We already massively subsidize rural living costs, stop that and the free market would raise wages to compensate without the need for government intervention.
Subsidized, farms, roads, healthcare, telecoms, deliveries, airports, etc etc it’s just wasteful.
You are the recipient of govt subsidies. We are a society and as such, some things are more valuable than people are willing to pay for them, but yet still essential to keeping society functioning.
Why do these have to be a one or the other?
It's like the argument of "Why are we doing stuff in space while we still have poor people".
As a society we're capable of solving multiple problems simultaneously.
Many farmers are going out of business because of major corporations driving out independent farmers.
There's huge numbers of farmers that are being required to undertake terrible short-sighted practices because that's what they're contractually required to do for $BrandName to buy their product.
As for 'not exactly poor' - no, they're the modern working class, for the most part. They're asset rich, but free cashflow low, and operate in conditions that are highly unpredictable, and much of their ability to turn a profit is based entirely on things out of their control. They depend on huge amounts of credit to buy the machinery and resources they need to operate.
Subsidies rarely help people in the long term because the markets adapt. Increase corn production and prices drop to match, but now you need to dump all that food on the market. Worse this is directly resulting in increased obesity and related health issues.
There is plenty of food and money to go around, but the complexities of getting it there, navigating the politics, culture and myriad of other issues are the real barriers.
Which is why it is so short sighted to think we should only spend money on the most pressing issue first, until it is solved.
The truth is that the free market optimises for maximised ROI to the exclusion of all else.
There used to be a lot of smaller retailers serving communities - smaller markets, corner stores, delis, etc. Large retailers came in and set up super stores which offered comparable goods at lower prices (due to the larger purchasing power and ability to take a local loss subsidised by other areas).
Once the local retailers were run out of business - the business eventually looked at what stores wern't turning enough profit and shut them down. After all, there's no local competition - customers will be required to go further.
This lead to lots of local unemployment and communities in which it's impossible to get food and other necessities locally.
In a free market, wages only rise where the business doesn't have control over the market. Once they do (through consolidation and driving out competitors) - wages drop, positions disappear, and conditions degrade.
If you want root causes, I would propose it’s a combination of subsidies on other foods combined with the reduced taste of modern fruits and vegetables.
Costs should be as transparent as possible. If there is low supply and high demand, you can increase supply by moving the prices up.
Alternatively, people in rural areas have to charge far more money for what they sell.
The truth about subsidies is simple: they're too fucking complicated to make meaningful generalizations. Each case really is unique enough it needs its own context, analysis, and decision for what's best.
I agree with your sentiment, but I encourage you to really dive into the details of any economic subsidy and realize how many confounding factors there are. There's the old economics joke "it works in practice, but not in theory" for a reason.
I agree with the spirit of the post - subsidies should be implemented for non-economic reasons and are therefore justified with arguments that say there are other good reasons to pay the price.
But this specific example isn't the best example because the stock market is a competitive human-driven environment where if a signal is predictive people will make money off it until it stops being predictive.
That is quite different from real-world processes where the laws of physics tend to remain in effect no matter how many what people figure out. Eg, resource depletion behaves differently to the loss of signal in a stock market.