Or, and hear me out here: We could pay people a competitive wage for their labor.
I understand the need for agricultural subsidies. The government inserts itself into the normal supply/demand process to protect the general public against a famine.
What I don’t understand is why those subsidies don’t seem to be flowing past the greedy hands of corporate farmers and into the pockets of farm laborers.
Actually I don’t think it’s that terrible for an idea, as long as things like food and accommodations are provided, and you can’t get out of it by paying (e.g. pay someone to do it for you).
I’d like to see billionaires doing hard labor alongside ordinary people.
How about we just add it to curriculum for school. During general highschool educational, you must take at least one Public Service class per year. You can choose from farming, retail, plumbing, electrician, road crew, et cetera. Each kid has to do a certain number of hour per school year, and it’s required even if private school kids. Disability would obviously be an exception, but otherwise you need to be doing at least X number of hours per school year to graduate. Could help people understand how these things work, and hopefully build some empathy in the little sociopaths.
I’m able to have a sense of empathy for all those people you listed, without having done every single one of them personally. I don’t know what the best way to teach empathy is, however.
A well rounded graduate of highschool, having experienced multiple different kinds of work environments could help our society feel a little more connected, lead to kids better able to determine what it is they want to do with their lives. If you had to do this once per year during highschool, and you had to pick a different one each year, you’d end up with at least 4 different experiences by the end. That’s a lot better than our current system of “you’ve never been allowed to make a decision before. Now, my child, on your 18th year, decide your career for the rest of your life, and blindly take our 200 thousand dollars worth of loans to do it”
If you think this is truly beneficial you should be able to hire people to do it. If you can’t convince people to do this what right do you have to force them?
That’s fair, honestly. I was going to make a quip about kids not wanting to learn math, so what right do we have to force them to learn it. But in all honesty, you’re right. We treat kids like little machines who must do and say as we command, and that’s a problem. I still stand by saying that experience with the working world would be beneficial, and that it should be part of standard education, but as far as the ethics and morality of it goes, it’s a sticky area that would need much discussion.
I would agree with it if it was working on publicly owned farms. I don’t support any kind of “drafted” labor that ultimately benefits private owners, or even a system where the government reaps the profits. If people are made to work in any fashion, every cent of value generated should go back to them.
you can’t have competitive wages on a free market as long as somebody else is willing to do it for less. That’s why migrant labor would have to end first.
Didn’t we try that here after Brexit? From what I remember, farmers were having to let crops go to waste because Brits didn’t want the jobs, even after wages were raised. Most farm work is seasonal, people don’t really want that instability.
yeah, there’s a serious argument to be made here that the people in england, USA simply don’t want these kinds of jobs.
then again, the thing isn’t so simple. Why would people in the USA not want these jobs, but mexicans are fine with them? is it because the people are spoiled? is it for other reasons?
Personally, the job itself I wouldn’t mind, but it’s what comes with it. It’s seasonal work. How would I consistently support myself outside the season? How would I get a stable home if I’m living in farm accommodation while working?
In the UK at least, these were often men coming in from the EU. They could send money back home to their families, where it would go further.
A resident Brit with kids to support isn’t going to go for this kind of job. As I said, no stability. They’d have to pay enough to make up for months of no work over winter. Which they can’t do as their margins are already low and supermarkets don’t pay enough and so much produce goes to waste because it’s a bit blemished or wonky.
Tbh, I’m not convinced that this would really happen. There’s not that much price elasticity to a lot of agricultural products. If the strawberries cost too much, most people will just not be able to afford strawberries and thus will just not buy them but instead buy less labour-intensive produce instead.
One could argue that if strawberries cannot be produced in a way that earns everyone involved a living wage then we shouldn’t produce strawberries, and that’s a totally valid point to argue.
It’s also fair to argue that we need to cut out capitalism’s inherent inefficiency of having to feed the capitalists in the process who did contributed nothing in terms of labour. But on the one hand, this hasn’t worked out that great in the past and on the other hand this would require more of a change than to just kick out migrants.
What would be more likely to happen (since we’ve seen it happen during Covid already) is that the wages will go up, but the locals still won’t do the work, thus strawberries will rot on the fields, the shelves will be empty, the prices will go up, but not enough to cover the losses for the farmers and the farmers will plant something less labour-intense next season.
(Wages would have to go way, way up before people will voluntarily quit their job in an AC’d office to work on a field.)
We are contemplating compulsory service by all Americans. “Free Market” is not a factor here. Against that alternative, we can consider a wide variety of non-free options for influencing market behavior.
You describe workers exploiting themselves: being willing to “do it for less” than a living wage. Correcting minimum wage to be a living wage keeps their slave-like desperation from influencing the labor market.
Beyond that, directly subsidizing American ag laborers corrects the follow-on market effects of anti-famine subsidies on agriculture. Ag subsidies depress food prices and tank farm revenue, forcing farmers to exploit workers. Ag subsidies directly to ag laborers corrects that undue influence on the labor market.
Or, and hear me out here: We could pay people a competitive wage for their labor.
I understand the need for agricultural subsidies. The government inserts itself into the normal supply/demand process to protect the general public against a famine.
What I don’t understand is why those subsidies don’t seem to be flowing past the greedy hands of corporate farmers and into the pockets of farm laborers.
Actually I don’t think it’s that terrible for an idea, as long as things like food and accommodations are provided, and you can’t get out of it by paying (e.g. pay someone to do it for you).
I’d like to see billionaires doing hard labor alongside ordinary people.
If we’re doing it, we gotta add in a rotation of frontline retail/restaurant work.
How about we just add it to curriculum for school. During general highschool educational, you must take at least one Public Service class per year. You can choose from farming, retail, plumbing, electrician, road crew, et cetera. Each kid has to do a certain number of hour per school year, and it’s required even if private school kids. Disability would obviously be an exception, but otherwise you need to be doing at least X number of hours per school year to graduate. Could help people understand how these things work, and hopefully build some empathy in the little sociopaths.
I’m able to have a sense of empathy for all those people you listed, without having done every single one of them personally. I don’t know what the best way to teach empathy is, however.
I’m not suggesting that no one has empathy, or even that most don’t, just that some would benefit from this in that arena
Could also steer some kids into trades instead of expensive college that isn’t a good fit for them.
A well rounded graduate of highschool, having experienced multiple different kinds of work environments could help our society feel a little more connected, lead to kids better able to determine what it is they want to do with their lives. If you had to do this once per year during highschool, and you had to pick a different one each year, you’d end up with at least 4 different experiences by the end. That’s a lot better than our current system of “you’ve never been allowed to make a decision before. Now, my child, on your 18th year, decide your career for the rest of your life, and blindly take our 200 thousand dollars worth of loans to do it”
If you think this is truly beneficial you should be able to hire people to do it. If you can’t convince people to do this what right do you have to force them?
That’s fair, honestly. I was going to make a quip about kids not wanting to learn math, so what right do we have to force them to learn it. But in all honesty, you’re right. We treat kids like little machines who must do and say as we command, and that’s a problem. I still stand by saying that experience with the working world would be beneficial, and that it should be part of standard education, but as far as the ethics and morality of it goes, it’s a sticky area that would need much discussion.
I would agree with it if it was working on publicly owned farms. I don’t support any kind of “drafted” labor that ultimately benefits private owners, or even a system where the government reaps the profits. If people are made to work in any fashion, every cent of value generated should go back to them.
Pick one
you can’t have competitive wages on a free market as long as somebody else is willing to do it for less. That’s why migrant labor would have to end first.
Yes you can. The issue is that it isn’t one market, it’s two: the legitimate market and the under-the-table market.
Didn’t we try that here after Brexit? From what I remember, farmers were having to let crops go to waste because Brits didn’t want the jobs, even after wages were raised. Most farm work is seasonal, people don’t really want that instability.
yeah, there’s a serious argument to be made here that the people in england, USA simply don’t want these kinds of jobs.
then again, the thing isn’t so simple. Why would people in the USA not want these jobs, but mexicans are fine with them? is it because the people are spoiled? is it for other reasons?
Personally, the job itself I wouldn’t mind, but it’s what comes with it. It’s seasonal work. How would I consistently support myself outside the season? How would I get a stable home if I’m living in farm accommodation while working?
In the UK at least, these were often men coming in from the EU. They could send money back home to their families, where it would go further.
A resident Brit with kids to support isn’t going to go for this kind of job. As I said, no stability. They’d have to pay enough to make up for months of no work over winter. Which they can’t do as their margins are already low and supermarkets don’t pay enough and so much produce goes to waste because it’s a bit blemished or wonky.
Sounds like they didn’t raise wages enough to fairly compensate workers for tolerating that instability.
Tbh, I’m not convinced that this would really happen. There’s not that much price elasticity to a lot of agricultural products. If the strawberries cost too much, most people will just not be able to afford strawberries and thus will just not buy them but instead buy less labour-intensive produce instead.
One could argue that if strawberries cannot be produced in a way that earns everyone involved a living wage then we shouldn’t produce strawberries, and that’s a totally valid point to argue.
It’s also fair to argue that we need to cut out capitalism’s inherent inefficiency of having to feed the capitalists in the process who did contributed nothing in terms of labour. But on the one hand, this hasn’t worked out that great in the past and on the other hand this would require more of a change than to just kick out migrants.
What would be more likely to happen (since we’ve seen it happen during Covid already) is that the wages will go up, but the locals still won’t do the work, thus strawberries will rot on the fields, the shelves will be empty, the prices will go up, but not enough to cover the losses for the farmers and the farmers will plant something less labour-intense next season.
(Wages would have to go way, way up before people will voluntarily quit their job in an AC’d office to work on a field.)
We are contemplating compulsory service by all Americans. “Free Market” is not a factor here. Against that alternative, we can consider a wide variety of non-free options for influencing market behavior.
You describe workers exploiting themselves: being willing to “do it for less” than a living wage. Correcting minimum wage to be a living wage keeps their slave-like desperation from influencing the labor market.
Beyond that, directly subsidizing American ag laborers corrects the follow-on market effects of anti-famine subsidies on agriculture. Ag subsidies depress food prices and tank farm revenue, forcing farmers to exploit workers. Ag subsidies directly to ag laborers corrects that undue influence on the labor market.