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Has anyone here even worked a minimum wage job?? A few dollars an hour above the baseline isn't enough to compensate for the long term health and career advanc

by ABCLAW 10y ago

Has anyone here even worked a minimum wage job?? A few dollars an hour above the baseline isn't enough to compensate for the long term health and career advancement penalties you'll be taking. These are terminal career positions; they don't get better. Hauling apples and hay isn't going to get you a spot at a tractor design firm. Pay people enough to make a decent, comfortable life and you'll have workers. The CoL/wage arbitrage between foreign and american workers is what makes these jobs work.

AlexandrB 10y ago
> Hauling apples and hay isn't going to get you a spot at a tractor design firm. Of course not. This is a change in required qualifications and education, not just a move up the ladder. I don't know about agriculture jobs, but in food service your career prospects were to go from flipping burgers to managing/supervising/leading others who are flipping burgers (at increasing scale - store, regional, national, etc). While it's not as nice as any kind of engineering there is a way forward there. Of course moving up like this gets competitive because of the sheer volume of people "at the bottom" hoping to move up.
- ABCLAW 10y ago
  Sure it is. You move from the person moving the hay to the person designing the hay moving systems. This would be a perfectly cogent career story for any engineer working in agriculture, and I know plenty of people who have worked in higher-margin areas of agriculture who have made the jump. (Beekeepers learning biochemistry and getting jobs working as Honey Q/A scientists, chefs jumping into food research and development positions, farm owners pivoting to seed banking/specific organism sales, etc.) The fact that you can't generate enough economic surplus to fund studies to acquire the additional mechanical engineering study in a manner competitive with other mechanical engineering students is why you view the path as untenable. Hence why these positions are desperation tier end-of-the-line jobs and why the CoL/Wage arbitrage is required to keep them staffed. Similarly, people engaged in agricultural studies generally don't come out of the 'harvest labour' workforce. Working on a farm is a transaction with a specific expected ROI. If the ROI sucks in comparison to other mutually exclusive exchanges, why would you do it?
PaulHoule 10y ago
Funny enough, many Mexicans who come to work in the U.S. plan to earn enough money to start their own farm back home. There are quite a few young people who would like to own a farm, often not farmer's kids. It would be almost impossible to "make it" as a farmer without getting experience in the biz in one form or another.

by ABCLAW 10y ago

AlexandrB 10y ago

> Hauling apples and hay isn't going to get you a spot at a tractor design firm. Of course not. This is a change in required qualifications and education, not just a move up the ladder. I don't know about agriculture jobs, but in food service your career prospects were to go from flipping burgers to managing/supervising/leading others who are flipping burgers (at increasing scale - store, regional, national, etc). While it's not as nice as any kind of engineering there is a way forward there. Of course moving up like this gets competitive because of the sheer volume of people "at the bottom" hoping to move up.

ABCLAW 10y ago
Sure it is. You move from the person moving the hay to the person designing the hay moving systems. This would be a perfectly cogent career story for any engineer working in agriculture, and I know plenty of people who have worked in higher-margin areas of agriculture who have made the jump. (Beekeepers learning biochemistry and getting jobs working as Honey Q/A scientists, chefs jumping into food research and development positions, farm owners pivoting to seed banking/specific organism sales, etc.) The fact that you can't generate enough economic surplus to fund studies to acquire the additional mechanical engineering study in a manner competitive with other mechanical engineering students is why you view the path as untenable. Hence why these positions are desperation tier end-of-the-line jobs and why the CoL/Wage arbitrage is required to keep them staffed. Similarly, people engaged in agricultural studies generally don't come out of the 'harvest labour' workforce. Working on a farm is a transaction with a specific expected ROI. If the ROI sucks in comparison to other mutually exclusive exchanges, why would you do it?

PaulHoule 10y ago

Funny enough, many Mexicans who come to work in the U.S. plan to earn enough money to start their own farm back home. There are quite a few young people who would like to own a farm, often not farmer's kids. It would be almost impossible to "make it" as a farmer without getting experience in the biz in one form or another.