Originally Posted by u-Bob

While people were starving the government was using tax dollars to pay farmers to destroy food.

To help the farmers the government wanted to raise the price of wheat. So their solution was again to lower the supply. They actually paid farmers to not grow wheat. Some farmers and even some corporations ended up buying more land so they could get tax dollars for every acre they hadn't worked. Then they would use the money to buy more land and then get even more tax dollars for every acre they hadn't worked, for every bushels they hadn't produced.