't go back and edit it now ;P

Dairies are consolidating because scale factors make the big ones more competitive than small ones.

Though with modern shipping taking milk from the middle of nowhere makes sense.

My family's farms were replaced by starter castles. I sort of understand the economic and social forces. It still makes me incredibly sad. (I can't even drive past my family's former lands.) Sprawl is evil. Big Ag is evil.

More recently, some local farmers worked with local government and businesses to figure how to conserve farm land. New laws and capital. Pairing immigrant farmers with land. (Here's the first hit from a quick search, not authorative, just to get the gist. https://crosscut.com/focus/2020/02/how-immigrant-farmer-kent...)

These efforts to conserve -- farms, wet lands, open spaces -- make me so proud.

At the same time, I'm pro development. Done smart. Such a huge opportunity.

I'm completely on board with Matt Yglessia's One Billion Americans (1B4USA) thesis. For so many reasons. Mostly as a way to reinvest and revitalize the entirety of our country. Back to Main Street. Back to family farms. Back to localized economies.

Great post but one point, Whole foods sells 1/2 gallons for $6! I don't drink much milk but would gladly pay a premium for high quality, local, organic milk.

Thanks for raising that point!

The dairy I worked at does sell high quality local raw milk; they have a pasteurizer to produce cheese, but they can't use the same one to produce pasteurized milk.

Additionally, the cows usually produce an excess volume of milk, which is sold so it doesn't go to waste: it's important to remember that even if the milk is sold for, say, $6 at Whole Foods, not all of the markup goes to the farmer.

Depends on the brand, good organic milk is worth it. Bare minimum is Whole Foods 365 brand

In New England Organic Valley is as good as it gets for store milk,

https://www.cornucopia.org/scorecard/dairy/

Organic is a scam and Whole Foods is a rip off.

Please explain what "premium" milk is. Milk is a commodity. All milk has a code on the bottle that indicates which farm produced it. If you compare codes you'll often find the cheaper store brands are the same thing as the more expensive brands.

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