I remember one thing from my COMM 101 class.

The prof, a young guy, told us that he grew up thinking 30% of the population has PhDs.

He grew up in academia with professor parents. All the adults in *his* world had advanced degrees.

He was absolutely floored to realize that less than 2% of the US population has PhDs.

I thought about this the other day after a young farm teen was telling me about equipment auction sale prices.

"It's only eight thousand dollars."

ONLY eight thousand dollars.

For a lot of kids in intergenerational farm families, they don't inherently grasp wealth in the farm community or how their situation is different from the rest of the population.

Many farmers I've known through my life see the rest of the population as people living in housing developments, driving Hondas, and trying to raise property taxes on landowners.

They don't see other Americans, other consumers of their products, as the people who are living in a third floor fire trap apartment over a closed store.

Lots of farmers miss out of the traditional signifiers of middle class wealth and don't comprehend their own security.

I'm thinking of farmer who my father told me doesn't have shit based on his house's upkeep, but I later found out that each son gets a new diesel truck after high school.

I'm neither excusing farm kids or calling them ignorant, but when you grow up with the majority of your peers being from the same social group, it can take a seismic disruption to see the world differently.