Generally speaking, they don’t. Getting a chance to work outside the prison is considered a good job and you’re going to be turning down volunteers. But if a prisoner does refuse to do any work he’s ordered to do, he gets punished. Refuse to mop the floor - no TV for a week.
Depends, too. I suppose the question is what sort of damage an inmate can do if they decide they don’t want to work. Shovelling snow or sandbagging, or even picking up garbage along the highway, are a community service and you are heping. Making a profit for some guy who won’t hire your cousin on the outside for a decent wage? Is that a good job? I bet someone could figure out a way to make things dificult if they wanted too - a thumb through a tomato every so often? Cracking branches on the shrubs?
The productivity of slaves (whatever their provenance) is related to their morale or the level of punishment you can use.
I’ll bet the even the prisoners that volunteer won’t get the work done as fast as Mexicans, and it will take 2-3 times as many, increasing the costs to provide them (security comes to mind). Illegals work faster because they make more money for picking more vegetables. Take away the wage opportunity, and they just aren’t going to do any more than the bare minimum to avoid punishment.
Ha Ha Ha!
The thread raises a very good point. The fact is, there are jobs that American workers CANNOT AFFORD to take-because:
-they are seasonal (like hotel workers in a summer-only resort area)
-pay very little
-have no health insurance.
Here in New England, the apple orchards bring in contracted pickers in the Fall-from as far away as Jamaica.
An American cannot take this job-because it only lasts for two months (once the apples are gone, the farmers have no more need for labor).
Eventually, automated apple picking will become a reality-and those jobs will vanish as well.
From a quick, lazy search, prison labor can be expensive.
I also remember reading a few months ago that prisoners weren’t responding well to ag work. Thisis the closest I could find now. The other article talked about ‘stoop labor’ and how foreign ag things were to city prisoners. Apparently dirt, bugs and snakes are not cool.
The economics of this process is, I think, more complex than your post would lead one to believe. But that’s a discussion more suited for GD, especially since this thread is really just about the legality of the issue, not the economics.
That’s the problem with all these stories…
‘Can’t find any workers’ means ‘Can’t find any workers for a certain wage, little/no benefits’.
This is CAPITALISM! Raise the damn wage. Just because wages have been illegally depressed for a long time doesn’t mean you are ENTITLED to workers at a low wage. What the hell are they…some sort of commies?
But they can’t raise the wage, because then they’d have to raise the prices of the final product to compensate for the raised wages. But they are in competition with products grown in other states that can still pay the cheaper wages to illegals.
So if they raise wages, their product becomes uncompetitive in the market, and they fail. If they don’t raise wages, they can’t get anyone to pick their crops and they fail.
All in all it’s a good object lesson of problems that can occur when states try and take Federal matters into their own hands.
It would be interesting to see the unintended consequences of this kind of law in Florida or Nevada, where large numbers of illegals work in the hospitality industries (hotels/restaurants/tourism). Good luck letting convicts clean hotel rooms or bus tables.
Maybe that will never happen, as the hotel industry has deeper pockets than agriculture, and can afford to ensure such legislation is never passed.
I think you misunderstand the meaning of capitalist economy and have adopted the propaganda of supply side economics. Capitalist economy really means that the richest capitalists control our economy. If they want $27 trillion in zero interest overnight loans, then they get it. If they want to find workers below the minimum wage, then they will get it. It does not mean that they will raise wages until people are willing to do the work, because that would cut into profits and encourage labor unions. It does mean that the richest capitalists will worsen the economy so that the low prices now offered are made to be offers that cannot be refused.
Adam Smith, the inventor of capitalism theory quite accurately described and condemned such immoral extremes of capitalism run amok. His criticism is largely ignored today as inconvenient to making as much money as possible by repealing the last 100 years of legal labor protections.
[Moderating]
Again, the nature of a capitalist economy is not really pertinent to the OP. Please keep this focused on the legal issues involved. If you want to discuss other issues, open a thread in GD.
If this thread continues to be hijacked I’m going to close it.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
All of which explains the dead Mexicans who littered the streets previous to the Alabama crackdown… :dubious:
Unless you know something about Americans somehow being an entirely different species than Mexicans, it’s already been demonstrated that human beings can and do survive on the sorts of wages that Mexicans were working for.
True, this. In spite of what most people think, farm labor is actually a fairly skilled activity. I’ve spent quite a bit of time working around the labor crews here in the northwest, sometimes supervising and sometimes pitching in with them. The work is incredibly demanding in a physical sense and requires a rather advances skill set. The really good crews, often middle aged and older people that have worked together for years are amazing to watch, and nearly impossible to keep up with. The organized teamwork, the manual dexterity and judgement are remarkable. They don’t get paid nearly enough. I can’t imagine a prison work party as being a suitable replacement.
I’m am wondering how this would work in real life? I mean I hear of overcrowding in prison and you have in some medium and low security prisons, two guards covering 100 inmates in a wing. They are understaffed already. Which means you’re going to have to hire more guards to watch over the inmates.
So that’s a cost.
You probably couldn’t let the maximum security prisoners out and though only “good” prisoners would be allowed the privilege of work release, even one escape would pretty much ruin the program. I can’t see the public standing for a dangerous criminal to be out among them, even if guarded.
And if they are going to need prisoners that are extremely trustworthy, why not just do away with putting them in jail and make them work for minimum wage and put them under house arrest.
It seems like a good idea, but it also seems if you tried to put it into force, you’d have a lot of problems too.
I can’t find it now but I’ve seen studies suggest that labour isn’t a massive part of the cost of final food. Raising wages to a living wage would only increase the cost of agricultural products by 4%.
If anyone could find that study/article it would be helpful.
Like many on this board tell workers…tough shit. Adapt or starve.
There are many workers out there saying they can’t raise their family on the wages offered and that they NEED salaries like they used to command. Just because you NEED low cost workers to stay competitive doesn’t mean you should get them. The market, in its wisdom, is telling these businesses to die.
Depends on your definition of “living”. Most Americans expect their own apartment or house (or trailer), not a shared washroom down the hall; poverty means 3 or 4 children to a reoom, not 9 people in the same room. Poverty means basic cable, not staring at the wall or the traffic outside.Poverty means maybe going to school hungry as the welfare omney runs out at the end of the month, not missing school to work the fields all through childhood.
To Mexicans, the level of food, shelter, and pay they get is better than at home, which is why they risk a lot to come here. TO many Americans, agricultural pay is not even as good as alternatives.
Dead Mexicans? Apparently illegals get the same basic health care as Americans who can’t find jobs.
I occasionally see unsubstantiated numbers that say i can cost between $50,000 and $100,000 to keep someone in jail for a year. If that number will go up - to provide guards and transportation - so prisoners can do a few weeks of labour for a few thousand dollars, I fail to see a break-even for the state. Presumably the prisoners see at least some of it; the rest is eaten by extra expenses like security. Basically, it seems the politicians are doing a favour for select constituents at the expense of the taxpayers.
Maybe the incentive will be to corral more felons to increase the body count, until it is not safe to jaywalk near harvest time. When they start making those awaiting trial also work, you’ll know the system has gone way too far.
Thread closed. Those who wish to discuss the economic aspects of this can open a new thread in Great Debates.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator