4 ms·

So pay more than $25 an hour. There is surely a salary that people will accept to do the work. I don’t know why everyone assumes that manual labor only deserve

So pay more than $25 an hour. There is surely a salary that people will accept to do the work. I don’t know why everyone assumes that manual labor only deserves near poverty wages.

infinite8s 7y ago
No one will pay $5 for an avocado.
- mikekchar 7y ago
  Clearly, you've never been to Japan ;-) We've got $50 grapes! And that's for one grape... not a bunch... But I think you are correct that most North Americans especially are geared toward buying the cheapest produce available, often regardless of quality or production methods. I think it's slowly been changing over the years, but people still baulk at paying prices that would sustain small family farms without imported cheap labour. However, every time this kind of discussions come up, I feel it necessary to point out that vast majority of cost in food production is distribution, not production. This is due to the practical monopoly on food distribution that some companies have. You could actually raise the production price a pretty hefty amount without affecting the final price terribly if you regulated the distribution. Of course, what would the poor Cargill's do? They wouldn't be able to have swimming pools full of money. That won't do...
- empath75 7y ago
  People said similar things about cotton before slavery was abolished. The world managed to survive.
- cortesoft 7y ago
  Then grow less labor intensive things.
- grumple 7y ago
  People will absolutely pay $5 for avocados if that's what the price goes to. Avocados are among the easier things to pick though, so this doesn't really apply to them. Tomatoes seem to cost about $3 at my local grocery store and are not nearly as good as avocados.
- richk449 7y ago
  Have you ever been to brunch in San Francisco?
  - nine_k 7y ago
    The cost of the raw food is 10-15% of the price of a meal. (Source: my wife ran a popular restaurant for 4 years.)
hiram112 7y ago
I agree - there should be no job that nobody will do, only jobs that people won't do at the price you want to pay them. And what this really means, is that maybe certain products - like $7 bins of pecans from Walmart, or $1 heads of fresh lettuce - have been under a market that wasn't sustainable, and a lot of these food products that we take for granted should be luxury items again.

So pay more than $25 an hour. There is surely a salary that people will accept to do the work. I don’t know why everyone assumes that manual labor only deserves near poverty wages.

infinite8s 7y ago

No one will pay $5 for an avocado.

mikekchar 7y ago
Clearly, you've never been to Japan ;-) We've got $50 grapes! And that's for one grape... not a bunch... But I think you are correct that most North Americans especially are geared toward buying the cheapest produce available, often regardless of quality or production methods. I think it's slowly been changing over the years, but people still baulk at paying prices that would sustain small family farms without imported cheap labour. However, every time this kind of discussions come up, I feel it necessary to point out that vast majority of cost in food production is distribution, not production. This is due to the practical monopoly on food distribution that some companies have. You could actually raise the production price a pretty hefty amount without affecting the final price terribly if you regulated the distribution. Of course, what would the poor Cargill's do? They wouldn't be able to have swimming pools full of money. That won't do...
empath75 7y ago
People said similar things about cotton before slavery was abolished. The world managed to survive.
cortesoft 7y ago
Then grow less labor intensive things.
grumple 7y ago
People will absolutely pay $5 for avocados if that's what the price goes to. Avocados are among the easier things to pick though, so this doesn't really apply to them. Tomatoes seem to cost about $3 at my local grocery store and are not nearly as good as avocados.
richk449 7y ago
Have you ever been to brunch in San Francisco?
- nine_k 7y ago
  The cost of the raw food is 10-15% of the price of a meal. (Source: my wife ran a popular restaurant for 4 years.)

hiram112 7y ago

I agree - there should be no job that nobody will do, only jobs that people won't do at the price you want to pay them. And what this really means, is that maybe certain products - like $7 bins of pecans from Walmart, or $1 heads of fresh lettuce - have been under a market that wasn't sustainable, and a lot of these food products that we take for granted should be luxury items again.