FWIW, since I was curious: Is the Honeycrisp Apple Engineered to Fail? | WIRED
Per random magazine article, low-grade apples typically wholesale for $100 per bin (800-1000 lb). Hcrisps for 3-4x that. Despite just having purchased apples today (some cultivar I wasn’t familiar with), I don’t recall what they actually retail for.
But if it’s $1/lb, that ain’t 50%.
:rolleyes:
The cost basis are made up, as there are too many different variables to pick a specific number, the person I was responding to had “made up” the number of $100 an hour, and so I was going with round numbers to make things easy. It doesn’t matter if the original basis is $0.01 or $100, as we are just talking about how that basis changes by the time it gets to the final price for the consumer.
Markups are not made up numbers. That is the thing that is under discussion.
Yes they can, and they do so by raising the price. Keep in mind that if they were to do what you suggest, and only increase what they charge by exactly the amount that their cost increased, then their volume will still go down, and even if they make the same marginal profit per apple, they sell fewer apples, and make less money overall, cutting into their ability to cover fixed costs. Which means that they must make more profit off of each apple, in order to maintain the same amount of marginal profit for the business.
Or, they could not do so, and just make less money, companies are big fans of that.
You see, it’s just much more complicated than you are trying to make it out to be. Everything touches on everything else, and trying to look at one set of numbers in isolation is completely contradictory to how economics works.
Does spoilage cost the same with an apple that cost more to put into storage?
And if your distributor sees that there will be fewer buyers because you have raised your prices, does he care about that enough to put an extra markup onto the item in order to maintain the same amount of profit he would make off of your apples at a lower cost point?
When the markups are already as low as they can be, because of the competition that you are apparently aware of as you mentioned it earlier as though it were relevant at that time, but seem to have forgotten about at a time when it is now actually relevant, then they do not have much room to go to lower their markup as the cost increases. At some point, the cost is going to be passed onto the consumer in the form of higher prices, or the growers, shippers, wholesalers and supermarkets will go out of business.
And then, we are not even getting into what happens when there are not enough workers to pick enough apples to meet demand, because then we are talking about shortages, and when you have shortages, the only prediction you can make about prices is that they will go up very, very quickly. Not so bad if you are short of HC’s, but have plenty of Galas, as substitution is a thing. Even if you are short on apples, people may be content with peaches and pears. What we are talking about doing is much wider reaching than that, and will affect all of agriculture. If there is a shortage of food, and there is actually not enough food produced to feed everyone that would like to keep eating, then prices are no longer tied to anything to do with costs of production, but are just about who is able to pay the most.
You’re conflating a few things. Here are the points that are usually made:
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We may not need migrant labor. The way to determine if we do is to stop an illegal work force from suppressing wages and allow the market to figure out what each particular job is worth to a willing worker and willing employer. After that price is set, if we need additional workers we can bring them in, either by increasing legal immigration or establishing a guest worker program.
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Increases in costs of labor for most agricultural work will not balloon cost of good because the cost of labor is only about 10% of the cost of goods at market. The $100/hour rate is a thought experiment to to show that the tired leftist trope that “illegals are doing jobs that Americans won’t do” is a complete fabrication with zero basis in fact.
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An increase to the cost of goods are offset by A) more Americans being employed at a good wage and B) a great reduction in the number of illegals coming in, since the jobs no longer exist. Additionally, there is C) the reduction in spending for social services for illegals, e.g. schooling, emergency rooms, assistance for children. And let’s not forget about D) the reduction in identity theft due to illegals wanting SS #s.
Speaking of basic economics, do you agree that an increase in the supply of X reduces the cost of X? It doesn’t get more basic than that. If there is an abundance of people available to do a particular job, the wage for that job will not be as high as if there were fewer workers and the demand for them was higher. Right?
No, we need migrant labor. We need people who will go to where the crops are ready to be harvested, where agriculture work needs to be done. Any given area needs thousands of people to come in, stay for a few weeks, and then leave, as there is no more work for them there.
The only question is, is do we need laborers to immigrate from other countries for this? Given that US citizens have been very slow to take up the offer of employment in such a lucrative and rewarding enterprise, I’d say yes.
We’ve done that. We’ve done that over generations. And the answer has been yes, we need immigrants to come here to help in our agriculture. We have had legal immigration and guest worker programs, and those worked. Those programs being cut, when they really need to be expanded to keep up with the demand, is what is causing the problems with improper border crossings.
But it is based in fact. What do you consider to be a realistic wage that would be affordable to the farmers, and be attractive to workers?
As it is, most immigrant workers actually make a pretty decent wage, well over MW, but it is usually based on production, not by the hour. So, a motivated worker will make more than a lazy one. Should we pay more per piece to US citizens if they are not willing to work as hard?
I don’t see US citizens going for that, they are going to want an hourly wage, regardless of their production.
Lets give them that wage. Now, after few weeks, the work is done, do we expect them to move to where new work is, or do we find more work for them to do where they are? Do we build permanent housing and amenities for these thousands of workers to live in for the 11 months a year they are not working?
Okay, so they are willing to move to where the work is, great. The amount of work needed to be done in the entire country fluctuates pretty heavily based on season. There really isn’t that much work for nearly as many to do in the winter. There are still some workers needed, but not nearly the number that are needed during the harvest seasons. What do we do with these US citizens for the 6 months a year that there is no work for them to do?
The idea that there would be enough US citizens who would be willing to take those work conditions at any reasonable wage is what is “a complete fabrication with zero basis in fact.”
I mean, I can also say that most US citizens wouldn’t commit murder, but I could probably convince a pretty decent proportion of them to commit murder for a billion dollars. That “thought experiment” does not prove that US citizens have a predilection towards murder, it just means that I can come up with a thought experiment where I could convince some number to do something that they would not, under any realistic scenario, contemplate.
So, rather than a thought experiment where you present an unrealistic scenario, and use that to “prove” that the actual scenario that really exists is counterfactual, why don’t you say what wage you think is fair, both to the employer and employee, and tell me how many US citizens you think you can get to become migrant workers for that pay.
You mean working in the fields as migrant workers a few months a year?
That’s a benefit to those who do not want non-white people coming into the country, legally or illegally, but not really a benefit for anyone else.
Which is more than offset by the decrease in the taxes that they pay in local, state, and federal, as well as a reduction in the economic activity when they spend money on rent, food, clothing and other items that they purchase in our country.
A problem that would be eliminated if there were a guest worker program or other means of legal immigration. In any case, what that actually means is that there are people paying into Social security who will never collect it. We win out on that part of the scam.
And if there is no one willing to do a job at the rate that the job is willing to pay, then the work simply does not get done. As is demonstrated by the real life examples right now of crops rotting in fields because of a lack of labor to harvest them.
McConnell concedes bill blocking Emergency Resolution will pass Senate.
I don’t think any of this helps Dotard, tbh. C’mon, Pubbies - I need GOP-sponsored bulldozers and backhoes tearing up private lands here in Texas! I need scenes of pissed off white ranchers and crying Hispanic abuela’s being forced off their family’s centuries-held property by GOP-enabled sheriffs! I think y’all are just dicking with me on this wall bullshit - I need to start seeing some BUILDING and TAKINGS, y’all feel me?
Well, perhaps I should have just assumed complete and total incompetence from the start:
U.S. Wall Funding of $1.57 Billion Yields 1.7 Miles of Fence
At that price, the fucking fence better have glory holes or something.
So, from February to May, they completed about 1 mile of fencing. How the fuck did we produce so much shit during WW2 again?
We didnt outsource everything to cronies.
In which direction?
For comparison, the average price to build a 2,000 square foot house in 2019 was $290,920, which will get you just short of 20 inches of wall.
At that price, both. 
I did not want to start a new thread about this relatively minor news item, but whaddya know?
https://twitter.com/HStarshot/status/1547240461177430016?t=0MdrKL-wLz4ll9uHVZYumw&s=19
From an unimpeachable source (at least for this topic):
If the wall has to be built of materials impervious to angle grinders the cost will be astronomical.