15 ms·

And what about the labour these unfortunate souls are already performing? Should all farmers and workers become web developers?

luma 10y ago
Agriculture jobs aren't coming back, and they weren't sent to China. Automation and productivity gains in agriculture have exploded, and as a result there isn't a lot of call for farmhands these days. Unless we move back to an agrarian existence, the rural poor are going to have to figure out something that doesn't involve a shovel.
- leereeves 10y ago
  Agriculture jobs never went anywhere. There are still millions of jobs in agriculture and construction, but they are now poorly paid because they are performed by people who aren't protected by employment laws and have no negotiating power. The only change that needs to be made is forcing agriculture and construction companies to obey the law.
  - Fjolsvith 10y ago
    Perhaps the removal of an undocumented workforce that requires being paid under the table will force agricultural and construction companies to obey the laws.
    - Fjolsvith 10y ago
      Downvoting, really? Are upvotes and downvotes a popularity contest?
      - maxerickson 10y ago
        To a large extent, yes. Try not to worry about it, they still help sort more interesting comments to the top. (I gave you a net 0, upvoting your comment and downvoting your complaining)
  - bduerst 10y ago
    This is the key distinction. Everyone is so quick to blame the immigrant, not the employer who paying them and dodging taxes.
    - ptaipale 10y ago
      BTW, is it just about dodging taxes? I could imagine that illegal immigrants are also a much easier workforce to manage. They won't be forming unions and going to strikes; if you want to terminate the employment, they won't go to a lawyer and sue you. They're humble, they're flexible. (I don't know that job market so well and I don't even live in the US, but this is the perception I get from the system.)
  - luma 10y ago
    > Agriculture jobs never went anywhere. I'm going to need a source on that. Here's mine: http://protecttheharvest.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/numberOfFarmers.jpg http://protecttheharvest.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/numb... What do you think "productivity gains" means? It doesn't mean we need to hire more workers.
    - leereeves 10y ago
      Oh, well, if you're talking about the jobs lost in the 1800's, I agree, those jobs aren't coming back. But that graph is relatively flat since 1970, and I seriously doubt they were able to count all the jobs now being performed without documentation and not reported to the government.
- 7952 10y ago
  Perhaps there is a middle ground? People need food, and being able to grow your own saves money. Small scale production builds community and resilience. Perhaps people need to feel a connection to the land in rural areas. It is not just about food.
  - soundwave106 10y ago
    Our family owns a farm in Indiana (principle crop is corn) that is small by modern family farm standards (200 acres). We only need one person to manage the entire farm. I imagine only one person would be needed even if the acreage was much, much bigger. There is tremendous amounts of automation in planting and picking corn. Small scale production might be better for connecting and jobs and whatnot, but that can't compete price wise. Our small farm isn't exactly a huge money maker as it is. Modern farming is hardly just grunt work, a farmer has to be familiar with the land and the processes involved. It's actually a bit more technical than many may realize. And the salaries for farming reflect that; it is a pretty decently paid profession. People with this skillset won't go away. You just don't need many of these people per acre. There is such a thing as labor-intensive crops, of course. But I speculate that any replacement for low-paid "illegal immigrant" grunt work would end up being automation in the end.
trashtoss 10y ago
What? Are we on the labor theory of value now? Look I will be honest if not polite. The farmers I know are doing well for themselves. My sample may be biased because I only encounter ones with an interest in technology, but to a one they don't seem to be hurting objectively (feel like they are hurting? Probably a few). But these are people making something people want, in an efficient way, and capturing a perfectly-reasonable proportion of the value they create. That's farmers though. Rural "workers" I feel sorry for but only so much. I don't know these people like I know the farmers I know--farmers I meet through work, these I know only as extended family, friends thereof, and people I meet in passing while traveling for work--but I have met enough and known enough to know what the deal often is. The standard story for these dudes tends to be they grew up in town, didn't do that well in high school--and these guys are usually older so they missed the big student loan expansions that changed college from rich kids and smart kids only to something most people had a crack at--but at least back then you really could walk onto the proverbial factory floor (or learn a skilled trade, but those guys' lives have tended to follow a different arc and I skip them here) and wind up with a stable, good paying job. So the standard story continues with them doing hard honest work and being paid well for awhile--long enough to have settled down and started a family--but of course we all know the story ends once the factory shut down fifteen or twenty years ago. Since then it has been a long, punishing grind, the city they live in has started falling apart, the good kids leave the area and try to make it elsewhere, the young people who are left are a mix of bad kids (drugs, petty crime), the unambitious, and a handful of saints i both admire and pity (hanging around out of a sense of obligation for a sick relative or similar). It's a sad story, but to treat them as having had no agency in all this time is profoundly insulting--insulting in a way far graver than any any snark I can make in passing--and I refuse to do so. The local factory closing and thus derailing your world and the life plans you made in it: that's a tragedy for you and yours, and I am truly sympathetic for the difficulties so imposed. Failing to better yourself beyond "some high school, worked hard and honest for awhile"? That's on you. Spending multiple decades in the same place, waiting for outside forces to benevolently restore the favorable circumstances of yesteryear? That's on you. Failing to go to where there are actual jobs suitable for the skills they have (often, again being honest, out of a fear of urban life that would be comical if the consequences weren't so unfortunate)? That's on you. We aren't taking about children here; these are grown men, possessed of automobiles, clean criminal records, and an admirable willingness to do hard, unrewarding work...but they are often also grown men feeling entitled to have that work offered to them in the place and manner of their own choosing, on terms of their own choosing, in accordance with the world they grew up in...and affording them a social stature and respect concordant with their own pride and self image. With deep sympathy: the ask is too high, the world has been telling them that for decades, and after awhile any sympathy I have for their plight becomes entangled with scorn for failing to take real responsibility for their own lives. It's hard for me, personally: as a rather more devout person than many on this site I really and sincerely believe that every human being possesses an intrinsic dignity and that we are all truly and equally alike in god's eyes and to love everyone as my neighbor...but it's hard not to slip into scorn and derision for people whose pride had lead them to fail to act like responsible adults and transformed what should have been a mere difficult period into a lifetime of struggle, disappointment, and resentment...and I have to struggle at it to keep my own disappointment in them from becoming something worse.

luma 10y ago

Agriculture jobs aren't coming back, and they weren't sent to China. Automation and productivity gains in agriculture have exploded, and as a result there isn't a lot of call for farmhands these days. Unless we move back to an agrarian existence, the rural poor are going to have to figure out something that doesn't involve a shovel.

leereeves 10y ago
Agriculture jobs never went anywhere. There are still millions of jobs in agriculture and construction, but they are now poorly paid because they are performed by people who aren't protected by employment laws and have no negotiating power. The only change that needs to be made is forcing agriculture and construction companies to obey the law.
- Fjolsvith 10y ago
  Perhaps the removal of an undocumented workforce that requires being paid under the table will force agricultural and construction companies to obey the laws.
  - Fjolsvith 10y ago
    Downvoting, really? Are upvotes and downvotes a popularity contest?
    - maxerickson 10y ago
      To a large extent, yes. Try not to worry about it, they still help sort more interesting comments to the top. (I gave you a net 0, upvoting your comment and downvoting your complaining)
- bduerst 10y ago
  This is the key distinction. Everyone is so quick to blame the immigrant, not the employer who paying them and dodging taxes.
  - ptaipale 10y ago
    BTW, is it just about dodging taxes? I could imagine that illegal immigrants are also a much easier workforce to manage. They won't be forming unions and going to strikes; if you want to terminate the employment, they won't go to a lawyer and sue you. They're humble, they're flexible. (I don't know that job market so well and I don't even live in the US, but this is the perception I get from the system.)
- luma 10y ago
  > Agriculture jobs never went anywhere. I'm going to need a source on that. Here's mine: http://protecttheharvest.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/numberOfFarmers.jpg http://protecttheharvest.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/numb... What do you think "productivity gains" means? It doesn't mean we need to hire more workers.
  - leereeves 10y ago
    Oh, well, if you're talking about the jobs lost in the 1800's, I agree, those jobs aren't coming back. But that graph is relatively flat since 1970, and I seriously doubt they were able to count all the jobs now being performed without documentation and not reported to the government.
7952 10y ago
Perhaps there is a middle ground? People need food, and being able to grow your own saves money. Small scale production builds community and resilience. Perhaps people need to feel a connection to the land in rural areas. It is not just about food.
- soundwave106 10y ago
  Our family owns a farm in Indiana (principle crop is corn) that is small by modern family farm standards (200 acres). We only need one person to manage the entire farm. I imagine only one person would be needed even if the acreage was much, much bigger. There is tremendous amounts of automation in planting and picking corn. Small scale production might be better for connecting and jobs and whatnot, but that can't compete price wise. Our small farm isn't exactly a huge money maker as it is. Modern farming is hardly just grunt work, a farmer has to be familiar with the land and the processes involved. It's actually a bit more technical than many may realize. And the salaries for farming reflect that; it is a pretty decently paid profession. People with this skillset won't go away. You just don't need many of these people per acre. There is such a thing as labor-intensive crops, of course. But I speculate that any replacement for low-paid "illegal immigrant" grunt work would end up being automation in the end.

trashtoss 10y ago

What? Are we on the labor theory of value now? Look I will be honest if not polite. The farmers I know are doing well for themselves. My sample may be biased because I only encounter ones with an interest in technology, but to a one they don't seem to be hurting objectively (feel like they are hurting? Probably a few). But these are people making something people want, in an efficient way, and capturing a perfectly-reasonable proportion of the value they create. That's farmers though. Rural "workers" I feel sorry for but only so much. I don't know these people like I know the farmers I know--farmers I meet through work, these I know only as extended family, friends thereof, and people I meet in passing while traveling for work--but I have met enough and known enough to know what the deal often is. The standard story for these dudes tends to be they grew up in town, didn't do that well in high school--and these guys are usually older so they missed the big student loan expansions that changed college from rich kids and smart kids only to something most people had a crack at--but at least back then you really could walk onto the proverbial factory floor (or learn a skilled trade, but those guys' lives have tended to follow a different arc and I skip them here) and wind up with a stable, good paying job. So the standard story continues with them doing hard honest work and being paid well for awhile--long enough to have settled down and started a family--but of course we all know the story ends once the factory shut down fifteen or twenty years ago. Since then it has been a long, punishing grind, the city they live in has started falling apart, the good kids leave the area and try to make it elsewhere, the young people who are left are a mix of bad kids (drugs, petty crime), the unambitious, and a handful of saints i both admire and pity (hanging around out of a sense of obligation for a sick relative or similar). It's a sad story, but to treat them as having had no agency in all this time is profoundly insulting--insulting in a way far graver than any any snark I can make in passing--and I refuse to do so. The local factory closing and thus derailing your world and the life plans you made in it: that's a tragedy for you and yours, and I am truly sympathetic for the difficulties so imposed. Failing to better yourself beyond "some high school, worked hard and honest for awhile"? That's on you. Spending multiple decades in the same place, waiting for outside forces to benevolently restore the favorable circumstances of yesteryear? That's on you. Failing to go to where there are actual jobs suitable for the skills they have (often, again being honest, out of a fear of urban life that would be comical if the consequences weren't so unfortunate)? That's on you. We aren't taking about children here; these are grown men, possessed of automobiles, clean criminal records, and an admirable willingness to do hard, unrewarding work...but they are often also grown men feeling entitled to have that work offered to them in the place and manner of their own choosing, on terms of their own choosing, in accordance with the world they grew up in...and affording them a social stature and respect concordant with their own pride and self image. With deep sympathy: the ask is too high, the world has been telling them that for decades, and after awhile any sympathy I have for their plight becomes entangled with scorn for failing to take real responsibility for their own lives. It's hard for me, personally: as a rather more devout person than many on this site I really and sincerely believe that every human being possesses an intrinsic dignity and that we are all truly and equally alike in god's eyes and to love everyone as my neighbor...but it's hard not to slip into scorn and derision for people whose pride had lead them to fail to act like responsible adults and transformed what should have been a mere difficult period into a lifetime of struggle, disappointment, and resentment...and I have to struggle at it to keep my own disappointment in them from becoming something worse.