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> illegal alien labor scabs self-deport in advance, and wages rise You know when there was a bug in the codebase so hard to fix and for so many years that deve

> illegal alien labor scabs self-deport in advance, and wages rise You know when there was a bug in the codebase so hard to fix and for so many years that developers started building on top of that and considered the bug to be 'not really a bug' but more of a design decision. And then some new hire comes along and fixes it without a deep understanding of the dependencies and breaks existing functionality. And then the dev budget for 'fixing' everything goes sky high? Guess what will happen to the price of produce?

kodfodrasz 10y ago
Then the market will fix this, either by automation (which will create other problems for these mostly unskilled people in need), or by importing some more goods from abroad, and farmers changing to crops more competitive in the changed circumstances. Also it might create a slight inflation, which will likely result in the rise of wages, usually in a larger proportion in the lower end wages than in the high end, resulting in some eradication of the divide in wages. Law is the foundation a society is built on. If breaking the law becomes the norm, a society will slowly disintegrate. If laws create more problems then they solve, but are enforced, they are eventually changed. This should be the norm, not breaking them.
dragonwriter 10y ago
> Guess what will happen to the price of produce? Very little, because it's a highly competitive global market and much of what is in supermarkets is already imported. There's a few crops where CA is dominant and where prices would be affected significantly, but the main question would be "what happens to the jobs, and the companies, when labor costs make it impossible to sell their product at a profit". Jobs aren't a fixed quantity for which wages will rise without limit given a labor supply constraint.
- Apocryphon 10y ago
  If this leads to the decline of agriculture in CA, does that mean the water woes will be diminished? But on the other hand, that just leads to the growing economic collapse of the Central Valley. Maybe some tech startups should start looking to relocate to Stockton and Sac, cheaper rents and CoL, and within drivable distance to the Palo Alto VC firms...
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > If this leads to the decline of agriculture in CA, does that mean the water woes will be diminished? Depends which crops are most affected and what the land use shifts to (could be rising ag labor prices favor crops where the work is more automated, which may be a decline in total profits but not in land or water use.)
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
edblarney 10y ago
"Guess what will happen to the price of produce?" Produce prices will rise - and surpluses will get distributed from the middle/upper classes to the working class and ease inequality. 'How to share the surpluses' is one of the most difficult problems in any society. 'The best' way is usually to let market forces take effect without some kind of non-market intervention. Well - if we didn't allow businesses to 'cheat' using non-market intervention of undocumented labour - guess what? A good chunk of inequality problems would go away. And it would also drive automation and towards other efficiencies - which is good. The very same people who are concerned with inequality are the very same people pushing the fundamental driver of inequality which is undocumented labour, which wipes out the only little bit of leverage that working class people have.
patrickg_zill 10y ago
Almost nothing. Head of lettuce, for instance, might go up 5 cents per head at wholesale, thus 15-25 cents per head at retail, max. i.e. less than 10% of current price, will be the amount of the increase

kodfodrasz 10y ago

Then the market will fix this, either by automation (which will create other problems for these mostly unskilled people in need), or by importing some more goods from abroad, and farmers changing to crops more competitive in the changed circumstances. Also it might create a slight inflation, which will likely result in the rise of wages, usually in a larger proportion in the lower end wages than in the high end, resulting in some eradication of the divide in wages. Law is the foundation a society is built on. If breaking the law becomes the norm, a society will slowly disintegrate. If laws create more problems then they solve, but are enforced, they are eventually changed. This should be the norm, not breaking them.

dragonwriter 10y ago

> Guess what will happen to the price of produce? Very little, because it's a highly competitive global market and much of what is in supermarkets is already imported. There's a few crops where CA is dominant and where prices would be affected significantly, but the main question would be "what happens to the jobs, and the companies, when labor costs make it impossible to sell their product at a profit". Jobs aren't a fixed quantity for which wages will rise without limit given a labor supply constraint.

Apocryphon 10y ago
If this leads to the decline of agriculture in CA, does that mean the water woes will be diminished? But on the other hand, that just leads to the growing economic collapse of the Central Valley. Maybe some tech startups should start looking to relocate to Stockton and Sac, cheaper rents and CoL, and within drivable distance to the Palo Alto VC firms...
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > If this leads to the decline of agriculture in CA, does that mean the water woes will be diminished? Depends which crops are most affected and what the land use shifts to (could be rising ag labor prices favor crops where the work is more automated, which may be a decline in total profits but not in land or water use.)

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

edblarney 10y ago

"Guess what will happen to the price of produce?" Produce prices will rise - and surpluses will get distributed from the middle/upper classes to the working class and ease inequality. 'How to share the surpluses' is one of the most difficult problems in any society. 'The best' way is usually to let market forces take effect without some kind of non-market intervention. Well - if we didn't allow businesses to 'cheat' using non-market intervention of undocumented labour - guess what? A good chunk of inequality problems would go away. And it would also drive automation and towards other efficiencies - which is good. The very same people who are concerned with inequality are the very same people pushing the fundamental driver of inequality which is undocumented labour, which wipes out the only little bit of leverage that working class people have.

patrickg_zill 10y ago

Almost nothing. Head of lettuce, for instance, might go up 5 cents per head at wholesale, thus 15-25 cents per head at retail, max. i.e. less than 10% of current price, will be the amount of the increase