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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   35726 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 9, 2025

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down on the farm, labor costs are typically less than 20% or for specialty crops close to 40% of total operating costs, and the price from the farm is about one-third the price on the shelf...

Quadrupling those wages might cost the typical family $300 in a year.

From Oren Cass' "Jobs Americans Would Do" https://americancompass.org/jobs-americans-would-do/

Quadrupling those wages might cost the typical family $300 in a year.

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.

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.

Are you saying inflation was caused by wages increasing instead of the government printing money?

Real wages went down in the Biden years.

What I recall during the Biden years was employers complaining that they couldn't find people to work for them, without being willing to raise their wages. And then Biden imported millions of new low-wage workers for the complaining businesses instead of letting the market come to a new equilibrium.

Changes in average real wages masks the explosion in bottom decile wages during the pandemic. That's a 12% gain in real terms for the bottom decile, 2019-2023.

I don't know why you are linking an average wage analysis from a single month as evidence of anything.

Are you saying inflation was caused by wages increasing instead of the government printing money?

Where did all the money the government printed go?

It was average wage taken from several months in a year span. But you are right, your article is better.

Where did all the money go? What did Pete Butigeg spend his 7.5 billion that was earmarked for charging stations across America in the Infrastructure and Jobs Act?

Probably a lot went to the pockets of Beltway grifters. It certainly didn't go into the pockets of actual construction workers.

Then there was the child tax credits, the stimulus checks, etc. Money went to everyone across the class spectrum.

Reading your article, it looks like the increase in wages was caused primarily by Minimum Wage laws increasing wages by fiat. I do not suggest doing that. Creating artificial floors is not great for a market. Even so, your article sounds pretty happy about increasing lower decile wages? Why is that? If you are correct, then should not it be obvious to an economically savvy publication to be terrified of the resulting inflation?

Or is inflation a little more complicated than that?

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