Aah yes, the Zebra shows his stripes!
Someday, Airman Doors, perhaps you will learn that there are more forms of humor besides flatulence and Adam Sandler.
This too is a joke, right? What you’re really saying is that you think Airman has a refined and nuanced sense of humor? 
Absolutely correct. In fact, there are two kinds of humor. Laughing at, and laughing with.
Guess which kind your posts fall into?
For those opposed to illegal immigration from Mexico I suggest lobbying your elected officials to eliminate the billions in tax dollars in agricultural subsidies to America’s corporate farming industries.
I’m sure that you can find lots of people who would be willing to pick fruit at $10/hr. The real question is do you want to pay the cost of fruit that was that exensive to harvest?
Buh-buh-buh-bingo. But we have a hard crowd to please with a tenuous grasp on economics…
Well, how much of an increase in price are we talking about?
What percentage of the price of, say, a strawberry is due to unskilled farm labor? It certainly isn’t all the cost, so there’s no way that doubling the wages of the laborers would double the price of the fruit. Perhaps GaWd has a greater then tenuous grasp of economics and can give us a breakdown on the expenses (unskilled labor, skilled labor, chemicals, equipment depreciation, building depreciation, shipping costs, interest or rent paid on the farmland, profit for the farmer, retail markup, etc.) behind some random variety of fruit?
Sorry, though my understanding of economics is not at issue, I haven’t run across any studies of thje market price difference between famrs that use illegal labor and those who use legal labor. You’re just not going to find it.
Let’s just say that a company not paying unemployment insurance, employment taxes, overtime, and legal above minimum wage(if not labor union rates), would cause a many-hundred percent increase in the price of whatever crop we are discussing. The advantages to the company using illegal labor are immense.
Sam
From here:
“A 1996 study by an Iowa State agricultural economist concluded that ‘The removal of illegal workers from the seasonal agricultural workforce would increase the summer-fall supermarket prices of fresh fruits and vegetables by about 6 percent in the short run and 3 percent in the intermediate term.’”
Perhaps the above post will encourage you to re-evaluate some of your assumptions about the economics of illegal immigration. But, perhaps not.
That is 6% in Iowa.
You’re right. I phrased that poorly. More accurate to say that The California economy has always relied on an exploitable underclass of unskilled labor that was not in a position, either legally or economically, to complain about low wages and unsafe working conditions. As legal protections for domestic workers increased, it became necessary to find groups that were, for whatever reason, excluded from those protections to exploit. The reason that California’s economy is currently so dependent on illegal labor is that we ran out of domestic groups we could treat like shit to facilitate our high standard of living.
This all assumes that cheaper, imorted goods wouldn’t be available. If Mexican farm workers disappeared tomorrow, and labor costs really did skyrocket, I’d expect to see agricultural firms go belly up before we saw produce double or tripple in price. The jobs would migrate to where the cheap labor was if the labor can’t migrate to where the jobs are. There might be a temporary period of adjustment as international producers dealt with seasonal issues, but there is nothing unique about the US wrt agricultural conditions.
And that all assumes that any price increase due to using legal laborers (so far, the only cite that hasn’t been a total WAG has been 6%) would be greater then the shipping cost of importing fresh fruits and vegetables.
Actually, if we’re completely ignorant about what we’re talking about, I’d just as soon we not say that, eh?
You’re a fucking peabrain. You really don’t have a tenuous grasp of economics; you have no grasp of it whatsoever.
You said there would be a “several hundred percent” increase in produce prices if illegal labor were stopped. Let’s assume you meant this statement to apply only in California, and let’s assume you meant a 100% increase. Iceberg lettuce costs $1.29 a head in California (I know, because I live there). Thus, you claim that stopping illegal labor would add at least $1.29 to the cost of a head of lettuce.
For an increase of $1.29 to represent a 6% increase, a head of lettuce would have to cost $21.50. Please provide a cite where lettuce costs $21.50 a head in Iowa.
Does Hyperelastic’s last post make absolutely no sense to anyone else? Or is it just me?
I don’t disagree that there is, and has been historically, a large amount of exploitation supporting our lifestyles. However, I would argue that the trend over the last 30 years or so has been toward more exploitation overall.
I’d almost have to agree with you, but Hyperboy’s spluttering peabrained utterance makes no sense whatsoever.
We’ve already seen doublings and triplings in price due to domestic unavailability of Tomatoes in California caused by repeated storms in Florida. Where’s the imported Tomato crop to prevent that? So it is definitely possible to see prices of domestically available products double and even triple in times of low supply.
Sam