7 ms·

> , but on how hard it is to find people to do them when we need them. This isn't even the case. Last season in my country fruits were rotting in the fields ca

> , but on how hard it is to find people to do them when we need them. This isn't even the case. Last season in my country fruits were rotting in the fields cause nobody was there to pick them up. Did farmers increase salaries in order to get more fruit pickers? No. Here, I suspect the obvious in the anime industry, like in many entertainment sectors including VFX: salary fixing between studios to keep pays low. > If there were 100 qualified surgeons for every patient needing an operation, and would stampede each other for a chance to work and get paid, we'd pay them $25/hour too. Given how opaque the healthcare industry is when it comes to cost for non elective surgeries, I doubt costs would go down even if you multiplied the number of surgeons by 1000. Case points: there are loads of restaurants yet the hospital will steal bill a meal 20 times what it would cost in the nearby restaurant.

MattGaiser 6y ago
> This isn't even the case. Last season in my country fruits were rotting in the fields cause nobody was there to pick them up. Did farmers increase salaries in order to get more fruit pickers? No. Is the fruit worth picking if salaries need to be increased to get workers? In a lot of cases the answer is no. A lot of work only makes sense at a particular salary. If market salaries are above that, the work just isn't done.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Retric 6y ago
  People can pick a lot of fruit per hour. You would need something like 1 cent apples for that to be an issue. At that point it’s not a question of making money, but minimizing losses.
  - konjin 6y ago
    Yet there are automated apple pickers. There is no money in agriculture. The only reason why most farms aren't bankrupt is because of subsidies.
    - Retric 6y ago
      In a competitive market long term subsides don’t actually benefit the industry’s profit margins. Suppose we subsidize toilet paper, suddenly prices drop and people might start using toilet paper for random other stuff if it’s cheap. However, the industry would simply expand until things stayed about the same. Where farm subsides play a role is dampening the boom bust cycle.
      - wing-_-nuts 6y ago
        There's also a very big national security concern. Each country should be able to grow enough food to support it's people. If it can't, it literally faces the threat of starvation in the event of war or natural disaster.
    - estsauver 6y ago
      That's just not true. It's about 15% of net incomes currently, but has hovered around 25% of net (in the US): https://www.agriculture.com/news/business/us-heads-for-highest-farm-income-in-seven-years#:~:text=The%20USDA%20revised%20its%20estimate,livestock%20revenue%20and%20direct%20payments https://www.agriculture.com/news/business/us-heads-for-highe....
      - konjin 6y ago
        It can be 1% and still be what keeps the majority of farms from going under. 15% is absolutely "I will go bankrupt if I don't have this" territory.
        Retric 6y ago
        If you drop that in one year sure, but remove all subsidies globally over even 10 years and the market would adjust.
        konjin 6y ago
        By having firms go bankrupt.
- mcv 6y ago
  Fruit picking is a very small part of the cost. Doubling the pay of the pickers wouldn't double the price of the fruit in the stores. Most likely, they'd cost about 10 cents extra or something. Easily worth it. Whenever the milk price is low, we get farmer's protests that they don't get enough for their milk. Turns out they get 9 cents per liter for which I pay more than a euro. You could double their pay, include it in the price, and I wouldn't care.
  - anm89 6y ago
    You say that and yet they opted to shut down production as opposed to raising wages. That seems to be a better indicator of the underlying reality than your opinion.
    - mcv 6y ago
      I think part of the consideration is that if they pay fruit pickers more now, they fear they may have to pay them more in the future as well. It's also possible they simply refuse to pay fruit pickers more because they strongly believe fruit pickers don't deserve better pay. There are often a lot more factors at play in these sort of things. Some rational, some maybe not so much.
      - merpnderp 6y ago
        So they set a whole season's profits on fire to stick it to seasonal workers? That seems so irrational as to require at least a smidgen of evidence to take seriously.
        notional 6y ago
        Ever hear about NYC landlords who leave ground level properties vacant for years because they'd rather lock in a high paying tenant. Same principal.
        ryandrake 6y ago
        “The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country.”
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  >A lot of work only makes sense at a particular salary. If market salaries are above that, the work just isn't done. All sorts of narrow specialized skill jobs (e.g. rebuilding electric motors) have gone this way in the west.
- imtringued 6y ago
  Actually, in developing countries there is a lot of money to be made by optimizing fruit picking and pruning afterwards. Mango farms are a pretty good example. Old farmers have grown their trees very tall and let the fruit grow as big as possible. It is very difficult for pickers to harvest the fruit. If you train the pickers to prune the trees and ensure a consistent size you can often plant more trees, have each tree bear more but smaller fruit with superior yield. Because of the decreased height fruit pickers can harvest more fruit per shift and the risk of fruit falling to the ground and only being used in food processinng is minimized. Overall it's a net gain for poor farmers and fruit pickers in Africa and consumers benefit from a greater availability mangos. These techniques are very common in developed countries though.
anoonmoose 6y ago
Salaries for fruit pickers didn't go up because demand for fruit pickers didn't go up. The farmers knew that they were screwed no matter what they did- if they paid the pickers more and tried to pass the costs on, they wouldn't be able to sell the fruit, and if they paid the pickers more but ate the cost, they wouldn't actually net a profit. So they were going to lose money no matter what, and did it in the least-impact way possible (let the fruit rot).
- sigstoat 6y ago
  > So they were going to lose money no matter what, and did it in the least-impact way possible (let the fruit rot). and at least that option might help fertilize their fields for next season.
jeffbee 6y ago
So, why didn't the growers offer better wages to get their fruit picked? Were they ambivalent because of insurance? Or perhaps they thought raising wages was futile? Some other reason?
- gruez 6y ago
  price elasticity[1] might be an issue. Fruit picking is seasonal work, so even if the wage were attractive you'll have a tough time finding people willing to quit their current job just so they earn slightly more picking fruits. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_elasticity_of_supply https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_elasticity_of_supply
asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
To a first approximation: the value of the labor is a ceiling on how much you can be paid to do it. The availability of laborers determines the floor of the price of labor.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
mschuster91 6y ago
> Last season in my country fruits were rotting in the fields cause nobody was there to pick them up. Did farmers increase salaries in order to get more fruit pickers? No. Probably because raising the wages would cost them more than the loss of the harvest since the price per tonne of fruit was already decided by long term contracts and there were no financial penalties for spoilage / mis-harvests in these contracts. Ever since food became a global commodity, the conditions in food manufacturing became a ruthless race to the bottom - with the worst offender being meatpacking. The John Oliver segment last weekend was horrifying to watch, even from an European viewpoint (where we also have a history of exploitation and animal cruelty, but nowhere even close to that).
mcv 6y ago
I think pay is largely a matter of power. Even bad managers get paid well. CEOs that drive their company to bankruptcy often still get massive bonuses on the way out. There are lots of people who want to do that job, and the people doing it aren't always good at it, yet still get paid a ton. The worst paid are always the most powerless. Of course having rare skills that are in high demand also gives you power, but it's one of many kinds of power that can give you more control over your own salary.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
randomdata 6y ago
> This isn't even the case. Last season in my country fruits were rotting in the fields cause nobody was there to pick them up. It is the case, but leaves some assumptions on the table. Namely that you understand that price exists to be a deterrent, and when price rises too high you will decide that you don't need something anymore. The fruits rotted in the fields because they weren't worth picking. There was no need to pay anyone to do a job that wasn't deemed worthwhile to do in the first place.
- Veen 6y ago
  > The fruits rotted in the fields because they weren't worth picking. That may be true, but why weren't they worth picking? In agriculture, large buyers often enforce artificially low prices (monopsony). Even if farmers were willing to pay pickers more, there's no point if the buyers refuse to pay a fair price that accounts for increased wages.
  - randomdata 6y ago
    > but why weren't they worth picking? The exact same reason. As the price rises in the grocery store, you and I stop buying those fruits. When we stop buying them, there is no need to produce even more of what is already not being purchased.
wilsonrocks 6y ago
> This isn't even the case. Last season in my country fruits were rotting in the fields cause nobody was there to pick them up. Did farmers increase salaries in order to get more fruit pickers? No. Sad that this is one of the plot points of The Grapes Of Wrath and is still happening today.

MattGaiser 6y ago

> This isn't even the case. Last season in my country fruits were rotting in the fields cause nobody was there to pick them up. Did farmers increase salaries in order to get more fruit pickers? No. Is the fruit worth picking if salaries need to be increased to get workers? In a lot of cases the answer is no. A lot of work only makes sense at a particular salary. If market salaries are above that, the work just isn't done.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Retric 6y ago
People can pick a lot of fruit per hour. You would need something like 1 cent apples for that to be an issue. At that point it’s not a question of making money, but minimizing losses.
- konjin 6y ago
  Yet there are automated apple pickers. There is no money in agriculture. The only reason why most farms aren't bankrupt is because of subsidies.
  - Retric 6y ago
    In a competitive market long term subsides don’t actually benefit the industry’s profit margins. Suppose we subsidize toilet paper, suddenly prices drop and people might start using toilet paper for random other stuff if it’s cheap. However, the industry would simply expand until things stayed about the same. Where farm subsides play a role is dampening the boom bust cycle.
    - wing-_-nuts 6y ago
      There's also a very big national security concern. Each country should be able to grow enough food to support it's people. If it can't, it literally faces the threat of starvation in the event of war or natural disaster.
  - estsauver 6y ago
    That's just not true. It's about 15% of net incomes currently, but has hovered around 25% of net (in the US): https://www.agriculture.com/news/business/us-heads-for-highest-farm-income-in-seven-years#:~:text=The%20USDA%20revised%20its%20estimate,livestock%20revenue%20and%20direct%20payments https://www.agriculture.com/news/business/us-heads-for-highe....
    - konjin 6y ago
      It can be 1% and still be what keeps the majority of farms from going under. 15% is absolutely "I will go bankrupt if I don't have this" territory.
      - Retric 6y ago
        If you drop that in one year sure, but remove all subsidies globally over even 10 years and the market would adjust.
        konjin 6y ago
        By having firms go bankrupt.
mcv 6y ago
Fruit picking is a very small part of the cost. Doubling the pay of the pickers wouldn't double the price of the fruit in the stores. Most likely, they'd cost about 10 cents extra or something. Easily worth it. Whenever the milk price is low, we get farmer's protests that they don't get enough for their milk. Turns out they get 9 cents per liter for which I pay more than a euro. You could double their pay, include it in the price, and I wouldn't care.
- anm89 6y ago
  You say that and yet they opted to shut down production as opposed to raising wages. That seems to be a better indicator of the underlying reality than your opinion.
  - mcv 6y ago
    I think part of the consideration is that if they pay fruit pickers more now, they fear they may have to pay them more in the future as well. It's also possible they simply refuse to pay fruit pickers more because they strongly believe fruit pickers don't deserve better pay. There are often a lot more factors at play in these sort of things. Some rational, some maybe not so much.
    - merpnderp 6y ago
      So they set a whole season's profits on fire to stick it to seasonal workers? That seems so irrational as to require at least a smidgen of evidence to take seriously.
      - notional 6y ago
        Ever hear about NYC landlords who leave ground level properties vacant for years because they'd rather lock in a high paying tenant. Same principal.
      - ryandrake 6y ago
        “The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country.”
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
>A lot of work only makes sense at a particular salary. If market salaries are above that, the work just isn't done. All sorts of narrow specialized skill jobs (e.g. rebuilding electric motors) have gone this way in the west.
imtringued 6y ago
Actually, in developing countries there is a lot of money to be made by optimizing fruit picking and pruning afterwards. Mango farms are a pretty good example. Old farmers have grown their trees very tall and let the fruit grow as big as possible. It is very difficult for pickers to harvest the fruit. If you train the pickers to prune the trees and ensure a consistent size you can often plant more trees, have each tree bear more but smaller fruit with superior yield. Because of the decreased height fruit pickers can harvest more fruit per shift and the risk of fruit falling to the ground and only being used in food processinng is minimized. Overall it's a net gain for poor farmers and fruit pickers in Africa and consumers benefit from a greater availability mangos. These techniques are very common in developed countries though.

anoonmoose 6y ago

Salaries for fruit pickers didn't go up because demand for fruit pickers didn't go up. The farmers knew that they were screwed no matter what they did- if they paid the pickers more and tried to pass the costs on, they wouldn't be able to sell the fruit, and if they paid the pickers more but ate the cost, they wouldn't actually net a profit. So they were going to lose money no matter what, and did it in the least-impact way possible (let the fruit rot).

sigstoat 6y ago
> So they were going to lose money no matter what, and did it in the least-impact way possible (let the fruit rot). and at least that option might help fertilize their fields for next season.

jeffbee 6y ago

So, why didn't the growers offer better wages to get their fruit picked? Were they ambivalent because of insurance? Or perhaps they thought raising wages was futile? Some other reason?

gruez 6y ago
price elasticity[1] might be an issue. Fruit picking is seasonal work, so even if the wage were attractive you'll have a tough time finding people willing to quit their current job just so they earn slightly more picking fruits. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_elasticity_of_supply https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_elasticity_of_supply

asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago

To a first approximation: the value of the labor is a ceiling on how much you can be paid to do it. The availability of laborers determines the floor of the price of labor.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

mschuster91 6y ago

> Last season in my country fruits were rotting in the fields cause nobody was there to pick them up. Did farmers increase salaries in order to get more fruit pickers? No. Probably because raising the wages would cost them more than the loss of the harvest since the price per tonne of fruit was already decided by long term contracts and there were no financial penalties for spoilage / mis-harvests in these contracts. Ever since food became a global commodity, the conditions in food manufacturing became a ruthless race to the bottom - with the worst offender being meatpacking. The John Oliver segment last weekend was horrifying to watch, even from an European viewpoint (where we also have a history of exploitation and animal cruelty, but nowhere even close to that).

mcv 6y ago

I think pay is largely a matter of power. Even bad managers get paid well. CEOs that drive their company to bankruptcy often still get massive bonuses on the way out. There are lots of people who want to do that job, and the people doing it aren't always good at it, yet still get paid a ton. The worst paid are always the most powerless. Of course having rare skills that are in high demand also gives you power, but it's one of many kinds of power that can give you more control over your own salary.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

randomdata 6y ago

> This isn't even the case. Last season in my country fruits were rotting in the fields cause nobody was there to pick them up. It is the case, but leaves some assumptions on the table. Namely that you understand that price exists to be a deterrent, and when price rises too high you will decide that you don't need something anymore. The fruits rotted in the fields because they weren't worth picking. There was no need to pay anyone to do a job that wasn't deemed worthwhile to do in the first place.

Veen 6y ago
> The fruits rotted in the fields because they weren't worth picking. That may be true, but why weren't they worth picking? In agriculture, large buyers often enforce artificially low prices (monopsony). Even if farmers were willing to pay pickers more, there's no point if the buyers refuse to pay a fair price that accounts for increased wages.
- randomdata 6y ago
  > but why weren't they worth picking? The exact same reason. As the price rises in the grocery store, you and I stop buying those fruits. When we stop buying them, there is no need to produce even more of what is already not being purchased.

wilsonrocks 6y ago