For this fifth post in my “If You Can Keep It” series we will continue our focus on the economic fortunes of rural Americans. So much has changed in this year’s presidential election since my last post in this series, that I delayed this post until the changes had shaken out. We now have new Democratic candidates, the major party conventions have past, a long-awaited presidential debate has taken place, and in general, the presidential election landscape has been turned upside down.
It’s worth reminding you that the focus of this series is on the long-term effects of policies promoted by different interest groups in our country. What has happened to rural America is not an exception but just one part of a process that started several decades ago and extends across all sectors of our economy and society. The Biden administration and its allies on congress have, for the first time in decades, taken some critical steps to fix the structural problems in our society caused or made worse by pro-corporate government policies. The next congress and administration could continue fixing this but it’s likely that progress will be uneven and may require citizens to put additional pressure on whoever ends up in office next year before changes take place. The better we understand how we got into this pickle and what can be done to fix it, the likelier it will be that we choose the right people to govern us.
Given that there is less than a month left before this year’s election, I’ll give you my opinion on how to vote. I start from the fact that there are stark differences between the two major parties’ approaches to economic matters, including how to deal with the unique problems faced by citizens in rural America. The Republican party has clearly prioritized the needs and desires of the wealthiest citizens and left the rest of us to pay the price. This has been true since the Reagan revolution and the recent ascendance of the MAGA movement has not changed it much. Trump and his lackeys talk a better game than some of the older economic conservatives, e.g., Newt Gingrich, but the actual policies they support and propose lead to the same results. Hence, the Gingriches, Thiels, Musks, and other wealthy Republican backers largely still support Trump and other MAGA candidates. Most of the federal and state policies that have cost rural Americans the most were enacted under Republican administrations, most of the laws enabling these policies were passed by state and federal legislatures in which Republicans were the majority.
These facts do not excuse the Democratic party. Many Democrats, including some representing rural communities, having bought into mistaken economic theories, cooperated with Republicans in passing harmful laws. Some members of Democratic presidential administrations, especially in the Carter, Clinton, and Obama administrations were also foolishly overawed by the economic theories of market fundamentalists and ran agencies in charge of federal policy toward rural communities in a way that favored the wealthy.
If you believe our government is handling the problems of rural America poorly, your best bet is to vote for Democrats in this election. If this election yields both a Trump administration and a Republican congress, rural Americans will suffer for it. It’s highly ironic that some of the strongest support for the MAGA movement comes from rural Americans. There are many reasons for this, but it remains a fact that the policies that Republicans favored in the past and are favoring now will not help rural Americans. There is at least hope for improvement if a Harris administration and Democratic congress take over, but only hope. Over the last several years large numbers of economically-conservative citizens have started supporting Democratic candidates, mostly due to fear of/disgust toward the MAGA movement in the Republican party. These folks will be bending the ears of Harris administration members and congressional Democrats to moderate or gut new policies designed to fix structural economic problems that impoverish rural communities. This goes for every other area of economic policy as well. What ordinary citizens communicate to their representatives after the election may matter as much or even more than which representatives we elect.
In the previous post in this series I gave you some background economic context, namely that people who live in rural areas face some unique challenges that make them especially vulnerable to the twin economic evils of monopoly and monopsony. If you aren’t familiar with that background you should probably read that post first. This post will start a brief history lesson that will take us through the next few posts.
What I’m about to describe is a vast oversimplification, that despite regional variations still holds true. As Europeans began to settle in the British colonies of North America, rural farming communities organized themselves following one of two models, the plantation or the yeoman farm.
Plantations were designed to produce large quantities of one or two cash crops, such as tobacco, rice, or cotton for sale on the export market. Typical plantation owners farmed hundreds or even thousands of acres and relied on slave labor to do the bulk of the work. A planter needed access to a lot of money to afford the land, the slaves, and the materials needed to start and maintain a farm this large. They obtained this money via inheritance from rich relatives who were wealthy merchants or royalty in Europe, generous land grants from the government, bank loans, and profits from the sale of the prior harvests of these highly-valued crops. This model resulted in a highly-stratified society, with a few relatively wealthy planters surrounded by a far larger number of impoverished slaves, indentured servants and free citizens who were trapped in low-wage occupations with no realistic ability to obtain enough capital to improve their lot in life. In this arrangement, the members of the planter class enjoyed far more freedom than everyone else. It should also be noted that in the regions where plantations dominated, there were relatively few urban centers or even small towns. Most planters depended on their slaves to provide many of the adjunct services that farmers in other areas would obtain from specialists in nearby towns or cities, e.g. smithies, carpentry, leather-working, tailoring, etc. This situation prevailed in the southern colonies.
Yeoman farms were smaller, rarely larger than 250 acres of actively-farmed land, mainly because the owners relied on members of their own immediate or extended family to perform most of the work. These farms also tended to be more complex operations, because they balanced growing multiple types of crops with animal husbandry. Where this model became dominant, villages, small towns and cities appeared in greater numbers to accommodate the artisans, traders, and professionals needed to support and supply the surrounding farm communities. Cumulative wealth was more equally distributed in regions where this model dominated. It prevailed in the northern colonies but was found in certain regions of the southern colonies as well. Small farms sprang up in the colonies wherever large numbers of European settlers of humble means settled. Most of the northern colonies started out this way.
In the next post we will review the first 150 years of the agricultural history of the United States.