A phenomenon akin to what happened in agriculture in the Great Depression may be happening in large swaths of today’s job market. Then increases in agricultural productivity raised the supply of agricultural products, driving down prices and farm incomes relentlessly, year after year, with an occasional exception from a bad harvest. At points, and especially at the beginning of the Depression, the fall was precipitous—a decline of half or more in farmers’ income in three years. When incomes were declining more gradually, workers migrated to new jobs in the cities, and the economy went through
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