Germany complains of its taxes being spent in southern Europe, New Yorkers’ complain their taxes are wasted away in the Mid-West. They have forgotten a contract made at the beginning of the industrial revolution. Cheap food in return for your tax surplus.

Food prices have dropped 90% in the 200 years between 1800 and 2000 in real terms. It is the drop in the percentage of salaries spent on food that allowed us to buy industrial goods. Price discovery is driven by the area of the value chain with the fewest participants. For example, with the dismantling of the Milk Board the power has shifted up the chain with 30,000 farms facing off against 3 dairies that control over 50% of the milk processing. Now 300,000 farms negotiate directly or indirectly with just 8 supermarkets that control 93% of food produce sold. If we urbanites paid the true price of food I suspect the farmers would wave the social support and would be the one paying the taxes. The farmers should have got the contract written in stone rather than a spit and a handshake. The city dwellers have forgotten they produce nothing we need. During the Central Bank printing of cash in the Weimar Republic a sack of potatoes was regularly traded for a piano, and agricultural workers received higher wages than lawyers and other white collar workers. Spain and Iowa should gently remind them….