Posted on 03/30/2016 8:39:26 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Brilliant, you farmers just pull a million or more out of your butts for machinery.
Shows how clueless politicians are wrt to economics.
I would tell you the proper answer but don’t want him to steal it.
We’ve got 90 million working-age Americans NOT working now.
America incurs massive debt for the huge nanny-state to encourage people NOT to work and employers NOT to hire. Fix that first.
Even when I was a teen in Iowa, not that many young people wanted to detassle, walk beans or the like.
I am surrounded by small Wisconsin farmers - both dairy and produce. Those that I know do not hire immigrants. They hire local and pay decent including room and board. The huge factory farms, which are trying to put the smaller family farms out of business are the ones hiring the immigrants.
detassling is a bitch!
Turned out I was allergic to the tassels, so I went back to walking beans.
We’ve got 90 million working-age Americans NOT working now.
America incurs massive debt for the huge nanny-state to encourage people NOT to work and employers NOT to hire. Fix that first.
and we have many more in minimum security jails that could do this work
Nice demonstration of Cruz not understanding economics. If labor costs < capital costs for a given job, then it doesn’t make sense to replace the workers with machines. And I imagine for the most part that agriculture has already been mechanized when and where it can be.
Is Cruz proposing a giant new subsidy for all these magical new machines?
I’m in Tillamook OR at their creamery often, and their dairy farms have started to bring in automated milking equipment. There are so many advantages to it, and the milk is tested before it leaves the milking head.
The cows prefer them, as they get to decide when they need to be milked.
Some agricultural processes can be automated, some cannot.
If the agricultural industry thinks that the illegals they hire now will work for the same low wages after they become “legalized”, they are fools.
There have been over 50 million abortions in this country and now there are over 40 million immigrants in this country. The work needs to be done and the taxes paid to fund the district of corruption. Robots do not pay taxes. Robots will not be used and the government will not provide incentives as long as the robots do not pay taxes.
Maybe he really is serious about sending those 50 million illegals back home and wants to problem-solve for the affected industries?
The guy pretty much admitted he was using illegals because no Americans wanted the job.
Cruz stated it as a way to cut the costs if he had to pay MARKET wages.
We can’t have both. Either some farmers go out of business because they can’t afford to modernize or pay market wages or we keep illegals.
The first one is capitalism.
[Even when I was a teen in Iowa, not that many young people wanted to detassle, walk beans or the like.]
They liked to detassle corn until legislators and the media told them no one wanted to do those kind of jobs. They said the same things about working in restaurants, roofing, carpentry, etc. They were brainwashed.
Farming has steadily moved toward more automization, just like most industrial jobs. It will continue to do so.
It is regulation that is killing jobs, and especially stupid enviromental regulation.
We have cleaned up 95% of the pollution for example fo $1, but the EPA insists that we pay $10 to clean up the next 2%
I’m in favor of mechanization as an alternative to politicians. Difficult to see what benefit Congress is. I’d rather get an email once a week asking me to vote on a half dozen issues. Conservative media is a fraud. Since the rise of the administrative state, separation of powers is dead. Admin agencies legislate, execute and exercise judicial powers over their own actions. The failure of overpaid blowhards like Limbaugh, Hannity, BeckLevin and Savage to address underscores their complicity in perpetuating misery for those of us actually capable of self-governance. Just say no.
I did those for minimum wage. Those wages had to go up above minimum wage ($3.35) in subsequent years, and they had to use machines, too.
Detassling was very short term work and the pay was terrible. Kids were looking for work that lasted the entire summer.
Trump hired temporary workers willing to work for a few months at a time, not illegals. The same kind of workers that work in the fields at harvest time, LEGALLY here.
In actual capitalism when there is a period of high unemployment wages go down and more people are offered jobs. This does not happen any more wages are “sticky” downward, Keynes understood this as early as the 1920s.
Over-capitalization hurts small operations because they become vulnerable to financial conditions outside their control and their capital costs cannot be reduced. Otherwise when conditions turn bad they can reduce costs of labor somewhat by laying off people, changing working hours, firing people.
How many of the farmers thought Cruz’s answer was helpful? Any?
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