When I was in college in Southern California, I met quite a few students whose expenses were paid by their dad who owned land in the Central Valley. Tuition, books, living expenses etc.
Central Valley agricultural is less subsidized than, say, corn farmers; but there’s still many implicit and explicit subsidies courtesy of the Federal and State governments. Access to foreign markets, water projects, etc.
So prosperous Central Valley farmers basically get free housing, food, and cars paid for by the Federal Government. In practice, they are the welfare recipients who actually eat T-bone steaks and drive Cadillacs on the taxpayers’ dime. Moreover, their kids get debt free college courtesy of the taxpayers.
In addition to sending their kids to college in LA, the very prosperous farmers underpay their workers, and avoid property taxes due to their long tenure on the land. Their low wages and tax avoidance leave the Central Valley poor but it makes big profits for the rich farming families and they invest in properties in LA metro and Bay Area.
This process is not unique to California. Rural elites funnel most of the economic surplus from rural areas to cities. And those same rural elites blame cities and liberalism for the rural poverty that they orchestrate.
Conservatives blame cities for the very really hardships and privations in rural areas but the truth is that rural elites hyper extract and they voluntarily send the surplus to the cities.
