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I can't speak to farming, but I know the going day labor rate, usually construction, for random (illegal) immigrants you can pick up at Home Depot is $20/hr min

I can't speak to farming, but I know the going day labor rate, usually construction, for random (illegal) immigrants you can pick up at Home Depot is $20/hr minimum around here. So you'll certainly have to do better than that to get natives. Again, if $20/hr isn't enough, the market will adjust until it is enough. Who cares whether unemployed people are capable of hard physical labor? Plenty of people in the country are capable, so farm wages will just have to compete against other sectors. And when it does, it will raise the wages of EVERYONE in those other sectors because people will leave for the higher wage farm work. This is the mechanism I keep bringing you back to about how it helps all the poor, not just the ones who take the farm labor jobs.

scarface74 9y ago
If everything costs more - especially a necessity like food, how does that not cause inflation and lead everyone Back to the same place? The whole food chain operates on thin margins so they can't eat the cost and reduce their profits.
- Consultant32452 9y ago
  If labor makes up 50% of the cost of a product, doubling the labor cost doubles the money the worker gets but only increases retail prices by 50%. This is still a great deal for the worker. Why do you feel it's okay to bring in desperately poor brown people to do work that you claim Americans won't do at even 5x the rate we pay the desperately poor people? Why shouldn't back-breaking work bring in a wage that is competitive with the broader market? Why is it okay to flood the market with an over-supply of desperately poor people? Do you think it would have any impact on your income if we brought in 10s of millions of workers to compete against you in whatever you do for a living?
  - scarface74 9y ago
    Because the alternative for the "desperate poor people" to getting poor wages is not getting any wages? Do you think they would be better off not getting anything?
    - Consultant32452 9y ago
      So you want to help the poor from other countries at the expense of poor from your own country, which coincidentally benefits you in the form of cheaper produce. That's awfully generous of you.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - scarface74 9y ago
        How many of the native poor are competing for jobs in the fields? If food prices for me go up by 50% I might grumble, suck it up and pay for it. The poor aren't going to have any choice but to eat cheaper less healthy food. And if food is more expensive to produce in the US because of labor costs, why would it be any different from anything else - the big companies will either start selling cheaper (less healthy) substitutes, or import it from places with cheaper labor.
        Consultant32452 9y ago
        >The poor aren't going to have any choice but to eat cheaper less healthy food. As we've covered, repeatedly, reduced supply of labor will increase the wages of those poor you're worried about buying food. Based on the first google results I could find farm labor constitutes 10-20% of the cost of food. Even at the high end, if you DOUBLE the wages of farm labor the price goes up 20% but wages go up 100%. And this same principle applies to every sector where new farm labor is pulled from. Wages go up more than prices, so it's a net win. This is great for the poor worker, but bad for the wealthy worker who doesn't get raises due to this increased competition on the low end of wages. To the extent that the wage gap might be a concern of yours, this is one significant way to reduce the wage gap using market forces. > the big companies will either start selling cheaper (less healthy) substitutes Millions of new potential customers have extra money in their pocket to be able to afford luxury food products. Meanwhile there are far fewer impoverished people looking to buy food (migrant/illegal workers). So if anything, it increases the market for luxury goods and decreases the market for cheaper unhealthy substitutes. >import it from places with cheaper labor. This is only a problem if you believe 100% of the illegal and temporary work visa produced goods could be replaced with imports. Not only is that not true, but even if it WERE true, that doesn't say anything about other sectors predominately filled with migrant/illegal workers such as hotel maid services or construction. My house, in my neighborhood, is not going to be built by someone who isn't physically here. I feel we've sufficiently covered the initial premise, which is that the policy I've described helps poor middle Americans. You might be able to debate the extent to which it would help them, or that this is good for the over-all economy/country, but it's undeniable that artificially increasing supply of labor in some sectors drives down wages for everyone in those sectors and in the labor markets that compete with those sectors.

scarface74 9y ago

If everything costs more - especially a necessity like food, how does that not cause inflation and lead everyone Back to the same place? The whole food chain operates on thin margins so they can't eat the cost and reduce their profits.

Consultant32452 9y ago
If labor makes up 50% of the cost of a product, doubling the labor cost doubles the money the worker gets but only increases retail prices by 50%. This is still a great deal for the worker. Why do you feel it's okay to bring in desperately poor brown people to do work that you claim Americans won't do at even 5x the rate we pay the desperately poor people? Why shouldn't back-breaking work bring in a wage that is competitive with the broader market? Why is it okay to flood the market with an over-supply of desperately poor people? Do you think it would have any impact on your income if we brought in 10s of millions of workers to compete against you in whatever you do for a living?
- scarface74 9y ago
  Because the alternative for the "desperate poor people" to getting poor wages is not getting any wages? Do you think they would be better off not getting anything?
  - Consultant32452 9y ago
    So you want to help the poor from other countries at the expense of poor from your own country, which coincidentally benefits you in the form of cheaper produce. That's awfully generous of you.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - scarface74 9y ago
      How many of the native poor are competing for jobs in the fields? If food prices for me go up by 50% I might grumble, suck it up and pay for it. The poor aren't going to have any choice but to eat cheaper less healthy food. And if food is more expensive to produce in the US because of labor costs, why would it be any different from anything else - the big companies will either start selling cheaper (less healthy) substitutes, or import it from places with cheaper labor.
      - Consultant32452 9y ago
        >The poor aren't going to have any choice but to eat cheaper less healthy food. As we've covered, repeatedly, reduced supply of labor will increase the wages of those poor you're worried about buying food. Based on the first google results I could find farm labor constitutes 10-20% of the cost of food. Even at the high end, if you DOUBLE the wages of farm labor the price goes up 20% but wages go up 100%. And this same principle applies to every sector where new farm labor is pulled from. Wages go up more than prices, so it's a net win. This is great for the poor worker, but bad for the wealthy worker who doesn't get raises due to this increased competition on the low end of wages. To the extent that the wage gap might be a concern of yours, this is one significant way to reduce the wage gap using market forces. > the big companies will either start selling cheaper (less healthy) substitutes Millions of new potential customers have extra money in their pocket to be able to afford luxury food products. Meanwhile there are far fewer impoverished people looking to buy food (migrant/illegal workers). So if anything, it increases the market for luxury goods and decreases the market for cheaper unhealthy substitutes. >import it from places with cheaper labor. This is only a problem if you believe 100% of the illegal and temporary work visa produced goods could be replaced with imports. Not only is that not true, but even if it WERE true, that doesn't say anything about other sectors predominately filled with migrant/illegal workers such as hotel maid services or construction. My house, in my neighborhood, is not going to be built by someone who isn't physically here. I feel we've sufficiently covered the initial premise, which is that the policy I've described helps poor middle Americans. You might be able to debate the extent to which it would help them, or that this is good for the over-all economy/country, but it's undeniable that artificially increasing supply of labor in some sectors drives down wages for everyone in those sectors and in the labor markets that compete with those sectors.