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People should pay more for fruit and food if more money is required to fairly compensate laborers. The solution shouldn't be importing a disadvantaged populatio
by ALittleLight 7y ago
People should pay more for fruit and food if more money is required to fairly compensate laborers. The solution shouldn't be importing a disadvantaged population to exploit for cheap labor.
If our modern economy is so weak we cannot afford fruits and vegetables we should confront and overcome that weakness rather than conceal it by importing an underclass.
- burntoutfire 7y agoInterestingly, it's a shift-by-one kind of situation. I.e. while British or German crops are picked by Poles, Polish crops are picked by Ukrainians... It seems that agriculture everywhere relies on underpaid migrant labor. I wonder if even Ukraine imports some migrant labor for this purpose.
- vkou 7y agoRussia does, from the former Soviet 'Stan republics. I assume Ukraine does as well.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 7y agoSince we can't turles-all-the-way-down with this, where does the chain end? What do they do there?
- chewz 7y agoThey have children.
- occamrazor 7y agoAnother solution is increasing the susidies to food production, which would shift part of the cost to people with higher income. This has some disadvantages (the market is distorted by subsidies and resource allocation may be suboptimal) and some advantages (a healthier diet is available for a larger proportion of the population).
- ALittleLight 7y agoI agree that there are many potential solutions and I think society should figure out a good combination. Importing people to do hard work for low pay and poor benefits seems like a bad solution.
- dillonmckay 7y agoSee Big Corn in the US.
- 0DHm2CxO7Lb3 7y agoSo the solution you propose means higher consumer prices (which hurts the lower class the most) and to prevent poor people from other countries the opportunity for a higher quality of life
- ALittleLight 7y agoThe solution I propose is to fairly compensate people for their work, give them high quality benefits, and tolerable conditions. I don't think that standard is being met by importing disadvantaged people who will work difficult and demanding jobs in harsh conditions for low pay. Worse, this policy effectively conceals the problem rather than addressing it. If fruit was too expensive for most people to buy, that would be a problem our society would need to solve. If we can pretend things are working fine by exploiting the poor, we don't have to face or solve that problem for a while. I also don't believe your summary. It's an easy excuse to pretend that allowing the poor to come slave away in demanding conditions to provide you with low cost goods and services is actually for their benefit. Their original countries are deprived of their economic energy and the poor in the richer countries are forced to compete with a vast influx of workers. The corollary of higher fruit prices is that the fruit workers get more money, more breaks, better benefits, and improved conditions. That's a worthwhile trade.