It was alleged the U.S. government was robbing American taxpayers in order to support grain trading companies by subsidising trading with the Russians.
“Author Martha Hamilton introduced the term as the title of Chapter VII of her book The Great American Grain Robbery & Other Stories, as part of an allegation that the U.S. government was robbing American taxpayers in order to support grain trading companies.”
Which in itself is a reference to a 1903 silent film The Great Train Robbery, widely considered to be the first of what we'd now recognize as an action film, and the first western.
The wikipedia article says:
> The term Great Grain Robbery is a pun referring to the "Great Train Robbery" novel
The novel in question being a 1975 one by Michael Crichton! Being British, to me, the term refers to an infamous train robbery in 1963. I don't know if that incident is well known in the US.
Presumably, though, both those uses are references to the film.
Michael Crichton's novel references a British train robbery from Victorian times:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Gold_Robbery
The 1903 movie referenced is a separate dramatisation of a US robbery:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Train_Robbery_(1903_...
Re:Great Grain Robbery (1972)
by tragomaskhalos on Sunday April 26, 2020 @04:44AM
(#22985624)
The '63 train robbery indeed still holds an unhealthy spell over britons, part of our broader culture of lauding mavericks who get one over on the system, even if they happen to be unpleasant / violent criminals. Probably the same in the US when put like that I suppose. A less commonly recounted aspect of the Great Train Robbery is how incompetent the perps were and how easily caught
just because the seller couldn't detect a weakness on the buyer and artificially inflate the prices it is considered a robbery? Does someone who will need a car for a job or lose the house for non-payment "rob" the car dealership for not disclosing they really need that car they are purchasing at market price?
IMO, the robbery is that the business people consulted for the deal saw only the big sale and the possibility to get their costs subsidized (for what reason that was even offered by the govt?!) and they indeed made a nice profit and were not affected by the internal price hike as they were sellers, not buyers, while the US public lost 300mi subsidizing this mess and paying the higher prices. Indeed a robbery.