As of now the only way most farms can survive is because of immigrants who are willing to work with no safety regulations for less than half of what an American citizen would make. How can we implement a system where we’re only employing citizens and legal immigrants without causing the price of food to skyrocket?
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Stop subsidizing it and let the market compete with itself until it stabilizes.
I appreciate your question posed to the other side…this is a good way to understand more of what the opposition thinks, so I wanna answer respectfully. I might not directly answer your question, but here’s my general mindset as a conservative (not all conservatives might agree):
Firstly, I disagree with the concept of a minimum wage. I feel like the job market would be best if minimum wage was eradicated (for citizens but also immigrants). You admitting that the immigrants are getting paid sub-minimum wages is (to me) undeniable proof that a minimum wage is bad (I’m not saying you support a minimum wage, btw).
Also, to me, I’ve seen this argument several places and it doesn’t make sense how people (I’m not criticizing you directly) are somehow ok with immigrants/employers doing illegal things (like paying sub-minimum). Perhaps my head was in the sand, but I never once heard this argument by liberals before Trump’s 2nd term. That (to me) feels like saying: “Without addiction, how can we control the homeless population?” (I am NOT putting words in your mouth, I’m just saying it feels like we’re justifying a bad and illegal thing just because it’s convenient to us). It honestly felt like liberals were denying this concept before six months ago (again, not speaking for yourself).
Having that said, without changing wage laws, I have no good solution to deporting immigrant agricultural workers without also raising food prices immensely. So yeah, minimum wage is the obstacle to this problem and I’d support any candidate who’d oppose it. However, I would also be for higher food prices if it meant to prevent farms from paying”under-the-table” since that feels so wrong to me.
(Btw, I’m a MAGA guy, but I very much oppose Trump’s tariffs…to me, they’re the same thing as minimum wages).
Hope this helps you understand my mindset 🙂
Abolish the minimum wage and pay the poors as little as we can possibly get away with 👍
Farmworkers are NOT paid “less than half” of what an American would make. The average hourly pay for a Farm Worker job in the US is $17.45. Hourly salary range is $10.82 to $26.20. Farmers will have to attract wokers with competitive wages. Even farmworkers cannot work for less than minimum wage.
Food will get more expensive, but not prohibitively expensive. Legal workers do pick crops and illegals actually get paid somewhat well. Labor costs will likely double (about 50% are legal). Wages are on average $13 an hour.
The problem is that it’s seasonal. If domestic workers don’t want to do it, then we could hire foreign workers on a visa. They get worker protections and the work conditions will improve which will lead to fewer food borne illnesses.
But it’s also possible that we’ll see an influx of rural domestic workers moving from poor regions like the rust belt or Appalachia to farming towns for the picking season. Some might stay the whole year.
Good for the economy since they won’t be sending money out as remittances.
How are we going to pick the cotton if we free all the slaves?
Industrialization. If you can think of a crop, John deere makes a machine to harvest it.over a period of years this is actually cheaper than paying wages. As an added benefit it creates good paying American jobs when we do this.
Contract. If farmers cannot afford to Industrialize right away, which is a realityfor many, contract the work to a harvest contractor. Harvest contractors buy, operate, and maintain the equipment for industralized farming.This can often be done for less than the wages that would have been paid. And creates good paying American jobs.
How do you know this is the case?
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So as a liberal you would be willing to enjoy benefits or profit off people being under paid doing dangerous work? You sound like a bad person, and the kind of person that gets people killed in hot semis because they heard they could come to America and get paid. ALL work in America needs to be done ON TOP of the table not under it. Every person working needs to have a social security number or at least a work permit and have wages reported to the IRS. period. Let the chips fall where they may. Because that’s how principles work. We believe in them we don’t just use them as a talking point.
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