" I'm a peasant, so American Capitalism has never improved my life or presented any opportunities for me "

$25 an hour is what minimum wage should be, and they need a college degree to make that. The example 2020 farmer doesn't even own the corporate farm, they are just employed labor.

Completely ignoring most farmers have been forced at one point or another to sell their land to giant corpo farmers and if they're lucky they can get a poorly paid job working on their family's old land.

Not often tho, because most is automozed these days...

OP, I'm just curious, do you know a so glen person who's lived or worked on a farm before?

It seems we have different parameters for what is better. You seem focused on who technically owns the land regardless of what value can be had, while I'm focused on quality of life and how much of the value is enjoyed by the worker. The average salary of farmer employees in today's America is in line with the average incomes for all households including college educated professionals. https://www.salary.com/research/salary/recruiting/farmer-salary

In the US, the average farmer salary is $47,390. The average farmer yearly salary in Russia is 31k /m rub or $4k USD /yr.

I know one of our US national pastimes is complaining about everything online, but if I had to be farmer, I know where in the world I'd rather apply for a job. And yes, that job would probably be at a mega corp, and that's fine to me as long as I'm getting paid $47k this year with benefits and a 401k, instead of $4k with no benefits and no rights as a person.

That was about money, but I also honestly don't understand the argument about "owning the farm". For instance, there are tens of thousand of US employees working at Google making $200k+ /year. They don't own Google, and I know they are fine with that arrangement. I haven't seen one of them lament that the Alphabet corporation owns the land where their office building is located. They are all going to retire millionaires without ever owning "the means of production" or having eating a single oligarch.

In fact, our US farmer friend in the picture making $25 /hr is likely stashing away $5k+/ year in her 401k plan. The lady in the picture is slightly on the upper end of farmer income, and she will retire a millionaire too, having never owned the land.

The guy from the 1800s picture did not retire a millionaire, in case it needs to be said. He never retired, he likely never had $1000 in his bank account, which is also true for a Russian farmer today.
- while I’m focused on quality of life and how much of the value is enjoyed by the worker
  
  I grew up on a tobacco farm, which is pure manual labor.
  
  But I've helped on all sorts of crops because that was the way to make money as a kid.
  
  It still sucks, and you pulled that $25/hr out of your ass along with the ease of work.
  
  You just have no idea what you're talking about. Talking averages like a thousand acre and a ten acre ain't a huge difference.
  
  At least look at mean instead

I believe this person has swallowed the YouTube garbage of trust fund babies and trad wives.

Farmers actually vote. So do the elderly. Consequently, they mould the government to better serve their needs.

Most small farms have had to sell to larger farms too. It's like comparing a small town general store to Walmart, and saying they're better off working at Walmart than owning their own stores.

Back in the 1800s you'd have 10 people raising 10 acres each. Now we have farms with thousands of acres where the person who owns it has never set foot on the property.

Those are the people exploiting our legislative and tax system.
I think you're both wrong, the average American farm is $1.7 million in debt and are being pushed out by farming conglomerates.

https://time.com/5736789/small-american-farmers-debt-crisis-extinction/
- Yep.
  
  The corpo farms actually don't want things to always be great for farming, because ariable land is a finite resource, and what small farms that are left won't sell willingly.
  
  So they also use their resources to fuck shit up every decade or so, hoping to kill off and canabalize a little more land that they'll never have to sell.
  
  There's not enough attention being paid to this shit. Another century and they'll have all the land and can charge whatever they want for food.
  
  We need to start charging exponentially more tax the size of an organization, it's the only way to give small businesses (including farms) a shot

Things fought and died for by American laborers in spite of the capital system, which would prefer to chew us alive

On one hand, it's absolutely true that living standards have increased dramatically, and we should always fight attempts to falsely romanticize the past.

On the other hand, these improvements have very fucking little to do with capitalism except insofar as capitalism creates the conditions for labor organization to fight capitalist elites.

American capitalism is also slowly eroding these luxuries and funneling the surplus value to elites at an ever-increasing rate.