Nobody wants to ban rural living, just stop subsidizing it, or subsidize it less. I don't get why responses to these suggestions are always framed this way: "but you need the countryside!" Well, yes... and that's what paying for goods and services is for.

If the situation were reversed, these kinds of defenses would not convince the people making them that rural dwellers ought to subsidize urban living.

Eh, we decided a while ago that certain things are worth subsidizing if they benefit the country as a whole.

Education, healthcare, transportation, retirement -- these are all things where we could say "People can just pay for these things if they value them", but instead we determined that some subsidies are good for the country as a whole (we often even want more subsidies for some of these).

Likewise, it's important to have a population that's willing to live and work in rural industries that supply big city centers. Subsidies to provide some of the infrastructure that more dense areas have can help the nation accomplish that needed population mix more easily.

So food prices skyrocket to make up for the lack of subsidies, and everyone gets a food purchase subsidy to make up for the high food prices since nobody wants people starving in the streets. Heck, Minnesota just became the fourth state to offer breakfast and lunch for free to all students regardless of ability to pay.

You can shuffle the board around however you want, but the truth is that agriculture (and therefor rural life) is going to be paid for one way or another.

So let food prices rise. This is a more honest method of accounting, because it is the people consuming the food who pay the cost of producing the food.

The status quo is that people indirectly pay for food through taxes, higher service cost, and other distortions that have no relation to how much food they consume. They are forced to pay a subsidy whether they like it or not.

Don't forget foreigners: If your country has a subsidized food production system and you're exporting food, then foreigners are benefiting from your subsidies. (This is actually a debate in Canada vs. USA regarding milk.)

>So let food prices rise.

"Let them eat cake"

This argument only makes sense if you're only subsidising consumption, but infrastructure increases the productive capacity of the economy as a whole, so the government gets a return on its subsidy in increased taxes.

If it costs an extra $20k to set up a new farm then we let food prices rise slightly to cover the costs. Why does the government have to step in?