4 ms·

At that pay rate, your grocery bill will rise 5x-10x and while that might not bother you, there are several people from whom that's a death knell.

Scoundreller 7y ago
Not a chance. When you're paying a couple bucks a pound for fresh ______, it didn't take 15 minutes of a migrant worker's time to plant/pick/care/pack that pound. My guess is that the migrant worker proportion of retail cost is <10%. Quadrupling their income would increase retail cost by 30%. edit: > What would happen to consumer food costs if farm wages rose and the extra costs were passed on to consumers? The average earnings of field workers were $9.78 an hour in 2008, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture survey of farm employers, and a 40 percent increase would raise them to $13.69 an hour. If this wage increase were passed on to consumers, the 10 cent farm labor cost of a $1 pound of apples would rise to 14 cents, and the retail price would only rise to $1.04. https://www.prb.org/usfarmworkersfoodprices/ https://www.prb.org/usfarmworkersfoodprices/
- phenkdo 7y ago
  Again such a naive viewpoint, in an economy everything is interconnected. If the prices of groceries rise, there are knock-on effects on everything. Yep, EVERYTHING From healthcare to housing, to transport, and whatnot will rise many-x and this bravado will evaporate in the time you took to read this post.
  - Scoundreller 7y ago
    And benefits when your purchases go into the pockets of a local instead of foreign remittances.
- DoreenMichele 7y ago
  A long time ago, I read that you could double the wages of farm laborers and it would add like two cents or four cents to the cost of a box of breakfast cereal.
  - Scoundreller 7y ago
    If that. Many farm-products have negligible farm-labour cost in their production: beans, rice, tomatoes, pulses, potatoes, onions, grains... Their farm costs are in land, storage, drying and expensive equipment. They're not being picked by hand and manually weeded. And even then, the price difference between the farm-gate and grocery store is massive.
    - swixmix 7y ago
      But the small and medium sized farms that do those things by hand with the local work force will not be able to afford to pay their workers.
  - bluGill 7y ago
    Breakfast cereal has very little farm labor. It takes seconds for a combine to harvest all the wheat you would eat in a year. Fruit and fresh vegetables are much more labor intense.
jellicle 7y ago
If you spend $1 on food, the farmer gets like 12% of that. Total. For everything. Seeds, fertilizer, gasoline, labor, tractors, whatever. You could quintuple the pay of fruit pickers and your grocery bill would go up maybe 50%? Less?

Scoundreller 7y ago

Not a chance. When you're paying a couple bucks a pound for fresh ______, it didn't take 15 minutes of a migrant worker's time to plant/pick/care/pack that pound. My guess is that the migrant worker proportion of retail cost is <10%. Quadrupling their income would increase retail cost by 30%. edit: > What would happen to consumer food costs if farm wages rose and the extra costs were passed on to consumers? The average earnings of field workers were $9.78 an hour in 2008, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture survey of farm employers, and a 40 percent increase would raise them to $13.69 an hour. If this wage increase were passed on to consumers, the 10 cent farm labor cost of a $1 pound of apples would rise to 14 cents, and the retail price would only rise to $1.04. https://www.prb.org/usfarmworkersfoodprices/ https://www.prb.org/usfarmworkersfoodprices/

phenkdo 7y ago
Again such a naive viewpoint, in an economy everything is interconnected. If the prices of groceries rise, there are knock-on effects on everything. Yep, EVERYTHING From healthcare to housing, to transport, and whatnot will rise many-x and this bravado will evaporate in the time you took to read this post.
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  And benefits when your purchases go into the pockets of a local instead of foreign remittances.
DoreenMichele 7y ago
A long time ago, I read that you could double the wages of farm laborers and it would add like two cents or four cents to the cost of a box of breakfast cereal.
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  If that. Many farm-products have negligible farm-labour cost in their production: beans, rice, tomatoes, pulses, potatoes, onions, grains... Their farm costs are in land, storage, drying and expensive equipment. They're not being picked by hand and manually weeded. And even then, the price difference between the farm-gate and grocery store is massive.
  - swixmix 7y ago
    But the small and medium sized farms that do those things by hand with the local work force will not be able to afford to pay their workers.
- bluGill 7y ago
  Breakfast cereal has very little farm labor. It takes seconds for a combine to harvest all the wheat you would eat in a year. Fruit and fresh vegetables are much more labor intense.

jellicle 7y ago

If you spend $1 on food, the farmer gets like 12% of that. Total. For everything. Seeds, fertilizer, gasoline, labor, tractors, whatever. You could quintuple the pay of fruit pickers and your grocery bill would go up maybe 50%? Less?