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For that matter, what if farmers had to pay a livable wage? Berry-picking is especially rife with social dumping. It is a hot topic here in Scandinavia, becaus

For that matter, what if farmers had to pay a livable wage? Berry-picking is especially rife with social dumping. It is a hot topic here in Scandinavia, because every season farmer will cry “no one wants to work!”, and then comes testimonies of indentured servitude at its worth, and sweat-shops at its best. Many farmers here “import” Asian rice farmers to pick berries these days.

gjsman-1000 3y ago
Sounds great until you realize how razor-thin the margins on farming are; and that all it takes is one bad year.
- xracy 3y ago
  It's wild to me that people see problems like this, and think to themselves "Yeah, it's okay that we overwork people for no money, but there's no other way to turn a profit for this, so this just has to be the way the world works." This is what governments are for. If the system doesn't pay people a livable wage to do the work to support our existence (food), then clearly we need to change the system to not be based on "maximizing profits". But instead you justify it by saying the margins are "razor-thin", and farmers have to take advantage of people if they want to survive. And that justifies this terrible behavior. Move who you're blaming and call them to action, instead of just accepting terrible conditions for workers. Farmers are responding to incentives, gov'ts have built subsidies for farmwork in the past, because food has to be cheap for people to live.
  - gjsman-1000 3y ago
    I challenge you to walk up to the nearest farmer, look at their (edit for clarity: accounting) books; and not realize that what you are asking, is just as impossible as asking 3 engineers to write a competitor to Windows. I know enough about their lives to know that your armchair quarterbacking is an absurdity.
    - jiggawatts 3y ago
      I guess that settles it then: modern slavery is a-okay.
      - gjsman-1000 3y ago
        Reminder that the median income for the US is $31K per year. If they earned only $24K per year, they are doing better than 25% of earners. Welcome to America. Where SV folk would scream slavery if they lived as a quarter of the nation does.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
        xracy 3y ago
        oh, well, I guess since everyone is doing it, that makes it okay, and we can't imagine a better world. Let's call it a day, accept our lot in life, and move forward. I hate the sentiment that because things are bad somewhere they should be bad elsewhere. Every time I bring up benefits that I have that others don't they start by saying "you shouldn't have those" instead of saying "I should have those too." It's like we're playing a weird game of the prisoner's dilemma, but there's not actually any benefit for the person defecting.
        seanp2k2 3y ago
        Just for some perspective, the low-income limit for a single person in SF, Marin, and San Mateo counties is $104,400 for 2023, and not much lower ($96k) for Santa Clara county where much of “SV” exists. https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/low-income-median-levels-18164328.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/low-income-media...
        b112 3y ago
        There really should be a very fine tuned 'wage vs cost of living' number, which takes effort to look at grocery cost, along with housing cost, including buying a house, electricity, basically all basics. Maybe some blended rate, where you look at "buying housing for a family of 4 + rented apartment for a bachelor" and blend, to get living costs. When I did research compared to where I live, I discovered a person makes more living near Ottawa, ON, making $70k USD/year, than someone making $250k/yr US in .. say, Palo Alto. This was of course primarily due to housing costs, although this was in 2020. Things have changed dramatically in most of Canada (re: housing) in the last 3+ years. Of course yes, most certainly, if you buy + pay off a $3M USD house/land vs a $300k USD house, you have more money to retire on. You could theoretically move to a lower cost area, and retire with style. Yet who wants to (potentially) leave their kids who might settle in the region too, and additionally, all their friends, associates, etc, etc. Any yet buying doesn't take into account "What if a person just rents for their entire life", which can happen. Nor does it take into account things such as property tax, and other associated housing costs (water tax, etc). To give an idea of the massive cost differences, just the property tax on a typical $3M Palo Alto home is 4x my mortgage on my $250k house. My mortgage is $800 USD per month. Palo Alto monthly property tax on $3M home? A little over $3000/month. Paying 4x as much just in property tax, compared to my mortgage? Well, that money is gone, gone, gone in terms of 'life savings', and is pure additional cost. For the record, my property tax is about $120USD/month. Let's call it 25x more for Palo Alto property tax. Again, there have been dramatic changes in Canadian housing pricing in the last 3 years. There are also differences in how peoples are taxed. For example, I probably pay more federal and provincial income tax, and a little less property tax, with money tricking down from those levels to the municipal level. Yet, I also get free health care (quality debates and issues not relevant, just a point), $10/day state funded day care, and pharmacare coming soon. So it's really hard to equate across national borders in terms of living costs, but I guess my point is living costs can be so dramatically different. I suspect that making $100k in Palo Alto makes a person much poorer than someone making $25k in rural Arizona.
  - badpun 3y ago
    US is the largest food exporter in the world. It would make sense to start with no longer subsidising exports, and putting more subsidies into food that is actually consumed in the country. This would kill the export part of the industry (whose main beneficiaries are rich people owning large farms), while increasing wages of farm workers. Also, the US's Midwest has one of the best lands in the world for farming, there's zero need to farm in the deserts from the country's (not the rich farm owners') perspective.
  - CM30 3y ago
    Exactly this. If your company cannot afford to stay open if it hires a certain number of staff, then it simply cannot afford to have that many staff and should hire less (and find a way to do that work with tech or what not instead). If it can't work with less staff and isn't practical to run, then the business itself isn't viable and should probably close its doors. That's true of everything from banks to shops to restaurants to tech companies and farms; if they're not viable businesses, then either the proprietor pays to keep them open out of their own pocket, or they shut down and make room for companies that are viable. And yeah, if society values the work enough but it isn't profitable to do, then the answer is that the government or some other organisation funds it, not that people get exploited or rules get relaxed to make it 'viable'.
  - scotty79 3y ago
    The problem is that to provide farmers with livable wage the people would need to pay a lot more for food, so they would need to have money to pay for food. I hope that with universal basic income we will be able to bring back market forces to food production instead of relying to artificial incentives for the farmers.
- magicalhippo 3y ago
  One of the larger unions here in Norway published an article with some calculations detailing how much a beer should cost in a pub or bar in Oslo. Their point was that if it was significantly cheaper than their number, the owners most likely didn't pay minimum wages or some similar shenanigans was going on. I've often since thought other groups, like farmers, should do something similar. I've got no clue how much a small basket of strawberries should cost for the farmer to make a decent living and the pickers to get a decent salary. Same with most other things I buy in the grocery store.
- nitwit005 3y ago
  You could use this argument to justify almost anything. We need slaves because of how thin the margins are! The price point is determined by the costs involved. If everyone had to pay employees decently, the price would adjust.
regpertom 3y ago
Here’s one I remember from the permaculture or market garden ‘scene’ couple years back: There was a relationship where some would teach and provide food and accom and others would learn and work for no or little pay. Assume no one was forced into such arrangement. Then they’d go off later with skills and start their own farm. Yeah? Later, govt got involved and enforced minimum wage standards. That previous relationship was no longer viable. The students could not return enough income for minimum wage. So, instead, those positions changed and the students had to pay instead, and not a small amount either because now there govt involvement in your training institution etc. So did the situation get better? I feel as though no, because now, to ‘get into it’, you need a thousand dollars or whatever, where as before you just had to be keen and show up.
- hughesjj 3y ago
  Wat? Are you arguing for unpaid/reverse paid internships here? Look, people need to eat. There will always be a need for farmers. We're literally suffering from success. As far back as the 30s we were paying farmers to dump or destroy their produce to prevent racing to the bottom. The supreme court declared that was unconstitutional so they ended up just doing a ton of subsidies instead. We don't want farming to be maximally price efficient. A surplus of food is a good thing, since crops sometimes fail or disaster strikes. Farming mega Corp domination is a fairly new thing and thanks to this guy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Butz https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Butz
  - badpun 3y ago
    > Look, people need to eat. Usually, on those permaculture "internships", you get a roof over your head and food to eat. You don't get any money on top of that, the assumption is that you're being paid in skill acquisition. It's a fair deal for many people.

gjsman-1000 3y ago

Sounds great until you realize how razor-thin the margins on farming are; and that all it takes is one bad year.

xracy 3y ago
It's wild to me that people see problems like this, and think to themselves "Yeah, it's okay that we overwork people for no money, but there's no other way to turn a profit for this, so this just has to be the way the world works." This is what governments are for. If the system doesn't pay people a livable wage to do the work to support our existence (food), then clearly we need to change the system to not be based on "maximizing profits". But instead you justify it by saying the margins are "razor-thin", and farmers have to take advantage of people if they want to survive. And that justifies this terrible behavior. Move who you're blaming and call them to action, instead of just accepting terrible conditions for workers. Farmers are responding to incentives, gov'ts have built subsidies for farmwork in the past, because food has to be cheap for people to live.
- gjsman-1000 3y ago
  I challenge you to walk up to the nearest farmer, look at their (edit for clarity: accounting) books; and not realize that what you are asking, is just as impossible as asking 3 engineers to write a competitor to Windows. I know enough about their lives to know that your armchair quarterbacking is an absurdity.
  - jiggawatts 3y ago
    I guess that settles it then: modern slavery is a-okay.
    - gjsman-1000 3y ago
      Reminder that the median income for the US is $31K per year. If they earned only $24K per year, they are doing better than 25% of earners. Welcome to America. Where SV folk would scream slavery if they lived as a quarter of the nation does.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - xracy 3y ago
        oh, well, I guess since everyone is doing it, that makes it okay, and we can't imagine a better world. Let's call it a day, accept our lot in life, and move forward. I hate the sentiment that because things are bad somewhere they should be bad elsewhere. Every time I bring up benefits that I have that others don't they start by saying "you shouldn't have those" instead of saying "I should have those too." It's like we're playing a weird game of the prisoner's dilemma, but there's not actually any benefit for the person defecting.
      - seanp2k2 3y ago
        Just for some perspective, the low-income limit for a single person in SF, Marin, and San Mateo counties is $104,400 for 2023, and not much lower ($96k) for Santa Clara county where much of “SV” exists. https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/low-income-median-levels-18164328.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/low-income-media...
        b112 3y ago
        There really should be a very fine tuned 'wage vs cost of living' number, which takes effort to look at grocery cost, along with housing cost, including buying a house, electricity, basically all basics. Maybe some blended rate, where you look at "buying housing for a family of 4 + rented apartment for a bachelor" and blend, to get living costs. When I did research compared to where I live, I discovered a person makes more living near Ottawa, ON, making $70k USD/year, than someone making $250k/yr US in .. say, Palo Alto. This was of course primarily due to housing costs, although this was in 2020. Things have changed dramatically in most of Canada (re: housing) in the last 3+ years. Of course yes, most certainly, if you buy + pay off a $3M USD house/land vs a $300k USD house, you have more money to retire on. You could theoretically move to a lower cost area, and retire with style. Yet who wants to (potentially) leave their kids who might settle in the region too, and additionally, all their friends, associates, etc, etc. Any yet buying doesn't take into account "What if a person just rents for their entire life", which can happen. Nor does it take into account things such as property tax, and other associated housing costs (water tax, etc). To give an idea of the massive cost differences, just the property tax on a typical $3M Palo Alto home is 4x my mortgage on my $250k house. My mortgage is $800 USD per month. Palo Alto monthly property tax on $3M home? A little over $3000/month. Paying 4x as much just in property tax, compared to my mortgage? Well, that money is gone, gone, gone in terms of 'life savings', and is pure additional cost. For the record, my property tax is about $120USD/month. Let's call it 25x more for Palo Alto property tax. Again, there have been dramatic changes in Canadian housing pricing in the last 3 years. There are also differences in how peoples are taxed. For example, I probably pay more federal and provincial income tax, and a little less property tax, with money tricking down from those levels to the municipal level. Yet, I also get free health care (quality debates and issues not relevant, just a point), $10/day state funded day care, and pharmacare coming soon. So it's really hard to equate across national borders in terms of living costs, but I guess my point is living costs can be so dramatically different. I suspect that making $100k in Palo Alto makes a person much poorer than someone making $25k in rural Arizona.
- badpun 3y ago
  US is the largest food exporter in the world. It would make sense to start with no longer subsidising exports, and putting more subsidies into food that is actually consumed in the country. This would kill the export part of the industry (whose main beneficiaries are rich people owning large farms), while increasing wages of farm workers. Also, the US's Midwest has one of the best lands in the world for farming, there's zero need to farm in the deserts from the country's (not the rich farm owners') perspective.
- CM30 3y ago
  Exactly this. If your company cannot afford to stay open if it hires a certain number of staff, then it simply cannot afford to have that many staff and should hire less (and find a way to do that work with tech or what not instead). If it can't work with less staff and isn't practical to run, then the business itself isn't viable and should probably close its doors. That's true of everything from banks to shops to restaurants to tech companies and farms; if they're not viable businesses, then either the proprietor pays to keep them open out of their own pocket, or they shut down and make room for companies that are viable. And yeah, if society values the work enough but it isn't profitable to do, then the answer is that the government or some other organisation funds it, not that people get exploited or rules get relaxed to make it 'viable'.
- scotty79 3y ago
  The problem is that to provide farmers with livable wage the people would need to pay a lot more for food, so they would need to have money to pay for food. I hope that with universal basic income we will be able to bring back market forces to food production instead of relying to artificial incentives for the farmers.
magicalhippo 3y ago
One of the larger unions here in Norway published an article with some calculations detailing how much a beer should cost in a pub or bar in Oslo. Their point was that if it was significantly cheaper than their number, the owners most likely didn't pay minimum wages or some similar shenanigans was going on. I've often since thought other groups, like farmers, should do something similar. I've got no clue how much a small basket of strawberries should cost for the farmer to make a decent living and the pickers to get a decent salary. Same with most other things I buy in the grocery store.
nitwit005 3y ago
You could use this argument to justify almost anything. We need slaves because of how thin the margins are! The price point is determined by the costs involved. If everyone had to pay employees decently, the price would adjust.

regpertom 3y ago

Here’s one I remember from the permaculture or market garden ‘scene’ couple years back: There was a relationship where some would teach and provide food and accom and others would learn and work for no or little pay. Assume no one was forced into such arrangement. Then they’d go off later with skills and start their own farm. Yeah? Later, govt got involved and enforced minimum wage standards. That previous relationship was no longer viable. The students could not return enough income for minimum wage. So, instead, those positions changed and the students had to pay instead, and not a small amount either because now there govt involvement in your training institution etc. So did the situation get better? I feel as though no, because now, to ‘get into it’, you need a thousand dollars or whatever, where as before you just had to be keen and show up.

hughesjj 3y ago
Wat? Are you arguing for unpaid/reverse paid internships here? Look, people need to eat. There will always be a need for farmers. We're literally suffering from success. As far back as the 30s we were paying farmers to dump or destroy their produce to prevent racing to the bottom. The supreme court declared that was unconstitutional so they ended up just doing a ton of subsidies instead. We don't want farming to be maximally price efficient. A surplus of food is a good thing, since crops sometimes fail or disaster strikes. Farming mega Corp domination is a fairly new thing and thanks to this guy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Butz https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Butz
- badpun 3y ago
  > Look, people need to eat. Usually, on those permaculture "internships", you get a roof over your head and food to eat. You don't get any money on top of that, the assumption is that you're being paid in skill acquisition. It's a fair deal for many people.