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Breaking news: Trump is saying he will not be deporting illegal immigrants who work on Farms and in Hotels.
Gavin Newsom is claiming it for a win for the violent riots that have taken over LA and other major cities.
This is a bit of a let down for Trump Supporters and anyone who wants to take America back from those who were not invited. Especially with Gavin Newsom rubbing it in the public's face. Especially with American Approval of deportation efforts have been increasing.
Trump's rationale appears to be:
Hotels/farms are low hanging fruit, it's easy to pick up illegal immigrants from these locations.
After swooping these groups first, then the only applicants to these positions (at the wages the farms and hotels are willing to pay) are the criminal illegal immigrants.
So focus on criminality first.
Does this mean that, once every last criminal is deported, he will then do sweeps of farms and hotels? Left ambiguous.
One problem is the effect of exploitable labor goes in one way. Over the past 2 decades, Landscaping businesses that employed high school students and ex cons went out of business because they couldn't compete against undocumented workers.
If one farm gets raided, and one farm growing similar things does not get raided for another year, then the first farm needs to hire more expensive people and raise prices while the second farm will still benefit from the lowered wages. The farm that got raided first goes out of business first, the second farm maybe gets to buy up the first farm, then when they are inevitably raided they still stay in business and make more money now.
It's not fair. It's not fair that the government has not enforced its own rules surrounding hiring employees uniformly across industries.
The fair thing would be to deport 100% of everyone deportable all at once. The shock of that will be destructive to every industry that is predominately illegal immigrants.
The next fair thing might be to deport 10% of employees in every business all together, then another 10% later, and so on until the bottom is reached.
Of course, the above two "fair" plans are ridiculous. We do not have the man-power to do it.
Any other fair ideas? Besides Trump's new plan of "Don't try to tackle this right now."
Farms are one of those things where you just can't get Americans to do it. You can pay well-above market rate, they won't do it. You can hire out of the parole office, they'll still quit knowing they stand a good chance of going to jail for it.
Like duh, Trump was never going to crack down on fruitpickers and no one really wanted him to.
I don't actually believe this but it definitely seems possible that the markets clear at prices that would be noticeably bad for the consumer.
From Oren Cass' "Jobs Americans Would Do" https://americancompass.org/jobs-americans-would-do/
Technically noticeable, but barely! Very interesting if true.
If I had to guess there's probably better ways to make farm work attractive, too, besides that – the article says that the average wage is $28/hour right now. For instance, normalizing shorter workdays (two shifts) or work weeks and paying more might generate a lot more interest and keep costs lower than simply quadrupling wages. But I'm spitballing (and not terribly familiar with what's normal in big ag right now anyway).
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These people really want a blue wave next year.
300 over a whole year is small compared to the inflation we've beeen seeing recently. And if it's coupled with increased wages then it's not too bad.
It's coupled with increased wages for the <1% of people who work on farms. The other 99% just pay higher prices.
Except all across the board, in this scenario, the country removes the downward pressure to wages caused by the underclass who can get paid under the table, who cannot ask for help if they are abused, and who are desperate to accept any wage to avoid going back home. That changes the wage equilibrium everywhere.
If farm wages double (not quadruple, like in the example above - I think that the quadrupling was a hyperbole) and farm workers make $40 an hour, price of groceries increases $150/year per family of four. Let's say $50/year for a single person.
Then anyone else in a shitty job can say, "is this really any better than making 40/hr picking corn?" And so now Amazon has to raise wages, or provide better working environments, to at least be better than farm work. And so it goes, rippling through the economy. Wages for the bottom third of the country should rise more than 150/yr.
Machinery is also abusable and doesn't require any wage at all, should we increase wages by banning it?
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There's a very straightforward way to resolve the humanitarian concern here.
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If other low-wage employers are increasing wages to compete with the new high-wage farm jobs, then the total cost to consumers will be more than the $150/year/family.
We know how this works out, because the main feature of the Biden economy was higher low-end wages paid for out of higher consumer prices. The median voter hated it enough to vote for the crook.
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