13 ms·

Sorry, I am going to be the insensitive sleazeball here. The point of staying at home is not that if you get this disease you are going to die. The issue is th

by wscott 7y ago

Sorry, I am going to be the insensitive sleazeball here. The point of staying at home is not that if you get this disease you are going to die. The issue is that if we ALL get it then a larger proportion of people are going to die because we don't have enough hospitals. We had to choose some people as being important enough that they are allowed to be out and about and use some of that valuable limited healthcare resources while the rest of us try really hard not to get sick and risk going to the hospital. If this goes south, you may wish that you were one of the people who got the disease early. Farm labor has always gotten the short end of the stick and this is an added burden. I would vote to give them extra income during this period if that was being considered. But the fact is that they are part of the food chain in this country and so are considered "essential" people to continue doing their jobs.

groby_b 7y ago
"during this period"? They're as essential to our survival even if we're not in a pandemic. It's maybe time we recognized that and stopped exploiting labor just because it's unskilled. If we paid them by the value they actually create. I'd really urge you to reconsider your stance, and be there to help them advocate for fair pay even when this is over.
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  How would the value they create or "fair pay" be measured?
  - groby_b 7y ago
    "fair pay" -> well, let's start with "treated like human beings, not chattel", "afforded basic hygiene & health measures", "kept safe in a crisis". From there, we get to "would you die without them? If yes, maybe they're underpaid. Maybe $18K a year just isn't fair pay under any circumstances, not if we can't force people via a "well, you could always die" clause. As for the value they create - you have food available to you. How valuable is that to you? Would you like it if farm workers applied the "well, you could always die or do it yourself" clause? Because at some point, that becomes an option.
    - lotsofpulp 7y ago
      If I were a business owner trying to figure out how much to pay, I would not be able to deduce the numerical figure from your comment. I understand what you're saying, my intention is to display how easy it is to say, but how difficult it is to execute. Currently, we pay people what it costs to replace them, but it would be nice if we could snap our fingers and give everyone a global standard of living equal to whatever the top 5% live in. Unfortunately, that's not possible, and short of a country wide or world wide effort to implement some type of UBI, I don't see much chance of success.
      - groby_b 7y ago
        "If I were a business owner trying to figure out how much to pay, I would not be able to deduce the numerical figure from your comment." That's OK, I'm happy to help you with regulation.
  - missedthecue 7y ago
    Things like "fair pay" and "living wage" are political talking points. In short, what the living wage is really about is not living standards, or economics, but morality. Its advocates refuse to come to terms with the fact that wages are market price–determined by supply and demand, the same as the price of oil, steel, corn, or coal. And it is for that reason, rather than the practical details, that the broader political movement of which the demand for a living wage is the leading edge is ultimately doomed to failure: For the amorality of the market economy is part of its essence, and cannot be legislated away.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - lotsofpulp 7y ago
      I think the doom to failure part is due to a scarcity of resources (especially an environment to pollute), which inherently causes distribution issues. If the world had an infinite number of detached single family homes in places with fresh water and secure food supplies and good weather, making things "fair" would be quite easy. We can certainly do better than we currently are, but the underlying reason things aren't fair is that nature doesn't offer fair.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - thatcat 7y ago
      Lol, the price of corn, or even oil, coal, and steel are constantly adjusted by gov. You've proven the opposite of your point - market price is political and can be controlled when it is politically favorable.
      - jnwatson 7y ago
        The government doesn't control the price of corn, oil, coal, or steel except indirectly via government policy.
        7y ago
  - bilbo0s 7y ago
    >How would the value they create [...] be measured? Even if it could, that value would be so enormous that there are simple economic constraints on what's possible in terms of remuneration. Lot's of people are allocated what are probably criminally small portions of the value they create. For instance, if the sanitation engineers in a city disappeared, you wouldn't want to be in that city 3 months later. The city's streets would be filled with rotting garbage, and that would be the least of it's problems. Its grey- and black- water processing systems would be long since collapsed. And that city'd better hope that no industrial actors took the opportunity to dispense of troublesome pollutants despite the lack of a functioning sanitation system. The thing is, despite the critical importance of the guys running our sanitation systems, and the enormous value the environment they maintain confers on us, in my own city, not one of them makes USD300 grand a year. (Or even USD200 grand. You get the idea.) A lot of civilization collapses without them, but they are still some of the lowest paid professionals in all of engineering. All that's due to the same economic limitations that constrict remuneration for farmworkers. They are absolutely essential. They create enormous value. Unfortunately, the way the system is set up, there is not much in the way of resources to reward them. We can discuss changing the system, but I doubt most people would like the outcome of that exercise. That would definitely go under "Be careful what you wish for."
    - lotsofpulp 7y ago
      >Lot's of people are allocated what are probably criminally small portions of the value they create. My comment was written to elucidate why "value they create" is a useless sentiment. For example, none of the paintings in Louvre or whatever museum have any value to me. But they do to other people, so it would be impossible to have a consensus on "value". Some people like strawberries and would value them more than people who don't like strawberries. The purpose of paying someone is to perform the desired work. The amount paid is the signal to the person performing the work that the work you want to be done should be done rather than someone else's. The purpose of paying someone is not to provide them with some nebulous concept of value or to make sure they have a minimum standard of housing and fed, etc. Those goals should be accomplished by other means (UBI or some other type of societal welfare system).
- munk-a 7y ago
  I think their pay being market driven is fair, honestly - the government granting them hazard pay or whatnot will just end up being eaten by the farm owners in the long run - but I do think we need to seriously reconsider privatized healthcare in America - it's insane that yall folks can end up destitute because you get sick.
- hitpointdrew 7y ago
  No farms, no food.
bluGill 7y ago
>If this goes south, you may wish that you were one of the people who got the disease early. Maybe, but the safer bet is that science will discover treatments (and ideally a vaccine) over time and so we are better off being one of the last infected. Let science learn on someone other than me. There are already media reports of both treatments and vaccines - only time will tell which work though. Yes the Spanish flu happened differently. That is always the risk, but overall I think I prefer to wait.
munk-a 7y ago
Who gets to choose who gets sick first - do remember that in the US a farm worker getting sick might bankrupt them and kill them not because a hospital bed isn't available - but because they can't afford it or end up having a heart attack after dealing with the stress of those costs. Additionally Covid-19 isn't super fatal, but it isn't just a get sick and whatever disease. Folks with health problems absolutely can die from this disease and it looks like healthy people can end up being saddled with respiratory issues like Pneumonia which is a bucket of fun for the rest of your life. I don't think you were intentionally being insensitive in this manner (even barring your disclaimer your point is balanced and reasoned - it isn't unnecessarily cruel and has grains of truth). But do recall that this disease can be fatal or otherwise debilitating - I'd find it reasonable to treat essential workers, like these farm labourers, like we treat vets[1] give them life long coverage from the government for any complication resulting from their labour. I don't want some farm worker who kept working through this to end up bankrolling Aetna. 1. At least, how we act like we treat them - America is pretty terrible to veterans.
- delfinom 7y ago
  >Who gets to choose who gets sick first - do remember that in the US a farm worker getting sick might bankrupt them and kill them not because a hospital bed isn't available - but because they can't afford it or end up having a heart attack after dealing with the stress of those costs. But this is literally a every day risk and problem with or without covid-19 as there is a whole host of diseases they could catch any day, especially the flu. The bigger problem is our shitty healthcare system.
  - tluyben2 7y ago
    The parent comment was about the healthcare system right? As a lot of that wouldn’t happen in a lot of countries so I assumed it was.
mattmanser 7y ago
That's clearly not the strategy any more. I mean, I was just as wrong as I was saying the same thing a week ago. But the numbers don't add up. You can't have 100,000-200,000 deaths in a country of 327 million people if it infects 80% and has a mortality rate of 1-2% if you have medical intervention (which is their best guess). Without intervention I assume it kills the up to 20% (probably more like 10% as we're still not clear on asymptomatic infections) who require hospitalisation. For the US that's 2.6-5.2 million dead to reach herd immunity with a shallow peak, or something like 25-50 million if its not flattened and the health service get overwhelmed. By saying only 100,000-200,000 will die, the strategy must ultimately be lockdown to stop spread, then release the lockdown and contain the infections using test, trace, quarantine like S.Korea, China and Japan. Or lockdown until a vaccine is ready in 18 months, which I can't see happening.
onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
I think it's pretty sad we passed a $2.2T stimulus bill, with $500Bn in unemployment benefits, so the average person that gets laid off can make about $60k a year (adjusted for taxes) to not work -- and we did hardly nothing to protect people that actually need to work and are at high risk! Worst of all, most of these jobs are low paying -- much less than you'd get from the current unemployment. We basically created an incentive to quit your job over fear of the virus and make more money collecting unemployment. I mean, even in hospitals there are A LOT of jobs that pay less than you'd make from this new unemployment bill. After taxes, the average nurse aid makes about half what they could collect on unemployment right now. I'm not saying beefing up unemployment was bad. I'm just worried this is going to backfire, and it doesn't seem fair to people working in grocery stores, on farms, and most of all -- in hospitals. It would be nice if these workers got paid AT LEAST as much as if they became unemployed, for example.
- germinalphrase 7y ago
  Can you provide references with regard to your unemployment claims. Here in minnesota you receive about 50 percent of your weekly wages up to a max of $740 a week. That hardly seems like an incentive to get laid off (note that you don’t collect unemployment if you voluntarily leave a job, i.e. quit).
  - onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
    The federal government is pouring $600 per week, federally tax free. So that's closer to $685+ after taxes.
- munk-a 7y ago
  Look, the vast majority of folks like to work. Some people will stop working but there are a number of older folks who worked as Doctors who are coming out of retirement to do their part. I understand where you're getting this from but unfortunately it's an old conservative Meme that gave us such hits as "The Welfare Queen" - people legitimately don't like being on unemployment when they can be working. Perhaps we need to beef up social safety nets in general, and I'd be ecstatic if we came out of this crisis with a more healthy view of public healthcare - but this issue you're concerned about isn't an issue.
hitpointdrew 7y ago
> If this goes south, you may wish that you were one of the people who got the disease early. This is my biggest fear.
jelliclesfarm 7y ago
Farm workers live in the most polluted regions. They are the most vulnerable. Usually without insurance even if legal. https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2018/12/californias-fertile-valley-is-awash-in-air-pollution/ https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2018/12/californias-...

by wscott 7y ago

groby_b 7y ago

"during this period"? They're as essential to our survival even if we're not in a pandemic. It's maybe time we recognized that and stopped exploiting labor just because it's unskilled. If we paid them by the value they actually create. I'd really urge you to reconsider your stance, and be there to help them advocate for fair pay even when this is over.

lotsofpulp 7y ago
How would the value they create or "fair pay" be measured?
- groby_b 7y ago
  "fair pay" -> well, let's start with "treated like human beings, not chattel", "afforded basic hygiene & health measures", "kept safe in a crisis". From there, we get to "would you die without them? If yes, maybe they're underpaid. Maybe $18K a year just isn't fair pay under any circumstances, not if we can't force people via a "well, you could always die" clause. As for the value they create - you have food available to you. How valuable is that to you? Would you like it if farm workers applied the "well, you could always die or do it yourself" clause? Because at some point, that becomes an option.
  - lotsofpulp 7y ago
    If I were a business owner trying to figure out how much to pay, I would not be able to deduce the numerical figure from your comment. I understand what you're saying, my intention is to display how easy it is to say, but how difficult it is to execute. Currently, we pay people what it costs to replace them, but it would be nice if we could snap our fingers and give everyone a global standard of living equal to whatever the top 5% live in. Unfortunately, that's not possible, and short of a country wide or world wide effort to implement some type of UBI, I don't see much chance of success.
    - groby_b 7y ago
      "If I were a business owner trying to figure out how much to pay, I would not be able to deduce the numerical figure from your comment." That's OK, I'm happy to help you with regulation.
- missedthecue 7y ago
  Things like "fair pay" and "living wage" are political talking points. In short, what the living wage is really about is not living standards, or economics, but morality. Its advocates refuse to come to terms with the fact that wages are market price–determined by supply and demand, the same as the price of oil, steel, corn, or coal. And it is for that reason, rather than the practical details, that the broader political movement of which the demand for a living wage is the leading edge is ultimately doomed to failure: For the amorality of the market economy is part of its essence, and cannot be legislated away.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - lotsofpulp 7y ago
    I think the doom to failure part is due to a scarcity of resources (especially an environment to pollute), which inherently causes distribution issues. If the world had an infinite number of detached single family homes in places with fresh water and secure food supplies and good weather, making things "fair" would be quite easy. We can certainly do better than we currently are, but the underlying reason things aren't fair is that nature doesn't offer fair.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - thatcat 7y ago
    Lol, the price of corn, or even oil, coal, and steel are constantly adjusted by gov. You've proven the opposite of your point - market price is political and can be controlled when it is politically favorable.
    - jnwatson 7y ago
      The government doesn't control the price of corn, oil, coal, or steel except indirectly via government policy.
      - 7y ago
- bilbo0s 7y ago
  >How would the value they create [...] be measured? Even if it could, that value would be so enormous that there are simple economic constraints on what's possible in terms of remuneration. Lot's of people are allocated what are probably criminally small portions of the value they create. For instance, if the sanitation engineers in a city disappeared, you wouldn't want to be in that city 3 months later. The city's streets would be filled with rotting garbage, and that would be the least of it's problems. Its grey- and black- water processing systems would be long since collapsed. And that city'd better hope that no industrial actors took the opportunity to dispense of troublesome pollutants despite the lack of a functioning sanitation system. The thing is, despite the critical importance of the guys running our sanitation systems, and the enormous value the environment they maintain confers on us, in my own city, not one of them makes USD300 grand a year. (Or even USD200 grand. You get the idea.) A lot of civilization collapses without them, but they are still some of the lowest paid professionals in all of engineering. All that's due to the same economic limitations that constrict remuneration for farmworkers. They are absolutely essential. They create enormous value. Unfortunately, the way the system is set up, there is not much in the way of resources to reward them. We can discuss changing the system, but I doubt most people would like the outcome of that exercise. That would definitely go under "Be careful what you wish for."
  - lotsofpulp 7y ago
    >Lot's of people are allocated what are probably criminally small portions of the value they create. My comment was written to elucidate why "value they create" is a useless sentiment. For example, none of the paintings in Louvre or whatever museum have any value to me. But they do to other people, so it would be impossible to have a consensus on "value". Some people like strawberries and would value them more than people who don't like strawberries. The purpose of paying someone is to perform the desired work. The amount paid is the signal to the person performing the work that the work you want to be done should be done rather than someone else's. The purpose of paying someone is not to provide them with some nebulous concept of value or to make sure they have a minimum standard of housing and fed, etc. Those goals should be accomplished by other means (UBI or some other type of societal welfare system).
munk-a 7y ago
I think their pay being market driven is fair, honestly - the government granting them hazard pay or whatnot will just end up being eaten by the farm owners in the long run - but I do think we need to seriously reconsider privatized healthcare in America - it's insane that yall folks can end up destitute because you get sick.
hitpointdrew 7y ago
No farms, no food.

bluGill 7y ago

>If this goes south, you may wish that you were one of the people who got the disease early. Maybe, but the safer bet is that science will discover treatments (and ideally a vaccine) over time and so we are better off being one of the last infected. Let science learn on someone other than me. There are already media reports of both treatments and vaccines - only time will tell which work though. Yes the Spanish flu happened differently. That is always the risk, but overall I think I prefer to wait.

munk-a 7y ago

Who gets to choose who gets sick first - do remember that in the US a farm worker getting sick might bankrupt them and kill them not because a hospital bed isn't available - but because they can't afford it or end up having a heart attack after dealing with the stress of those costs. Additionally Covid-19 isn't super fatal, but it isn't just a get sick and whatever disease. Folks with health problems absolutely can die from this disease and it looks like healthy people can end up being saddled with respiratory issues like Pneumonia which is a bucket of fun for the rest of your life. I don't think you were intentionally being insensitive in this manner (even barring your disclaimer your point is balanced and reasoned - it isn't unnecessarily cruel and has grains of truth). But do recall that this disease can be fatal or otherwise debilitating - I'd find it reasonable to treat essential workers, like these farm labourers, like we treat vets[1] give them life long coverage from the government for any complication resulting from their labour. I don't want some farm worker who kept working through this to end up bankrolling Aetna. 1. At least, how we act like we treat them - America is pretty terrible to veterans.

delfinom 7y ago
>Who gets to choose who gets sick first - do remember that in the US a farm worker getting sick might bankrupt them and kill them not because a hospital bed isn't available - but because they can't afford it or end up having a heart attack after dealing with the stress of those costs. But this is literally a every day risk and problem with or without covid-19 as there is a whole host of diseases they could catch any day, especially the flu. The bigger problem is our shitty healthcare system.
- tluyben2 7y ago
  The parent comment was about the healthcare system right? As a lot of that wouldn’t happen in a lot of countries so I assumed it was.

mattmanser 7y ago

That's clearly not the strategy any more. I mean, I was just as wrong as I was saying the same thing a week ago. But the numbers don't add up. You can't have 100,000-200,000 deaths in a country of 327 million people if it infects 80% and has a mortality rate of 1-2% if you have medical intervention (which is their best guess). Without intervention I assume it kills the up to 20% (probably more like 10% as we're still not clear on asymptomatic infections) who require hospitalisation. For the US that's 2.6-5.2 million dead to reach herd immunity with a shallow peak, or something like 25-50 million if its not flattened and the health service get overwhelmed. By saying only 100,000-200,000 will die, the strategy must ultimately be lockdown to stop spread, then release the lockdown and contain the infections using test, trace, quarantine like S.Korea, China and Japan. Or lockdown until a vaccine is ready in 18 months, which I can't see happening.

onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago

I think it's pretty sad we passed a $2.2T stimulus bill, with $500Bn in unemployment benefits, so the average person that gets laid off can make about $60k a year (adjusted for taxes) to not work -- and we did hardly nothing to protect people that actually need to work and are at high risk! Worst of all, most of these jobs are low paying -- much less than you'd get from the current unemployment. We basically created an incentive to quit your job over fear of the virus and make more money collecting unemployment. I mean, even in hospitals there are A LOT of jobs that pay less than you'd make from this new unemployment bill. After taxes, the average nurse aid makes about half what they could collect on unemployment right now. I'm not saying beefing up unemployment was bad. I'm just worried this is going to backfire, and it doesn't seem fair to people working in grocery stores, on farms, and most of all -- in hospitals. It would be nice if these workers got paid AT LEAST as much as if they became unemployed, for example.

germinalphrase 7y ago
Can you provide references with regard to your unemployment claims. Here in minnesota you receive about 50 percent of your weekly wages up to a max of $740 a week. That hardly seems like an incentive to get laid off (note that you don’t collect unemployment if you voluntarily leave a job, i.e. quit).
- onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
  The federal government is pouring $600 per week, federally tax free. So that's closer to $685+ after taxes.
munk-a 7y ago
Look, the vast majority of folks like to work. Some people will stop working but there are a number of older folks who worked as Doctors who are coming out of retirement to do their part. I understand where you're getting this from but unfortunately it's an old conservative Meme that gave us such hits as "The Welfare Queen" - people legitimately don't like being on unemployment when they can be working. Perhaps we need to beef up social safety nets in general, and I'd be ecstatic if we came out of this crisis with a more healthy view of public healthcare - but this issue you're concerned about isn't an issue.

hitpointdrew 7y ago

> If this goes south, you may wish that you were one of the people who got the disease early. This is my biggest fear.

jelliclesfarm 7y ago

Farm workers live in the most polluted regions. They are the most vulnerable. Usually without insurance even if legal. https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2018/12/californias-fertile-valley-is-awash-in-air-pollution/ https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2018/12/californias-...