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Comment by artisinal | Hacker News Reader

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artisinal·

Where I am from most farmers are millionaires. They are all corporations. 200 per machine per year is nothing to them.

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Well this is the problem with farming and politics.

You have a long tail of poor farmers, and a few very large powerful farmers.

Thus you have the politics of the small family farm barely making a living, and large industrial monocultures at the same time, and people picking and choosing which, as and when it suits.

In the US, according to USDA, the median total family income for a farming family is ca $108k

Which is a huge amount over the median all family income in the US of 83k. So in that sense farmers are richer than average Americans.

I would not say $1-$2k/mo extra income counts as a huge amount richer. It’s like 58th percentile by family income. I don’t really think it makes sense to call solidly middle class income rich in any sense…

It’s 25% richer. That’s huge amount. Most people, if given a 25% income boost, could make a lot of quality of life changes.

That is how they know the subscription is a bad idea. They are afraid of being squeezed like they squeeze their own labor. That 200 dollar fee will go up any time the CEO needs to juice the stock price.

They’re asset millionaires and maybe gross revenue millionaires, but not typically net income millionaires.

Most millionaires are asset millionaires. Almost nobody has a million in their savings account.

Farms are some of the least liquid assets. Not because it's that hard to sell them but when your whole income depends on owning something you can't just decide to give it up. And the social networks you depend on for things like finding seasonal workers or helping out after a natural disaster break down if you move.

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