'They quit after a few hours': Farmers admit they can't find American workers
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-farmers-2672410822/Open linkView original on lemmy.ca1072
Comments293https://www.rawstory.com/trump-farmers-2672410822/Open linkView original on lemmy.ca
Oh boy, way to seriously fuck yourself from every conceivable angle, smart guys. Sumo wrestler lookin leopards after this one.
Add that any products grown for trade are sitting unwanted in fields, or for aid rotting in warehouses because the government canceled the contracts for them. Food is often held in special warehouses where the oxygen is pumped out, but there aren't enough of those to hold all the excess that was expected to be sent elsewhere
It's a colossal mess, with an incredible amount of waste
Yes. Yes, he is.
That's just good old fashioned republican efficiency. These boys better get their bootstraps and figure out which conglomerate they're gonna sell the farm to.
Big corpos probably lining up to strike a bargain rn
At least during Covid the farms were transporting food to churches/communities at lower prices. They literally have no one now to pick up the produce. Waiting on farms to start pick your own systems like blueberry farms.
This won’t work for orchards and tree based produce. One idiot falling off a cherry picker will ruin a small farmer
One more: China puts tariffs on agricultural products specifically, because they know what they're doing.
Correction: every country has agricultural tarrifs to protect local farmers, except in extreme scenarios where populations are being starved or cannot produce food by themselves.
China put tariffs on us products from states that voted for trump, specially on soy beans IIRC.
This is just a gift for big farm.
Maybe these morons should stop voting to remove their employees. Too smart for these MAGAts.
No no no, they'll vote for the GOP again, but hope they'll force inmates or homeless people to work the fields.
I'm certain that when they say MAGA, they mean bring back slavery.
But instead of shipping in the slaves, using the existing stock
I hope the inmates and/or indigent perform plenty of malicious compliance if this happens.
they tried with inmates already, they arnt going to do it, they will do the bare minimum or nothing at all, since they have very little to gain from it.
Don't you guys have forced prison labour? That ought to do the trick. You can even employ Moore people that way because you need guards and fences, gps tracking on the volunteered workers and all that.
If the prisoners don’t want to work, they won’t. And if prison guards start whipping inmates there will be riots.
If the prisoners don’t want to work, they won’t. And if prison guards start whipping inmates there will be riots.
You mean slavery?
Yes, but with a nicer name.
Its truly incredible.
Their response will just be to fold, to literally sell the farm, and also at the same time never even be cognizant of the fact that they got exactly what they voted for, that Trump repeatedly said he was going to do exactly this, that lefties screamed about Project 2025 and the resounding response was basically 'pff, he's just bluffing,' and then making up a fan fiction version of what Dear Leader will actually do.
They're just gonna revert back to the 'no one wants to work' mantra untill we just literally put our incarcerated prisoners to work in the fields, going full circle all the way back to slavery.
These idiots didn't even realize how dependant they were on so many massive subsidy programs untill they poofed out of existence, again, 100% in line with Trump's platform.
Has any nation in history fucking autolobotomized as hard and as fast as we have?
Literally the world's sole super power 20/30 years ago, and in a single generation we have destroyed ourselves in almost every way possible, short of just nuking ourselves.
Well, the Khmer Rouge killed everybody who wore glasses because they were "intellectuals," China killed millions trying to force city kids to become farmers during the Cultural Revolution, and I'm pretty sure other autocratic totalitarian governments have fucked themselves in similar ways. Usually when societies become illiberal, people with brains are the first to be put up against the proverbial wall.
Just to add a point - if the farmers do end up folding and selling off, who's going to buy the land? My money would be on large corpos.
Yes, it would 100% be large corpos that more or less run and own many farms that same way large landlords run 10s or 100s or 1000s of apartments / rental homes.
Sorry, I had thought this was so obvious it didn't need to be directly stated, but yeah, it's not a bad idea to be more explicit and more clear.
Bill Gates owns 270,000 acres of farmland already.
they tried it with prisoners already, they arnt doing it because they are already in jail, why work when you have all the ameneties provided for you, and it barely affects your sentence.
Much like how it is very easy to pass laws and ordinances that fuck over the homeless, it is also easy to pass laws and ordinances that fuck over prisoners.
The US Constitutional + Ammendments explicitly allows slavery as punishment for a crime you've been convicted of.
The Supreme Court has now repeatedly just thrown all prior existing legal case precedent out the window and just made such nakedly hypocritical rulings that its fair to say they are a completely biased and arbitrary institution.
The rule of law in the US is dead, is a farsical joke.
Some state will just pass a law that says uh hey, if you're a prisoner in a facility in our state, and the state has some kind of extraordinary need, we can force you into involuntary labor.
Then other states will copy this once it passes one state's court, then in 6 months-ish it'll get to the Supreme Court who will say yep, checks out, carry on, and then every other red state and half the blue states will do it as well.
I am not 100% sure this will happen, but it is very, very plausible. 95% sure something like this will happen within 5 to 10 years, possibly less.
Also... its illegal to be homeless now, and the economy is crashing. Get foreclosed on, can't pay rent, end up in the streets, living in your car?
Yep, why not crack down on that like ICE is cracking down on migrants, now you're convicted of being homeless, the punishment is a few years of forced labor.
A few years? Optimistic, are we?
Dude what? Our Constitution literally allows for us to continue slavery as a punishment. Why the fuck would you ever think they had a choice?
I wouldn't mind being a crop worker...provided I get at least minimum wage, breaks, healthcare, and reasonable quotas that ensure my wellbeing.
...crickets...
I've done a lot of seasonal field scale farm work, mostly in Europe - it can be extremely hard work. Couldn't do it now, you have to be pretty fit.
Which probably means that it would have to pay significantly above minimum wage. But, farmers were getting that labour for below minimum wage because they had the luck to be able to use workers who had no other options.
Federal minimum wage is $7.25/hour.
Good luck with that.
I would assume they were joking. Why you would do anything for minimum wage is beyond me
Wasn't joking. Still, I would much prefer a living wage, like what we see from old-timey videos, where a single person can support a household and feel happy about their fiscals.
If only people would be willing to pay for that at the market...
Something like 80% of the prices you pay at a grocery store go to middle men. Farmer is only about 11%, IIRC.
Might be even less depending on your produce, also keep in mind that farmers don't have the same costs every year nor the same yields. A bad year can totally finish them in a bad economy.
I swear I said "market"...
If only the parasitic middlemen were willing to reduce their ridiculous profit margins...
Nowadays you can circumvent middlemen in a lot of cases (if you live in the center of a big metropolis probably not, but the you -need the middlemen). Farmers market, bulk orders or weekly markets are all decent options.
Good point
Here’s one of San Francisco’s :) just wonderful when the sun is shining
That's why governments subsidize agriculture, to keep the price down.
So Walmart strategy, the government should subsidize my company so I can pocket the profit!
Nobody is going to work for slave wages and slavery conditions. Raise wages! Improve working conditions! That's the point of the whole Trump immigration policies you dumbass!
It is indeed baffling that immigrants worked all this time for slave wages under slavery conditions. USA is full of people taking advantage of others. It is not just Trump, it is the 50% of the population that is anti-social psychopathic sociopath.
it is not anywhere near baffling. it is an example of exactly how disgusting and terrible capitalism is. these times should be moving people radically left.
Meh, I mean sure capitalism sucks, but these people would try to exploit others for personal gain under any system.
And they won't be able to if they never had the power (money in capitalism) to do so to begin with.
"Try" is the key word here. It only matters if anyone succeeds.
For real. In America being a psychopath is rewarded with money. And what's worse is that there is something very dark and heartless happening that seems to have a hold of not just the government but the people as well. Like it's now becoming known at least slightly, that America is not the image it branded itself as and that the people here are very much being manipulated socially and society is being orchestrated to be something that is not for humanity but instead for an ideology that feels like the essence of evil.
We should be realizing our nation isn't for humanity. It's all strictly business, and "the game" of conquering life and existence. And anything that gets in the way is the enemy.
As citizens here we aren't special. They can do the same things they do to other countries to us. We can become the middle east warzone. The only reason they don't do it inside the nation bluntly is because then it would show their true colors. So what they do is manipulate and divide the citizens over simple things and watch the citizens destroy themselves. The same geopolitical methods they use to overthrow countries they use here.
That's true anywhere on the planet.
Capitalism
The point is racism and cruelty.
The Republicans don't give a fuck about workers wages.
they prefer slaves.
The fuck are you talking about? It's the Democrats saying we need a slave class, that we can't deport them, not the Republicans.
Psst: the deranged focus on deporting every single undocumented immigrant actually makes it easier for employers to exploit undocumented immigrants. You can’t threaten to deport someone for organizing labor if the government is only deporting criminals.
The vast majority of the immigrants being deported are being forced to leave against their will. Why do you think they should have no say in the matter? Forced deportation is violent and cruel, and results in the separation of families.
If either party actually cared about the people, or budgets, or morality, instead of spending tens of thousands of dollars to remove each person, they would just check them in, have them sign a piece of paper, and grant them legal status.
To what Democratic policy or policies are you referring?
The one against deporting illegal immigrants?
Okay, but like specifically what law, proposed or enacted?
25 downvotes, no upvotes?
Downvotes don't change the past and the fact that Democrats enabled slavery.
Leaving this here instead of removing this dumbfuck comment for disinformation based on an intellectually dishonest half-truth.
Sorry but I didn't mean it in that historic perspective and neither did OP.
It doesn't matter what people say, it's important what happens. By keeping illegal immigrants in their exploitive conditions, and by e.g. not prosecuting those who employ illegal immigrants, the Democrats created the current situation, together with the Republicans. The Democrats are complicit.
Nevertheless, those are interesting links.
Ah, sorry, that makes sense. If you didn't know, there's a common Republican talking point that – because the Democrats were the racist slavers in the 1800s and the Repuublicans the progressive abolitionists – the modern-day Democrats are the real racists because like, like, uh, look at what they did 160 years ago! Completely ignoring, of course, the context I linked to above.
I'm used to it. Lemmy has problems with the reality of the democrat party.
This is what people don't understand.
Yes, the work is hard, but good old Americans will do the work if they are paid.
No pay, no work.
The point is to get votes and financial support from racists and xenophobes. The policies are just tools for it.
I thought farmers were their base though.
the rich white farm owners, yes. the owners dont do any of the farm work.
You got three sentences correct.
not to mention, the fuckery around shrinkflation/cheapflation. many other products like oral care is heavily shrinkflationed.
To be fair, in Germany a lot of food is imported from other countries that have different labor protections, so Spanish tomatoes could have different conditions. Of course Aldi and Lidl have popularized super efficient supply chains that help keeping prices low (and AFAIK they pay reasonable salaries).
You might want to let Trump know that these are his objectives. I don’t think he’s aware that he’s supposed to strengthen OSHA and fight for higher wages.
he already gave the response to people complaining" you voted for what i cammpaigned on, deal with it"-paraphased trump exact words.
Is it? Why would you think that.
It's not inflation if that is actually how much it always should have cost. Our food is too cheap and full of shit.
That would be unpleasant, yes, and would require further efforts to minimize the consequences for those with low incomes (for instance, expansion of food subsidies, which yes would require even more taxation of those with wealth), however, if food prices aren't as high as that now because of near slavery conditions, then there's probably no ethical way to avoid it.
EXPANSION of food subsidies? They just gutted USDA programs providing food to food shelves all over the country. My local food bank recently switched to every two weeks instead of every week. It's already bad and only getting worse
You may misunderstand, I'm not making any prediction that this administration or any like what we've had in a long time, if ever, would do such a thing. What I'm saying is that if some government was installed that actually cared, it's not an impossibly to improve agricultural labor conditions without driving the working class broke from food cost increases.
Oh yeah, that's definitely true. But our food system isn't ass backwards on accident, you know?
even if they did all that, its pretty back breaking work, you will your back or joints will be destroyed in the 30s, thats why also people dont stay in the trades that long either. disc disease from wear, is pretty hard to treat.
Which means the pay has to rise even more.
My guess is that this is a Peter Thiel move and robot companies are almost ready to deploy their farm helpers.
Which raises prices, while wages won't be
You mean that the job isn't worth what you pay to do. They always pretend it isn't the money. But of course its the money. If I'm going to work my ass off I expect better pay. Those immigrants were working their ass off for minimum wage and the farmers knew they were exploiting them.
Literally everything in America is about how much money you have, but God forbid you ask an employer how much they're going to pay you. Because at your job what really matters is FAMILY. It's like, give me a fucking break.
Does Vin Diesel own a farm?
Any pretty much any physical job comes with copious risks to your body and health, yet these types of employers typically don't pay for employee health plans nor do they pay enough for employees to comfortably afford their own. Why would anybody want to risk severing a finger, breaking a leg, getting bitten by a dangerous snake, a nail to the hand, etc if they don't have to, especially knowing they can't afford the treatment and it could lead to lifelong pain and disability?
You think they're making minimum wage?
There's literally a sub minimum wage in a lot of U.S states. 2.13$ an hour iirc?
Probably not all of them. The ones I've had experience with were.
They mean that the workers are probably making less than Minimum Wage. There are exceptions to minimum wage for agricultural work. Minimum wage would have been an improvement.
Nothing about my statement was an argument requiring input from tom clancy.
I think those exceptions are made (, in principle,) to to let farm workers get paid per unit. They pack a crate, they get $3. They can probably pack 10 crates an hour if they work their asses off.
But I'm sure it is exploited egregiously.
Yup. I worked a terribly hazardous job that will work you to death at asphalt plants for a couple of years and absolutely only did it for six figure pay in California. Worst people I have ever worked around. Most were dumber than the rocks in aggregate but they always show up, are great at driving in circles, and gossiping far worse than a group of little girls.
ICE facilities are currently overflowing. ICE prisoners will simply be leased out as farm labor.
Jesus fucking Christ that's dark but entirely possible.
The US has always operated off of slave labor. We currently, among other things, use slave labor to fight forest fires.
I read somewhere the US both has a really high incarnation ratio (as in amounts of prisoners per x citizens) and a high percentage of externally employed prisoners. Interestingly those stats where compared to Russia (Siberian labour camps) and China (Uyghurs in forced labour).
i think its 1.2+million in for profit system, and you wonder why courts are often desperate to hand out convinctions often, despite the lack of evidence in many cases against disadvantaged people. it also helps breed future cannon fodder for the military too(through the children of the incarcerated), basically generational slavery.
Yes, we have one of the highest prisoner per-capita in the world
Nah it's a reality
https://m.economictimes.com/news/international/us/trump-shifts-stance-says-farmers-can-hire-migrants-if-they-take-responsibility-for-their-workers/articleshow/121996126.cms
Bringing back that slave labor
It's literally their plan
These red voting MAGA fucks were receiving grants to hire labor and they claim socialism is bad. I have zero sympathy for their problems and this is another classic FAFO situation.
Yes but if the farm work doesn't get done you are looking at the next thing which will be the great American famine, which I expect somewhere this summer. If the US food production falters and importing food is made very expensive though tarriffs, Americans are not going to have enough food.
It's going to be like post revolutionary China in so many ways.
AND ITS ALL BIDEN'S FAULT!
/S, so you don't think I'm one of those MAGA Nazis who actually, truly believe that.
Its actually Obama's fault, still. I really don't get how, but he (Trump) said he(Obama)'d nuke Iran. The deep state strikes again now is the time for peace etc all caps
/s :(
They mean compassion for the out-groups.
This is how Trump will defend recreating slavery adjacent to the prison system slavery.
He will claim there is no choice.
will?
it already happened.
he said he'll exempt some industries from ice raids. those who work well be even more desperate, and the bosses will be able to call ICE to kidnap whichever worker isn't performing as desired. under those conditions it might as well be slavery without the actual ownership.
What a hellish nightmare of a country.
remember reading an national geographic article about modern slavery.
it focused in Dubai construction, Israel sex trade (kidnappings), and US farms.
it was really depressing.
found the article but it's not online, "21st-Century Slaves" September 2003 Andrew Cockburn.
https://www.npr.org/2003/08/27/1408233/slavery-in-the-21st-century
And everyone enjoys the spoils of that country. In the form of medicines and media. Subsidized by the actual Americans.
Wow, such stupid.
do you think pharma uses slaves for research?
and do you think MARVEL movies is a justification for slaves?
You're so pathetic.
Nah he all ready changed his mind on that. The dude has dementia.
is it dementia? or was he always that stupid
Combination of the two
Damn freeloading immigrants, staying at home and stealing all our jobs
Shrondinger's immigrant.png
At least Hitler cared about Germany, or something.
???
dumbest take I've read today
Give me a single example that shows Hitler cared for Germany.
...it's a Rick & Morty quote.
OK. The rigorous completion of the Autobahn network. Or, a better example I guess, is the entire reason for Germany's eastern expansion if you ever bothered with history.
The Autobahn was made so they could send troops all over the place fast and easily.
It wasn't originally for the betterment of Germany, it was for war.
awkward challenge to reply to, but why not I suppose. https://archive.ph/ct9xC
They promised JJ 100,000 a year to hire illegals and whatever other farm subsidies AND his whole family is on Medicaid. Is he literally that bad at living off farming, rather than welfare, or is he also committing fraud?
Why is a welfare queen (by the original definition) voting Republican
Around the 1990’s it became okay to be greedy in America, and okay to complain about what you don’t have. Empathy in the US has fallen off considerably over the years.
As to how they’re on medicaid, farms almost always miraculously have a loss of a few hundred dollars each year, so farmers tend to qualify. When you’re used to quietly having healthcare paid for by the government, you can vote for the hate party until that changes. Every republican knows they’re not the problem, much as no raindrop blames itself for a flood.
The phrase “The Surely Exception” applies here as it does to abortion, they were sure any cuts would not affect them. One benefit of the buffoonery of trump is they are not smart enough to protect their voters.
Well yeah. Turns out people who aren't in fear of being deported won't work for a fraction of minimum wage paid under the table.
I mean, it's not so much the fear of deportation so much as the fact that lower wages go farther in Mexico. Most Mexicans who illegally immigrate do so simply because it makes economic sense. If the wages were so low that it didn't make economic sense to them, then they would simply return to Mexico voluntarily.
Is it still Mexicans that come over or has it changed to people from even poorer countries like Venezuela or Honduras?
You kind of lose that economic advantage when you're not living in Mexico anymore. Plus a lot of people that come here don't have a life to go back to and likely sunk everything they had into getting here.
A lot of immigrants accept a low quality of life here so they can provide a better one back in their home country for their family.
The real irony here is that a lot of immigrant workers were here on legitimate visas, in fact a huge portion of the "illegal" immigrants who the Trump administration has deported were here on legit visas that he wantonly revoked, and were therefore paying taxes on the shite wages they were being paid. Taxes that the U.S. is now no longer collecting. Anyone wanna take bets on the deficit increase under Trump?
What's that? Southern states running on cheap labour can't cope with the loss of that labour? Where have we heard that before?
Fool me once and all that, but they actually voted for it this time round...
It’s not just Southerners who are the bad guys here. A huge amount of liberals are ecstatic to exploit cheap migrant labor as well.
Capitalism exploits cheap labor everywhere around the world. It's a feature of the system.
They'll start calling to use prison labor soon enough. Prisons are commercial facilities anyway and could use some cash. And there are more African American in prison proportionally so that's a bonus for MAGA. Police will get their cut for putting more people in prison. That way the new racist slave labor gets established.
That is already happening at scale
That's definitely the plan, and they'll be using private, for-profit prison companies. One is a facility in Louisiana that has been closed twice due to abuse and torture of inmates, and has been reopened as an ICE facility they've been stashing the students arrested for pro-Palestinian protests there. The Columbia student who just got released was being held there.
They are also building a 30,000 bed facility at Guantanamo Bay. The $250 million dollar contract has been awarded, and it's underway. For context, the average maximum security prison hold 800-1200 people, with the largest in Angola, LA holding about 8400. So this new facility is nearly 4 times larger than the largest prison, which is already several times larger than average. Clearly, they intend to house MANY people there.
It's my belief that they will eventually take the position that if you can't stay actively employed (due to AI, robotics, automation, discrimination, etc.) and require the help of the government to survive, then they will house and feed you in exchange for renting you out as slave labor. That way, they can say they solved the homeless problems, even though all they did was turn them into slaves.
And the MAGA followers will go along with it, happy that the "parasites" are being forced to work. Besides, they've been hoping for slavery to return since 1865. The only legal slavery in America is prison labor, and like MAGA always does, they intend to exploit the shit out of that Amendment.
pulls up investment app
Any idea what terribly evil corporations own these hellish places?
The Wackenhut company was one, and they've re-branded as GEO. They're the ones operating the problem prison in LA I wrote about.
It's almost as if immigrants are a big source of exploitable labor that keeps the wheels of capitalism turning. Who would've thought?
This is part of the plan. Small farms will be run out of business and then bought for a low price and consolidated by mega farms.
Big Agriculture wants this and lobbies for it to happen.
What a coincidence that the VP has a financial interest in independent farms going bankrupt.
I definitely believe this, but do you have a source I can point to for others?
The company is called AcreTrader
https://www.snopes.com/news/2024/10/08/jd-vance-acretrader/
Snopes is appalling.
So Vance owns a fraction of a company that owns a fraction of a company that allows fractional ownership of farmland. They can only sell to accredited investors so the headline is false but snopes don't have the balls to admit it.
I'm not saying he has no interest in making farmland cheap, but Tarrif insider knowledge is multiple times more profitable than trying to influence farmland prices through labor costs.
Something something Hilary Clinton and uranium. Funny how that was a big issue until it went through anyway and wasn't. It's almost as if these crooks aren't serious
Another 80s reboot
Isn't it a confession that he wittingly employs undocumented migrants and isn't it illegal?
Hard to say since a lot of immigrants with legal status have been kidnapped and trafficked out of country.
They stopped even trying to maintain that lie decades ago. 20 years ago the paper had an article with a local farmer vocally declaring “We can’t afford to hire legal migrant labor. Too much regulation. They make us provide toilets and pay minimum wage.”
I wasn’t surprised that farmers exploited migrants. I was surprised that it was so common that the farmer felt safe having his name and picture next to a quote in a regional newspaper declaring, “Of course I break federal laws.”
A lot, but it doesn't look like the most, does it?
Hard to tell without due process.
The ones with paperwork registered and such are much easier to find so I would be astounded if the illegal ones are over half of the deported. Most likely the illegal ones are a very small minority.
There was a big document leak just the other day from ICE that showed that 2/3 of the people they arrest or something like that have no criminal records.
Are you a bot or something? I do not defend ice, nobody on fediverse would
Repeat with me, class: There are no bad jobs, only bad conditions
No shit jobs only shit wages.
There are people who literally shovel congealed fat out of sewers, that's definitely a shit job.
They get paid a ridiculous amount though.
No this can only be spoken by those in profound ignorance or utter stupidity. There are bad jobs. Go look up sewage cleaner in India. No amount of money is worth that. There will always be shit jobs.
Kind of a bad argument. "Look up sewage cleaner in India" implies that there are sewage cleaners elsewhere with better jobs. Making the problem with being a sewage cleaner in India a bad condition.
Ironically I agree with you. Some jobs are way better than others, making some jobs bad and some good. A garbage man will always be a worse job than an ice cream taste tester barring absurd caveats. it's just funny to me that your argument explicitly implies a problem with job conditions.
That's just untrue. There is definitely some amount of money worth it.
For sure. If I got paid a million dollars a week I would do it for a couple weeks to then not have to work again the rest of my life lol. But seriously, there are lots of jobs that don't pay what they should for how crappy the work is
*can’t find american workers willing to work for what they’re offering.
pay more get more.
You'll still have trouble finding people. Picking crops fucking sucks.
Pay even more. Just shows you the extend of the exploitation.
No. Shit.
Especially not when OSHA is simultaneously being dismantled.
Just wait until we get those pesky child labor laws rolled back, then there’s a fresh new crop of serfs for the fields
Oklahoma already got a head start.
And Tennessee, Florida, and Wisconsin I believe.
Fuuuuuuck. That's depressing.
Ugh. I HATE waiting!
Yes but that's freedom.
It's bothering me that the cursive is not properly centered.
At least they are removing all those gang members from the fields
Maybe offer better compensation if you can't find workers. No one wants to bust their ass all day for a shit wage. Unless they're desperate.
This is all designed to drive the family farm out of business and make land cheap.
Which is why billionaires have already been buying farmland and have been for years.
Slave labor, monitored by drones with AI supported facial recognition.
"You reap what you sow" originates from farming wisdom. Just putting that out there.
It's weird to think the agricultural workers, who can't vote and don't have legal status and are often living on subsistence wages, deserve to be snatched off the street and fed into a concentration camp system in order to deprive a few agricultural wholesalers of their profit margins.
I don't see that as reaping what you sow at all. Fascism does not fall heaviest on the fascists.
Supporters of facism and their narcissism. Specifically, they use their privilige to moan about their own challenges, seemingly without much thought for those taken into concentration camps. They will only ever understand what hurts them.
Time for Mexico to pump up its own agriculture to supply the goods that will be needed on the other side of the fence. Labor is plenty now.
Mexican farm produce at American farm prices. That's how capitalism works, right?
Higher than American farm prices, what with the tarrifs
Mexico and Canada have been investing in agricultural infrastructure for decades now. The only reason that the U.S. farmer can compete is due to shenanigans in import requirements. Imports are held to a much higher standard than domestic production. It's why the majority of foodborne outbreaks are from American production.
American farmers have been conditioned to rely on cheap labor and expensive equipment. There's been only been minor infrastructure investment since the 1970's.
Without government subsidies and cheap labor, the majority of the farmers business models in the us is not sustainable.
The idea is so badly implemented... you have to raise back Unions and decent salaries, what they expecting is that actual born americans will do the same job for the same shit money that desperate migrants who have absolutely nothing.
So in essence they want the new slaves to be US born, yeah fuck that.
Society needs more unions period.
I'm a medical student applying for residency this year, and the top program I'm interested in is at the top of my list partially because the residents have a union.
Fucking right, unions are for the people and any damn company that hates them is against giving people a working wage that gives them a life. PERIOD Fuck anti-union politicians! Power to the people!
Prison labor. And what minority is overrepresented in prison?
Jails...
🤣🤣🤣
🍿
I thought that Covid would have been enough of a trial run for that.
At least in my country it was that. You know, it was Covid, with the highest unemployment rate since quite a long time, and farmers ran nation-wide ads looking for workers. They increased the pay sometimes up to 2-3x. They promised housing in nice hotels. And still, nobody wanted to do the job and that year there was just no strawberries on the shelves.
The only way working as a farm hand makes sense is if:
So much of the argumentation around this topic sounds the south arguing for slavery except it's liberals arguing for exploitative labor.
Yes but no. These people should be allowed in to work, legally and with workers protections. Not exploited.
Yep, forcing businesses to actually pay market rate for labour is something of an upside.
Republicans are not "liberals", no matter how much you Tankies claim that they are. They are the very definition of Fascist.
OP meant liberal Democrats.
Almost like...
Importing workers to make 16.84/hr. Just what American is going to accept that kind of wage when the boss is getting grants of hundreds of thousands of dollars?
The immigrant would have to work 11,876 hours to earn the 200k handout that the boss gets for hiring him seasonally for two years. How is this sustainable? Are we all going to be working to subsidize farmers by 100k/year to hire a single foreign farmhand?
Not to mention the program for that grant has only 141 members... it just doesn't make sense.
OK, so, I live in farm country and there's some problems with what your saying. 1. It's actually good pay. In fact some farmers have tried raising the pay to attract more workers, it rarely works. Farms are in the middle of nowhere. There's no city. MAYBE there's a post office and a store that sells exclusively Croation gass station fare. MAYBE. It's temporary work. You get a few months pay. So. Remote, physically demanding, and temporary. That's what makes it a ''no thanks'' job for every American. We live hand to mouth, we live in a stack of cards that requires constant payments. That's not a problem in Latin America for the most part, they live hand to mouth but they can save up money, they are maxed out on payments and debt, they just throw extra money in a jar and only live of what they really really need. So working a few months in the US, then Canada, then Mexico, it's OK. That's why they're called seasonal farm workers. When you close to boarders you trap them out of their job and create insane problems. I don't know why Americans can't figure out how the food gets to the Walmart, but they have been failing up grasp this for a long ass time.
You're not gaslighting anyone into thinking $17 an hour is worth much of anything. What the fuck does "some farmers have tried raising the pay to attract more workers, it rarely works" mean?? Oh no, farms are paying more, better not work there. Are you retarded? You don't see rednecks passing up oilfield work because it's out in the middle of nowhere. Couldn't possibly have anything to do with the six figure paychecks those jobs have. Nope. Hell, I bet if you dropped their pay to $17 an hour, every roughneck in the field would sprint as fast as they could over to thank you personally. What a fuckin genius idea.
So what amount of pay would YOU want to do that type of work for? And what would you be willing to pay for the food produced at that wage level?
You guys were bitching about the cost of eggs being $5 a dozen not too long ago. And just a few years ago it was the cost of Doritos and cornflakes because of high corn prices. So make up your minds. Either you can pay the temporary fieldworkers $50 hr, or YOU can have cheap food. Which is it going to be?
I've been running my own garden for three years now on a community plot. I don't ask anyone to work for me, and I don't pay anyone. I pick what I want and everyone else does the same. Sometimes they help, sometimes they don't. It doesn't change anything for me.
I can't fix your busted local economy for you. I do know that paying $30/hr will get a lot of people out doing something they don't necessarily like, even if they have to drive for it. Even in a place with ridiculous cost of living like California.
I knew guys who left their house at 1 in the morning to be 120 miles away for the start of work at 4. I asked one of them why they did it. They said "Where we live, you either go out and get a real job, or you work in the fields". It's not even about the money. It's mostly about the benefits. How many farmers offer medical, paid holiday, or sick pay?
These guys worked 10s and 12s every day. They work hard, and they want that work to mean more for them than someone else's profit. That's ALL you are offering.
The funny thing is that if they used the 100k/year for labor, they would be able to pay out $87,600 after 12.4% employer tax, this equates to ~$42.11/hr. I absolutely promise workers will line up for that wage.
Course that still doesn't provide healthcare. That being said, the farmer is pocketing more money by paying the employee so little than what the employee actually makes, and this money is not at all earned by the farmer, but a handout from taxpayers. The employer gets to profit from the fruits of their labor on top of making more money simply by paying them the legal minimum they can pay with the program.
They took our jerbs!
It makes plenty of sense when you realize that grift and sensationalism were the goals all along
The system has been set up to extract as much wealth from the workers while offering the thin illusion of ultimate freedom to distract from said extraction.
At least three typo mistakes in this article. The degree of publish-fast-don't-edit in our "journalism" is off the scale. I hate it.
Anyway, this is what you voted for, asshole.
They demanded the freedom to treat women and minorities as subhuman, and Trump supplied them with a government that said "yes, that's exactly what we'll do, and we won't even bother to pretend otherwise"
Yes, they do. It's why they voted for Trump, so they don't have to. What they want is to be able to explot cheap labor sans consequences and keep all the profits, not paying any taxes.
Currently some hicccups along the way to thier nirvana, which is why they're complaining and waiting for the fix.
And yet they wont change their political positions. Theyd much rather go broke.
go anti-woke go broke. anti-woke is actually one of the republican voters top concern in a poll last year.
Honestly, it would be good if Republican businesses go kaput, and leave the field(s) to more humane and sane businesses that value society.
It won't. They will be bought off for pennies on the dollar by large farming corps.
Just buy a Musk-branded, doge- approved, exploding slave neck collar and perimeter fence kit. Keeps your child employees motivated, on-task, on-location.
Proles hate this one easy productivity hack, the results will shock you!
Not too long ago, historically speaking, kids were in coal mines, chimney sweeps, etc
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_labour
And Sarah Huckabee Sanders is trying very hard to get kids back into the workplace.
And she wonders why people hate her.
Arkansas is a failed state.
Finding new and different applications for the Musk RTO technology!
You DONT understand! All he Wanted was to Bully GAY Kids! He NEVER thought HIS Immigrant Workers who were STRAIGHT would be DEPORTED too EVEN THOUGH Trump promised to do that! STOP being SO Divisive you STUPID LIBRUL COMMIES!
-Chuck Schumer and the DNC!
What a Rollercoaster ride of a comment... fuck politicians in the US. This is the downfall of our society
The leopard of eating faces is going to become obese after the end of this year
The leopard is already on a triple bypass. By the end of the year, if it keeps going like this, they will be doing a sleeve gastrectomy.
capitalism suddenly stops believing in the supply demand graph once coercion is off the table
real "food comes from the supermarket" vibes here...
Being an American who is stuck here and didn't choose any of this, wishing additional suffering upon us doesn't feel great, but I understand where you're coming from.
You can thank our fellow countrymen for that. America deserves international contempt because collectively were an international bully. I've gone overseas and have had a person tell me straight up I was the only American she has enjoyed talking to.
People overseas fucking hate us. Maybe if we bomb the middle east just one more time we can turn things around.
You talked about how entertaining it will be to watch our agricultural industry collapse. Different but feels pretty similar.
Plus your gross hate complex for the entire country. It's weird. Go outside.
Well, it will be entertaining, there's no doubt of that.
Don't want to sink with it? Leave the fucking sinking ship. The writing was on the wall for a full decade already.
"Well, no, you didn't actually say what we said you did but we don't like you anyway so fuck off"
Lemmy's really gone to shit lately with you cunts
You do realize that corporations don't care. They will import foods and this will also encourage small local farmers. Some will turn to gardening and foraging which is like printing money with no taxes.
Isn't $7/hr minimum wage? That's slave conditions as well.
Let's think about this. If you work 8 hours under the hot sun with little breaks, you'll get $56 and that's before taxes. It's insane. That's probably not even what they're paying them.
Farm labor is often 12-14 hour days. It's backbreaking work. Also, Florida and Texas (and I'm not sure what other states) have passed laws eliminating guaranteed water breaks for outside workers.
I'm sorry, what the fuck?
The one in Texas got overturned in courts, but as far as I know, the Florida one made it through
https://www.npr.org/2024/04/12/1244316874/florida-blocks-heat-protections-for-workers-right-before-summer
Lower for agriculture workers under certain circumstances.
Do you have a choice when you starve or work for what you can get? This isn't rocket science.
Or I could pan handle. Or go to one of many homeless shelters/kitchens in my city. A couple options there.
And on what planet would you not expect someone to work for food?
Is pan handling legal?
Didja know there’s often waiting lists for shelters? Didja know that food banks usually require proof of residency? (Good luck cooking that bag of beans if you are unsheltered. Milk might have a few chunks in it too.)
Hmm, I wonder if you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.
They're options. I didn't say they were good options, just that they were there.
The best way forward is to find a decent job that pays a living wage. Get your CDL or something, it's really not that hard.
Epilepsy.
I had a job that paid a living wage, they just made it illegal for trannies to have it 🙃
$7.25/hour is not a "living wage" regardless. It's slavery, with extra steps
You can go to a place with better wages. Like many gas stations.
And living wage heavily depends on location.
What's your wage? I bet it's not $7 an hour.
No no, I did about six months of construction work out of high school, got my shit together and now I make a good wage. It might be harder for some people than others, but it's still possible.
No it isn't if you're a minority of any kind in some places. Someone who landed on 2nd base telling everyone to become a professional player and hit a home run. I know you're trolling, but hopefully this gives people something to read if they're banned from the game.
Bootstraps, ammiright
remind me of the post after brexit
Lol. What a clownshow. You voted for this, morons. Decisions have consequences, even/ especially if it's to sit out and do nothing, and yes, im now talking about the other group of idiots.
Absolutely. But I’m beginning to think there weren’t as many sit-outs as certain precincts would have us believe.
If we all have to get fucked over, I'm definitely gonna laugh at the morons who chose this and will suffer worse than me
Everywhere there's lots of leopards
Leading leopard lives
You can see them out for dinner
With their leopard wives
Clutching forks and knives
To eat MAGA faces!
jaguars, lions, tigers and hyena are being shipped into help eating faces.
(to the tune of "Piggies" by The Beatles if anyone didn't pick up on it)
I’m surprised that they haven’t considered using prison labour yet.
It is also ironic that people in the US criticize alleged slavery in other countries but ignore their agricultural economy
"THEY TUK URR JERBS!!!!"
Morons
Way to screw all of us over your jingoism
What’s funny is the old idea that book nerds know things but farmers do things is a source of pride for farmers.
The reality is that farmers are just nerds also.
Yet they think of themselves as something else, like mythical strong men beasts who feed the rest of us useless folks.
The real strong men are the very immigrants that do the literal toiling while the farmers are basically like mini CEOs by comparison
Their rejection of the very nerdiness thst gives them their mystique is ironic
They are smart enough to turn land into food
But not smart enough to realize how they actually do it
I heard this story during his last administration. Assclowns never learn.
Listen up, MAGAt American farmer:
You better keep your prices low, or I won't buy as much American food!
Good! No exploiters should be able to sustain their practices.
This called having the day you voted for
No-one want to be exploited any more!
Question: Are you getting great already?
Actually feeling far less great than any time in my fairly long life.
These guys are certainly the landlords of our time
When bunker people run the country, the country becomes a bunker.
Wow. So much ignorant hate here, as always in the enlightened misinformation age.
Most farms aren't corporations. In America for example more than 80% of farmers are smalltime. They don't dictate their profits or the wages they can afford to pay, or influence the prices of their crops or all the crap they have to buy to do farming. A typical American farmer makes $40-50k a year, and every year they risk going into the red or bankruptcy because of fluctuating prices. I really don't know why anybody in their right mind would keep farming. Family tradition or whatever - apparently it's "in their blood".
As always, a lot of people here have jumped right onto the binary world tailgate, using their vast 3-second attention spans to make a value judgement about who wears the black and white hats in the situation and who's evil, then they thumb-type a few decisive words of irrefutable justice wisdom - in this case about evil farmers treating people like slaves.
It's great that Lemmy is non-corporate and part of the fediverse, but after 7 or 8 months here I'm more and more developing the opinion that it's just another kneejerk ignorance shithole on the social media superhighwqy. Scroll on, brave justice warriors, scroll on! And enjoy your lunch.
Robots will take over?
cylons will take over, after they go all skynet on humans.
May not have choice in the coming years.
Well this is good
You can't expect a good end for the net negative incentives all the collectivist immigrant policies created during this time. Here is the backlash.
Ironic for people that keep saying to have empathy for others, and yet everything they do keeps increasing human suffering.
Great idea guys
Yeah let's allow everyone to enter the country. Where will they work, how will they provide for themselves? What do you say? Not our problem now!
Ah but y'all knew the incentive was already there. People desperate for work and people in need of cheap labor go hand in hand
An industry can't be based on cheap exploited labor just like that
Now the guys who you hate have to undo what you did
Now they need to remove the incentive on why people come to the US in the first place and the ones related to companies not having actual consequences to hiring illegal inmigrants
Shit will get expensive? Sure, but it will be worth it right?
People will need to work more? Of course, every poor citizen of the us usually has to work their ass of. But now much more
The cheap food and goods festival over? Well, about time
Good thing mossad infiltrated USA, otherwise it would be too overpowered.
Good thing mossad infiltrated USA, otherwise it would be too overpowered.