No, that’s not what open borders means.
Prove what? That increasing the cost of an apple by $0.45 usually means more than a $0.45 increase in the end price?
My statement was that it would settle closer to the $10 than the $1.50, not that it would be $10, so your assertion that $10 an apple being fantasy is an assertion against a strawman.
ETA: what is “CIW’s FFP”, google doesn’t seem to have any idea.
:rolleyes:
As am I.
But I actually like to read and actually understand someone’s argument before decaling it to be poor, and if I have a question about it, I ask that question, rather than declaring that the question is unanswerable.
The one that can produce apples at a lower cost than they can sell them at. The point is that the costs will go up, which means that the price needs to go up. If the market will not sustain the higher prices, then the product will not be on the shelves.
Exactly, so we are going to try to have higher paying jobs provided to US citizens to compete with imported fruits from lower wage countries. Who will win?
which has a robust guest worker program.
don’t know much about New Zealand’s labor policies, but if we are getting fruit from them, with shipping, then their labor is probably lower than what we are paying currently.
A huge part of that is seasonality. Try getting an apple in february. It’s probably not going to come from the US.
But, as you said, we do import quite a bit of our produce. If we could produce more of it in country, then we would have less of a trade deficit.
As is a claim that I said we would have $10 apples.
What if we put a “Picked by an American” sticker on each apple?
Only if I can automate the placing of the stickers. Otherwise, too expensive.
I’ll admit to poetic hyperbole.
The point is that Republicans they claim that the only problem with illegal immigrants is their illegality but don’t actually want to allow them to become legal. Also all of the problems that the claim would arise in allowing more legal immigrants are really problems that arise with an increase in population, but they actually want a larger population. Just not of the “wrong” kind of people.
Not exactly but close enough. I guess Buck Godot could have meant just make current illegals into legals but then we’d have the same question next year when new people overstay their visas or jump the border.
It’s more than hyperbole. Sure, some people are indeed xenophobic/racist and don’t want anyone in but plenty think some control of immigration is perfectly reasonable.
R: They’re breaking the rules, they have to go.
D: Well, let’s just get rid of the rules then there’s no problem.
R: I don’t want to get rid of the rules.
D: Racist!
The stickers will be made in China, and it will be cheaper to ship all the apples there, have poor Chinese workers put the stickers on, and then ship the apples back to the US for sale.
I know of a Nairobi shipping firm, really cheap, much less expensive than the American carriers.
So we hired a bunch of people in China and made some guy in Nairobi a few bucks, but at least we didn’t spend that money in America, on “Illegal Immigrants”! That would have hurt the economy! And America! And Americans! Especially those who were just waiting for that Apple-Sticker job they trained their lives for.
This. Some places already have walls and criminals simply tunnel under 'em, requiring additional manpower to weed out the tunnels.
There is no realistic way of making a wall which covers the entire border cost-effective and keeps people out unless Trump wants to emulate the Communists from East Berlin.
I would have taken it as increasing the legal immigration to where there is not an incentive for illegal immigration.
R: They’re breaking the rules, they have to go.
D: Well, it’s a small civil matter, how about we have them pay a fine or something, rather than cause harm to not only them, but to our own economy, in harshly persecuting someone for just trying to find a better life?
R: I don’t want to impose a fine, I want them gone!
D: What if we increase the quotas for legal immigration, then we will have less illegal immigration?
R: I don’t care about the harm that will befall them or even ourselves, I just want them gone! And how dare you call me a racist!?
Weasel word won’t help here. $5.76 (or “about $6” for people who aren’t for some reason trying to write larger numbers) is closer to $10 than it is to $1.50. And $5.76 up from $1 is still unjustifiable fantasy. And if you meant “any number closer to $10 than $1.50”, e.g. $1.51, then the assertion is meaningless (and your writing $10 in the first place even more questionable.)
Whatever the number is, it doesn’t follow that intermediaries or retailers will hold mark-ups the same or even similar. So if you think it will, let’s see some evidence and some math. The typical liberal trope is that increasing farm labor pay won’t affect our in-store prices much, and that’s why we should pay farmworkers more.
Nor, apparently, do you. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ Fair Food Program is the very first result when punching
CIW’s FFP
into Google. Ya know, those lefties who were in the news for getting McDonald’s (not Wendy’s! Wendy’s is on the CIW’s naughty list last I heard) and Walmart to pay a nickel more per 'mater? Sorry no, I see it was a penny more per pound. So not a 10x increase, more like a 60% increase in piece rate.
But pick another example if you prefer. I’m sure you have several.
No weasel word at all. Maybe you need to pay attention to the poster that I was responding to to understand the context of my comments.
He specifically advocated for a $100 an hour wage. Yes, at that wage, it’s gonna be closer to $10.
Also, all the numbers here are made up. a $10 apple is a fantasy, sure, but apples don’t cost 1 each now (at least not the standard ones at the grocery store, I'm sure you can find some at whole foods for that or more), and it doesn't cost .05 in labor to pick each one.
The only point I was making was to dispel the myth that many conservatives operate under when they talk about increasing the costs of something at the lowest level that that cost will stay static up the chain. That a $0.45 increase in the cost of picking an apple translates into a $0.45 increase in price at the market. This is not true, and there are many multipliers involved. Exactly what it settles out at is complicated and hard to predict, which is why I did not attempt to make such a prediction, but that it will be greater than the increase in the base cost is a given.
Any other point you think that I am trying to make or weasel about is entirely a product of your motivated imagination.
At magellan01’s proposed $100 an hour wage, given the production that many US citizens seem to think is reasonable, yeah, I do think that an apple is going to go up to well above $5, probably pretty close to $10. If you think that a $100 an hour wage is unreasonable, take that up with the magellan01. I am just saying what would happen if we followed his proposal, not saying what would happen due to general labor shortages. For that, there will be no offers of $100 an hour, instead, the farmers will just allow the food to rot in the fields.
Once again, you are criticizing things that I said in response to someone else’s absurd hypothetical, but you are treating what I said out of context, as if it stands on its own. Please note the context that a post is in before replying next time.
So, your claim is that when costs go up, farmers, intermediaries and retailers just eat that increased costs out of the profits without raising the price? Do they keep doing that even when profit goes to 0? What about when they start getting into taking a loss?
Farmers will need to pay more for labor, which means that they either charge more for produce, or they go bankrupt. Intermediaries that have to pay more to procure produce will charge more to sell it to wholesalers or consumers. Retailers that pay more to stock their shelves will need to charge more to their clients.
Now, what will prevent the consumer from feeling the full effect of the price increase is imports. We will import the food from other countries that have lower labor costs than we do. It will still cost more than producing it here with our own willing migrant workforce, and it will mean that american farmers cannot harvest their crops for a competitive price, and it rots away while the farmer fills out bankruptcy paperwork. So, win?
This is such basic economics, it is like you are asking me for evidence about water, and math as to how wet it is.
Do you have any evidence that businesses in the food supply chain will take a cut in profits, or even accept a loss, in order to prevent prices from rising?
I’ve not heard that “typical liberal trope” before. I mean, I’m sure that there is some blogger out there somewhere that has said something to that effect, but if you call it a “typical liberal trope”, then it should have a pretty widespread following.
I have heard people on the right claiming that we don’t need migrant labor, and that we can pay people $100 an hour to pick fruit and that will not have any noticeable effect on the costs for consumers, which is the notion that I am arguing against here, and the notion that you are working very hard to try to defend.
What made that apparent? The fact that I asked what it was? Very clever deduction on your part.
Odd, I must have left off that last “P” when I highlighted and searched, as it came up with something completely different. My bad on that.
However, no, I had not heard of it, so, what do you think that those few letters prove? You just put them out there expecting me to google and research to see what your point and evidence is? That’s a pretty lazy way of trying to make a point, don’t you think?
How about you actually make some sort of claim, rather than “See CIW’s FFP.”
No, I don’t know those lefties. Sounds like you have quite the animosity towards them though.
Did they go to making $100 an hour? If so, then you have made a point. If not, then you have failed to even come close to addressing anything that I’ve said.
How much did the pay increase to an individual worker? What is the current rate for a worker under FFP, and what is the rate for a worker that is not? What percentage of each type of produce or food sold in the US come under that program?
Unless you are talking about greater than an order of magnitude increase in the labor cost, with 100% of the produce available to consumers coming from that program, then your “cite” is worthless as a counter to my point as to the consequences if we follow the “thought experiment” proposed by magellan01.
I’ve not picked any examples, just refuted the examples that others have posted here. Not sure why I should be the one to pick the next thing that you will choose to misunderstand and try to relate to something that it’s not even remotely related to. That’s all on you.
How about costs of Unicorn Farts vs Rainbow Tears? That’s about as relevant as what you have offered so far.
Nobody needs to take a cut in profits. If the supermarket previously had a 50% markup for that $1.05 apple, they can sell the more expensively-picked apples at $1.50 at a 30% markup without any loss in profit per apple, which remains $0.35. A decrease in profit margin does not require a decrease in profit. There is no requirement for multipliers here. Especially not hundreds of percents multipliers, just because a minor component in the final cost received a hundreds of percents multiplier. A more expensively-picked apple does not cost more to transport, warehouse, distribute, shelve, etc.
When my costs go up, I certainly don’t keep the markup the same. No sane business does this. I may pass along these costs directly (and decrease my markup) or eat some of them (decreasing it further) or increase prices more than the costs increased (decreasing it less but increasing my profit per unit). But I’m not going to just apply a flat markup regardless of costs.
Supermarket profit margins run around 1 to 2 percent, not 50%. There’ no room as you suggest.
You are only talking about the last part in the chain at this point, the supermarket. The supermarket didn’t start with a 50% markup. They probably started with a 10% or less markup, so they were previously getting $0.10 or so per apple. Not a whole lot of profit to give up.
In your example, you have the cost to the supermarket going from $0.70 to $1.15 to procure the apple. Not sure where you get these numbers, but I assume it to be based on the inaccurate idea that it will cost the grocery store $0.45 more per apple if the cost of labor to pick an apple increases by $0.45. If that were to be the case, then the price of an apple to buy at the store would have been around $0.77, and that would increase to $1.26, if the store were to maintain a 10% (much more realistic scenario) markup. Only in the case where they are starting with absurdly high markups are they able to drop them as much as you suggest they should. If, rather than a markup, they maintained the profit margin of $0.07, they would still go from $0.77 to $1.22 per apple, not a huge difference in the final outcome of the price from maintaining a markup.
The total profit margin of a grocery store is usually only a couple of percent. They make their money on volume. Volume that will be reduced with higher prices. If prices get too high, then they can’t sell them and maintain a profit at all. Produce does seem to be very price elastic.
And all that is assuming that the store is getting them directly from the farmer and there are no middlemen. If you have middlemen, then they will too want some sort of markup to incentivize them to deliver apples.
However, in getting to the supermarket, it had to pass through at least one, and probably several vendors who each want a cut of the profits. Now, one reason why it is more common for a vendor to price things based on a percentage, rather than on marginal profit, is because their operations all depend on a percentage markup, rather than marginal. Their loss and waste and shrinkage are all based on the idea that they will have a certain percentage profit to cover it. If any sort of financing is involved (and in nearly any business, some sort of financing is involved), then the finance charges apply to that higher price, which again, increases your costs more than just the marginal increase in base cost.
If a bushel of apples used to cost me $1, and now it costs me $2, just increasing the price I turn it over to my customers by $1 is not going to cover the actual increased financing of the costs of procurement and waste. Now, the final number will end up being somewhere between the original percentage markup and the marginal profit, but my entire point is that it will be greater than just the increase in base cost.
Put that through a few middlemen, and you see that that marginal increase gets higher with each one. By the time a product gets to the end consumer, the increase in the price will be much more than the increase in the base cost.
Profit =/= markup.
Sure, their markup is 12 percent. Still not 50%.
Sure. Cite?
It really doesn’t matter if it’s 12% because the man said we’re using made-up numbers. I picked 50% to make the math easy. You can do the same math with 50%, 12%, 1000%, or 0.01%. If anyone doesn’t know how, just holler and I’ll hold your hand through it. It doesn’t change the point that everyone – the farmer, the trucker, the distributor the retailer – can make the same profit per apple even if the price for picking labor goes up. It costs our co-op or the buyer the same to ship Galas as it does to ship Honeycrisps (not that we’re ever shipping apples AFAIK). Cold storage space (we do use that for apples) costs the same. The distributor cares about weight, volume, distance, special handling, and that there are buyers. Lower markup does not mean lower profit.