patrick.net

zzyzzx says

you think American’s won't get off their lazy ass for less than 60K per year and Air conditioning.

Well a lot of those jobs require hard work and even my parents have a few Mexican employees after years and years of hiring local yokels, known as bricktuckians.

Of course, they can't afford to pay someone 60K unless they are working in a managerial capacity.

In any event, the only reason I can think of that Dan would say that a person won't get off their ass for less than. 60k and air conditioning is because he knows virtually no Americans who are poor enough to jump at the opportunity. Only middle-upper middle class professionals I would suspect.

Also, if farms bad to pay that kind of money to Americans to get them to show out, many fewer would be hired and the economics of further mechanization/automation would suddenly start to become more cost effective

OMG with out illegals who will work the farms, drive around LA no farms here.

zzyzzx says

You are pathetic if you think American’s won't get off their lazy ass for less than 60K per year and Air conditioning.

Like I said, your straw men arguments are transparent. Sure, Americans will work at Walmart and McDonald's for minimum wage. That does not mean they will do backbreaking farm work for minimum wage. You're either an idiot for not understanding what I said or a despicable liar for pretending that you don't.

Oh, and your tomato video offers no contradictory evidence. Here's some real evidence.

A day in the strawberry fields seems like forever

LA Times: "Americans don't want to do the fieldwork. They'll go over and make hamburgers for $8 an hour with no insurance, no nothing, when they can make more money here," Teixeira said. "I don't care if you pay $20 an hour, they'll come here one or two days, and they're gone. It's a mind-set: They think fieldwork is below them."

And what happened when Alabama experimented with getting rid of illegal immigrants? Their agricultural industry collapsed despite there being massive unemployment.
Bloomberg: Why Americans Won't Do Dirty Jobs

For years, Rhodes has had trouble finding Americans willing to grab a knife and stand 10 or more hours a day in a cold, wet room for minimum wage and skimpy benefits.

Most of his employees are Guatemalan. Or they were, until Alabama enacted an immigration law in September that requires police to question people they suspect might be in the U.S. illegally and punish businesses that hire them. The law, known as HB56, is intended to scare off undocumented workers, and in that regard it’s been a success. It’s also driven away legal immigrants who feared being harassed.

Rhodes arrived at work on Sept. 29, the day the law went into effect, to discover many of his employees missing.

His ex-employees joined an exodus of thousands of immigrant field hands, hotel housekeepers, dishwashers, chicken plant employees, and construction workers who have fled Alabama for other states. Like Rhodes, many employers who lost workers followed federal requirements—some even used the E-Verify system—and only found out their workers were illegal when they disappeared.

In their wake are thousands of vacant positions and hundreds of angry business owners staring at unpicked tomatoes, uncleaned fish, and unmade beds. “Somebody has to figure this out. The immigrants aren’t coming back to Alabama—they’re gone,” Rhodes says. “I have 158 jobs, and I need to give them to somebody.”

There’s no shortage of people he could give those jobs to. In Alabama, some 211,000 people are out of work. In rural Perry County, where Harvest Select is located, the unemployment rate is 18.2 percent, twice the national average. One of the big selling points of the immigration law was that it would free up jobs that Republican Governor Robert Bentley said immigrants had stolen from recession-battered Americans. Yet native Alabamians have not come running to fill these newly liberated positions. Many employers think the law is ludicrous and fought to stop it. Immigrants aren’t stealing anything from anyone, they say. Businesses turned to foreign labor only because they couldn’t find enough Americans to take the work they were offering.

That's some pretty hard-core empirical evidence that you are completely and utterly wrong. The experiment has been ran and the indisputable results are in. 211,000 unemployed Americans chose to remain unemployed rather than to even attempt to fill the 158 jobs in agriculture. And if you were or are unemployed, you'd make the exact same decision.

And why? Because no one wants to work these shit jobs and even the damn few that try at all leave immediately when they find out what the reality of the job is.
US Farmers Farm Owners Depend on Illegal Immigrants

With U.S. unemployment near 10 percent, many believe illegal immigrants are taking jobs from Americans. But when the United Farm Workers union launched a campaign offering to connect unemployed people to farm jobs, only three people accepted -- out of thousands of inquiries.

Union president Arturo Rodriguez says most balked at the difficult working conditions.

"They really don't have any idea what it is to work in agriculture today," he says. "We've just gotten so far away from that type of society that people have forgotten."

He says he's tried to hire Americans, but he simply can't find enough able and willing do the work.

"The truth is, nobody is raising their kids to be farm workers," he says.

Of course, fuck the farm owners, rather land owners or lords, who don't want to pick their own crop and just want to siphon the wealth production of the actual farmers, the migrant laborers. This is no different than the feudal system in the Dark Ages. The greedy and lazy land owners cannot and would not do the hard work, so peasants had to be beaten down into submission. When the Black Death came and killed off enough peasants that the survivors could demand decent wages, the seven hundred years of economic stagnation ended and the Renaissance began ushering in the modern world. It's amazing what stopping the impoverishment of the masses can do for an economy. Had the peasants not gained the upper hand, Europe would still be in the Dark Ages and China would have conquered the North and South American continents. And you, zzyzzx, would be a serf living a life harder than the illegal immigrants you blame for everything.

And Alabama's experience is by no means unique. The experiment has been repeated several times with the exact same result.
Alabama Illegal Immigrant Crackdown Destroys Farm Business

Alabama’s situation is not unique. Georgia passed a similar immigration law in 2011. When undocumented workers fled, farmers lost around 40% of their workers and $140 million worth of blueberries, melons, onions, and other crops due to labor shortages. This year Georgia farmers again fear they will be short on workers to pick the crops, and many have scaled back production or stopped planting altogether.

It’s not only Southern states; farmers all across America are dependent on migrant labor. For example, immigrants make up 40% of Wisconsin’s dairy industry workers and almost one in three U.S. farming and fishing workers is from Mexico.

Many farmers land owners want to hire local workers, but it is increasingly difficult to find U.S. natives with the proper skills. Few are willing or able to perform the physically taxing and low paying labor which requires them to move with the crops, even with wages of $15-$20 an hour. Georgia recently experimented with creating a program that allowed parolees to work as farm laborers, but it was unsuccessful when they wouldn’t — or couldn’t — endure the grueling days.

Pennsylvania farmers land owners say local Americans just don't want farm work

Pennsylvania farmers insist it gets harder every year to find enough workers — and low pay isn’t the problem.

For example, he says fruit pickers in Adams County, who get paid according to how much they pick, commonly earn $14-$20 an hour. But it’s very hard work, he stresses, often done under uncomfortable conditions and on all days of the week. It also takes a lot of experience and skill to pick well enough to earn those wages.

He says farmers advertise for local workers, but attract few applications.

“Americans, for the most part, are not interested in doing this type of work,” he says. “They prefer to make less money and work in a fast food restaurant or a supermarket where the conditions are more comfortable.”

Yes, that's the reality. All evidence demonstrates unequivocally that like you all other Americans would rather get paid less than do the grueling work of farming. Not even for $20/hr. So my $30/hr figure is damn conservative and almost certainly too low to fulfill all the jobs. The real figure is so high that many think it doesn't exist. Of course it does, but it's way more than the wealth production possible from farming, i.e. it would cost more to get Americans to do the labor than the labor is worth.
Alabama Immigration Law Causing Produce To Rot In The Fields

As we learned yesterday, and as Georgia farmers learned earlier this year, picking vegetables simply isn’t something that Americans are willing to do no matter what the wages might be. There’s nothing wrong with that, really. Standing outside in the hot sun, bending over, and picking tomatoes, onions, or cabbage isn’t fun to say the least and doing it for eight or nine hours a day, five or six days a week, is physically and mentally exhausting. There are people out there who are willing to do this work, though. So willing that they’re willing to take the risks of immigrating and living under the radar just for the privilege of starting a life in the United States of America. The response of states like Alabama and Georgia, though, has been to respond to the xenophobia that lies beneath most anti-immigrant rhetoric and pass laws that chase these people out of their states, leaving the farming industry high and dry during a period is rough to begin with.

So bitch all you want, zzyzzx. That doesn't change the verifiable facts, the hard-core evidence, the empirical examples that all disprove everything you've said and confirm what I've stated all along. You can call evidence bullshit if it contradicts your position, but everyone knows it's you that's full of bullshit, not reality. The most basic scientific principle is that if reality contradicts your theory, it's your theory that's wrong, not reality.

MMR says

In any event, the only reason I can think of that Dan would say that a person won't get off their ass for less than. 60k and air conditioning is because he knows virtually no Americans who are poor enough to jump at the opportunity. Only middle-upper middle class professionals I would suspect.

That is true. The only reason you can think of is that. However, that's the result of your limited intellectual capacity and imagination. Plenty of people could imagine other reasons for my statements. However, using your imagination is not necessary as I have provided this thing called evidence as the basis of my beliefs. There is no need to conjecture about what is going on inside my mind, and the messenger is irrelevant to the message, anyway. All you have to do is look at the evidence. Evidence is all that matters.

It's really sad that most Americans personalize economics and politics instead of treating these things as a science in which the facts are verifiable and ideas are testable. This stupid cultural trait is the primary reason that America keeps repeating the mistakes of the past instead of fixing problems.

Not the case for other jobs. When I hire contractors to work on the house or yard, illegals do indeed compete with citizens. E.g., landscaping jobs. I am always surprised when what appear to be citizens show up to bid on work. Yes, American citizens are engaged in landscaping work, and they face competition from illegals. Ditto basic carpentry jobs.

US agricultural interests have always worked with the gubberment to allow farmworkers entry into the USA. That is one reason why US immigration law that banned folks from Africa, Asia and Europe did not apply to those south of the border.

Dan8267 says

So bitch all you want, zzyzzx. That doesn't change the verifiable facts, the hard-core evidence, the empirical examples that all disprove everything you've said and confirm what I've stated all along. You can call evidence bullshit if it contradicts your position, but everyone knows it's you that's full of bullshit, not reality. The most basic scientific principle is that if reality contradicts your theory, it's your theory that's wrong, not reality.

What a load of crap. All your "empirical" examples, actually they are anecdotal examples, talk about low wages. Did you read what you posted?

For years, Rhodes has had trouble finding Americans willing to grab a knife and stand 10 or more hours a day in a cold, wet room for minimum wage and skimpy benefits.

Martin says wages, benefits and labor conditions for farm workers have remained relatively poor for decades because of the steady stream of illegal immigrant labor.

Few are willing or able to perform the physically taxing and low paying labor

But some organizations, such as the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Immigration Studies, argue the problem is farmers’ unwillingness to pay sufficient wages and provide acceptable working conditions. If they offered those things, farmers would be able to find local workers to fill their labor needs, the center has argued.

Right from your posted articles. So yea if people have a choice of $8.00 an hour at mcdonalds or $8.00 doing backbreaking work out in the sun they will choose mcd's.

bob2356 says

What a load of crap. All your "empirical" examples, actually they are anecdotal examples, talk about low wages. Did you read what you posted?

Hey Bob, you got another post that actually makes sense. But it wont be for long, just wait and see.

bob2356 says

All your "empirical" examples, actually they are anecdotal examples

I don't think you know what those words mean.

empirical: based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic.

anecdotal: not necessarily true or reliable, because based on personal accounts rather than facts or research.

The examples I gave most certainly are based on facts, not personal accounts, and verifiable by observation. The evidence has been independently verified by several sources. You can't get more empirical than that.

Look, I understand that you want to dismiss evidence that contradicts your world view, but you just can't throw around terms that don't apply and magic that evidence out of existence. That's not how reality works. Facts are persistent no matter how much you dislike them.