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I did all those jobs before I was 18 and I did farm labor too all for less than minimum wage and it's simply exploitation. These jobs are open because they pay
by screwturner68 3y ago
I did all those jobs before I was 18 and I did farm labor too all for less than minimum wage and it's simply exploitation. These jobs are open because they pay shit, they are dangerous and they work you like a rented mule. The solution is simple and always ignored, raise the wages and if you keep raising them people will flock to the job. The fact of the matter is paying $7.50/h (less because they are minors) for dangerous work where you have a foreman screaming at you 8-12 hours a day is just not worth the effort -adults figured it out, so now the businesses are trying to exploit children.
And these aren't good jobs they are laborers at best, no skill required, you are a human mule.
- giantg2 3y ago"The solution is simple and always ignored, raise the wages and if you keep raising them people will flock to the job." I generally agree, but it's not so simple to do. Perhaps the easiest thing to do is remove the minimum wage exemptions from things like servers and farm workers, not just for kids but for adults too. Not a lot of appetite to effectively raise food prices though.
- screwturner68 3y agoRasing wages might add pennies to your food bill, honestly do you know how much food a worker can pick in an hour let alone a day? A lot aren't even paid by the hour they are paid by the ton/bushel. Labor is cheap that's why they still use people and haven't replaced them with machines.
- giantg2 3y agoDepends on the food. Yeah, being paid 1-2 cents per pound of tomatoes picked won't raise the price much if you make it 10-20 cents even. But it can raise the price of other things like dairy where it's an hourly rate and usually smaller farms. If it's such a small increase, then why hasn't it been raised/changed? Why do we still subsidize a lot of farm stuff too?
- Ekaros 3y agoFrom local price of 56 cents per litre of milk to the farm. Even if we doubled that it wouldn't still be that expensive for consumer. And that would cover doubling of the wages. As that price already includes all other costs. Labour isn't actually that big of an part.
- giantg2 3y agoMost consumers think milk is expensive at $3-4/gal. Maybe it's different where you're at, but in the US it's a race to the bottom. Much of the agriculture relies on subsidies because we can't compete on price when doing global exports.
- screwturner68 3y agoFarming is the only business in the US that is propped up whether they grow crops or not. We pay these millionaires all sorts of money to grow crops nobody wants and we also pay then not to grow crops nobody wants. The fact of the matter is if we didn't states like Iowa and Nebraska would simply close down, they have no industry and no reason for people to live there but since they have equal representation in the congress they get billions just to exist. We could close down several Midwestern states and give them to Monsanto and we'd all be better off...except the millionaire farmer that didn't get a subsidy.