Monday, September 7, 2009

A REAL UNEMPLOYMENT SOLUTION

Why Don’t We Put the 10s of Millions of Unemployed in America to Work on the American Farms?

We could pay them $50/hr and it wouldn’t matter much for our like Safeway food prices too.

Article in part:

“…Consumers benefit from low farm wages, but less than many people believe: Farm wages constitute a surprisingly small part of the prices consumers pay at the grocery store. Farmgate prices average approximately one-third of retail prices, and labor costs represent approximately one-third of farmgate prices for fruits, vegetables, and horticultural products. This means, for example, that a 10-percent increase in farm wages would increase retail prices by at most 1 percent….”

The rest of the URL

http://www.urban.org/pubs/pap/summary.html

Most of what drives food increases has nothing to do with hiring low wage farm slaves, its packaging, like glass, aluminum and plastics….and the diesel to deliver the food [all driven higher by recent overpopulation driving energy higher and higher in price]….but let’s not forget one key food cost impact, especially the like Safeway profits [LOL]

Even America’s water shortages delta’s worsening, mainly due to uncontrolled overpopulation/immigration since 1990, adds costs and energy use to food….the deeper we dig for water the more energy it costs to pump it out. The Baby Boomers did good with their negative fertility rate since 1990, but only scientists types like me give them environmental kudos for a job well done, not corporate power political lobbyists for slave wages and lower RE prices.

But I’m just a scientist type who talks pragmatic. Go ahead, call me a hater for telling the truth, but you know, science truth has absolutely nothing to do with brainless defamation of character against me or unscientific pig-headed politics, clearly controlled by big corporations seeking slave wages anyway.

Reply – Quote

1 comment:

Pete Murphy said...

You're exactly right. I made the same observation while advocating for reduced immigration in my book. Consider tomatoes. A tomato sells for approximately $1.00. If a typical farm laborer making $5 an hour harvests 1,000 tomatoes per hour, then his labor contributes only 0.5 cents to the cost of that tomato. Raise his pay to $20 an hour, and the price of a tomato rises only 1.5 cents. But tomatoes will actually be more affordable because the increased demand for labor (resulting from giving the jobs to Americans instead of illegal aliens) will drive wages higher enough to offset the increased price.

Pete Murphy
Author, "Five Short Blasts"