
Texas Companies Tie Worker Shortages to Immigration Fears - smaili
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2017/06/17/us/ap-us-immigration-crackdown-losing-workers.html
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soniman
When farm workers make a wage that can support a family of five without any
government benefits, including paying health care premiums without subsidies,
then we can start talking about a labor shortage.

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hn_throwaway_99
Arguments like yours seem divorced from the reality of what a farmer can sell
his produce for in the US. What your argument is really saying is that the
price of produce should greatly, greatly increase in the US. That may be a
fine argument, but if so you should explain how that is possible (i.e. it
would require very high import tariffs), instead of arguing basically that
farmers should pay much higher wages from their orchards of money trees.

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soniman
Employee wages are a tiny fraction of the cost of produce. To get a head of
lettuce to your supermarket, the main cost factors are land, irrigation,
fertilizer, farm equipment, seeds, pesticides, transportation, spoilage,
marketing, storage, compliance, retail markup, etc etc. Why is it that market
prices are fine for all of those factors but not for labor?

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hn_throwaway_99
> Why is it that market prices are fine for all of those factors but not for
> labor?

Huh, I don't understand that? It's clear that the problem _is_ that the market
price for farm labor is extremely low.

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soniman
And what's even more curious is that the farmers are complaining that there's
a shortage of workers. How can there be a shortage when the market price is
extremely low, as you put it? There is no shortage. The farmers will always
complain about "crops rotting in the fields," I made a Twitter account a while
ago to gently mock their endless whining.

twitter.com/bigagmoneybucks

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mc32
The article is very light on details.

That said, It'll be interesting to see if this lasts and if it does whether it
results in increased wages in the affected sectors or not. This presents an
opportunity to understand how this affects the economy one way or the other.

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sundaeofshock
We already have a number of examples in the US to choose. Economic impact is
begative and it does not result in increased wages. The Trump crackdown is
going to devastate US farming.

[https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/05/17/the-
law-of-unintended-consequences-georgias-immigration-law-backfires/amp/)

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gaius
_The Trump crackdown is going to devastate US farming._

Isn't this kinda on the farmers who built businesses that are only viable with
indentured/exploited labour?

I mean I am not saying I agree with Trump on this but let's call a spade a
spade shall we? Business that pay a market clearing price for workers do not
suffer from staff shortages.

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bluedino
What did plantation owners do when slavery was abolished?

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Broken_Hippo
I think some folks just went bankrupt and moved away. Larger plantations were
often spit up and sold off, and a few took up a form of sharecropping with
former slaves.

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gumby
This wasn't what I expected (and what it actually was wasn't that insightful).
When I worked in Texas I had many colleagues from Mexico (many more than I
encounter here in the Bay Area, where the number is in the single digits).
Most had PhDs from major US or Mexican universities.

There were dire predictions of educated non-Americans being unwilling to take
US jobs. Though the absence of something is hard to document, is there any
evidence this is actually happening? I know tourist numbers are dropping.

