They both created it, but actually if we want to nit pick the US govt
created this whole labor market back around WWII with a *legal*
migrant worker program to support American farms during the war when
so many farm workers were away fighting. Somewhere 'tween then and
now the Govt lost it's grasp
The workers didn't created the uneven playing field. The companies
that hired them did.
On 6/23/07, Cameron Childress <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> They would be forced to get off their lazy asses and mow their own
> lawns, cook their own food, and ***gasp*** apply free market
> forces (
Technology/automation vs cheap labor is one thing.
Technology/automation versus illegal labor (or illegally cheap) is
another. Remove the illegal labor and I think the technology would
advance faster, improving the US's competitiveness with both first and
third world farms...
-Cameron
On 6/24/07,
What I was getting at was that we are competing, more so every
day, with the rest of the world. And teh 3rd world, in some cases.
So, if the better tech IS the answer (which it always is, but some
stuff is hard to automate), we'll get there even with cheap labor,
cuz the automation is only viable
That's actually kinda my point - in agricultural areas where there isn't
cheap labor available in the US, those areas have been automated. Areas
with cheap (illegal) labor don't advance because the low costs farms have
when they break labor laws. That, in my opinion, has been artificially
suppress
Our tech is the only reason we've been able to keep up with the rest of the
world, actually. See tomato picking, for instance. We'd be slaughtered by
3rd worlders with plenty of cheap labor if we didn't have superior (and keep
producing superior) technology.
It's sorta artificial, anyways. We w
They would be forced to get off their lazy asses and mow their own
lawns, cook their own food, and ***gasp*** apply free market
forces (aka: innovation) to fruit picking which have been artificially
held back for THIRTY YEARS due to the uneven playing field that
illegal and underpaid work
