Speaking backstage at the 10,000-strong pro-immigration reform rally in Seattle today, Rep. Jim McDermott puts aside the moral argument for reform, and presents it as a straight-up pocketbook issue:
“People have to understand there is a direct connection between cheap food in this country, and the fact that we have this workers who are coming from other countries.”
Americans spend a smaller percentage of their income on food now than they have at any time in our history, steadily falling from 24.2% of income in 1930 to 9.6% in 2008, and part of what makes our food so cheap is all that cheap immigrant labor. So while I suppose we could, with great effort and expense, seal off our borders and deport millions of immigrant laborers, we all better be ready to give up those 99-cent value menus in return.
The food delivery system in America is a shared monopoly. Only a handful of companies are responsible the vast majority of the food that American’s eat. Immigrant labor not only helps keep food costs down it helps keep that monopoly intact and keeps profits for food processors high.
There are also huge costs to our society. The use of illegal immigrant labor in meat packing plants has driven down wages in the midwest and helped spread the meth epidemic in places like Iowa (people used meth so they could work three jobs, where they used to only need one). See the book Methland for more.
http://www.methlandbook.com/
You get what you pay for.
I still don’t get how Dems,w/ large black base…would flood this country w/ even poorer Mexicans…thus depressing black wages and employement
oh yeah, its free votes…i guess that explains it.
Sounds like these immigrants are responsible for our childhood obesity epidemic. OTOH if they have cause meth addiction too at least they have balanced it out. Whoever saw a fat meth-head? As an added bonus meth and obesity have given McKenna and Michelle Obama respectively something to do. Hey three cheers for immigration.
2
What a racist piece of shit you are–you pit African-Americans against Latino immigrants. That is pure Karl Rove. Roast in hell, righton.
@3
They didn’t cause the meth problems. Cheap labor Republicans & Democrats & other assorted ilk set that up.
Proud Goatist,
Your claim@4 is specious like most farts from your fingers…
How many blacks were at today’s immigration rally? How come you don’t see Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton at these rallies Proud Goatist?
Puddy
Lobbying for the Golden Goat, once again? My friend, as you know, you have to earn the award through spewing wingnut nonsense, not through insulting me. I am fully confident of your ability to win yet again simply through your ability to spew. Go for it, Pud!
Once again Proud Goatist, when confronted with truths the Goatist slings the Golden Goatist Goat crapola. Telling the truth is an insult to your sorry ASS.
We’ll create the Golden Fool award. You are in the running with #4.
Do whatever fool. Goodnight!
Still waiting for the Proud Pyrite Goatist (Fools Goatist) to tell Puddy how many blacks he saw at the “rally”.
Puddy,
Are you suggesting that you confront me with “truths”? Pud, you are a propagandist and tool of wingnuttia. If Glenn Beck told you to pronounce that it was raining, you would do so, even if looking out the window would disclose a sun-baked day.
Right Proud Pyrite Goatist… drinker of the Daily Kook-aid!
What, I’m not your favorite any more? :(
FYVM
@1 Yep, a lot of people want to spin it as racism, but it’s not. It’s a cheap labor issue, with a lot of attendant collateral damage.
Mexico is a failed state, so you can’t blame them for trying to leave, but wages in this country have been stagnant since Reagan. Construction workers and those in a lot of other industries have suffered. Illegal workers have become a union-busting tool in the building trades. The result has been serious quality and safety problems. (Of course, developers continue to sell shoddily constructed homes for top dollar.)
“Americans spend a smaller percentage of their income on food now than they have at any time in our history,”
… and a larger percentage on health care than ever before, partly because the food industry’s products are so unhealthy.
http://i223.photobucket.com/al.....at_kid.jpg
@8 You shouldn’t smoke dope before going to bed and having sex. Your kids might be born stupid.
McDermott and the Progressives have already bankrupt America with Massive Deficit Spending and adding to the Nation Debt.
They are Kriminals and should be punished!
This just in from AP–
McDimwit is such a moron…he seems to think the money supply is endless with no negative consequences. Every Economist worth a sh*t says the only solution to our ultimate financial ruin is to STOP GOVERNMENT SPENDING.
McDimwit is a Kriminal!
Dems generally don’t. It’s the right wingers who hire them that do.
Ever go to farm country during election season? It’s almost always filled with right wing political signs.
Ronald Reagan’s more fanatical supporters in California were growers.
If right wingers don’t like illegal labor then don’t hire it.
Cite?
Of course not.. As long as the rich and the banks hoard the money to themselves – there’s no threat of inflation. And that’s exactly what’s happened.
Exactly! The dishonesty of the right wing over this issue is appalling.
@16 Mr. Cynical04/11/2010 at 7:32 am spewed:
That’s funny!
I imagine a cost curve of sh*t at one end and Nobel Prize at the other and then imagine how Cynical plots this curve.
Seriously, what do economists, folks with PhD-s and a paying gig as an economist say?
I know of two economists, both of whom won a Nobel Prize in the field, who disagree. I know of another economist who was just reappointed as Fed Chairman who disagrees in principle and in practice.
More amusing. Mr. Cynical, is the oblivious ignorance your comment shows about the asymmetry of information flaw in the glibertarian religion you subscribe to and proselytize for.
Congressman for life spews…
“People have to understand there is a direct connection between cheap food in this country, and the fact that we have this workers who are coming from other countries.”
The problem isn’t immigrants or workers who come here legally. Democats know this. Republicans know this. Everyone knows this.
Do it legally….that’s all anyone is saying.
It’s not racist to require someone to respect the sovereignty of the United States of America. There are plenty of programs that allow for temporary status within the United States to work.
@2 righton
Still wondering why your side doesn’t get votes?
So if the premise of this post is correct, we’re screwed under any scenario except the status quo. If we “get rid of” (the remarkably simple-sounding but expensive and probably impossible solution) our immigrants, then food costs go up and we solve our unemployment problem by forcing a bunch of inexperienced white people to pick lettuce. If we give them a path to citizenship and greater labor protections, then our food prices go up anyway.
So hey, let’s just keep a vast pool of illegal, unprotected workers here for us to exploit and call it good, OK?
Cyn @16
I’ll set aside for a moment the amusing thought of you claiming that you have some realistic, knowledgeable conception of the consensus among economists.
To your statement:
“Government spending,” pal, is about all that is keeping the good old US of A afloat right now. It is common knowledge (translation: maybe even you know it) that consumer spending powers the boat here, but that dropped off a cliff back in December 2008 and has not yet recovered, in part because we have about 10% unemployment. Cut off “government spending” and let the depression begin!
But I’ll be generous here and guess that what you really mean is something like “stop deficit spending.” That’s really a good idea–kudos to you if so. I support it as a general rule and would prefer to see balanced budgets and/or budget surpluses to deficits. However, counter-cyclicial deficit spending is reasonable and necessary during economic downturns (see previous paragraph).
The problem we have is that revenues and spending are not in balance. What we need is more revenue. And raising taxes a moderate amount, along with revewing our spending programs for efficacy and ongoing need (do we still need EVERY gov’t program?), and pruning where necessary but continuing to make investments in the industries and human capital we need to grow the economy, can balance our budget and promote our national well-being (a bit beyond merely averting our “ultimate financial ruin”).
How come everything is the end of the fucking world for you guys? I mean, it’s all black and white, and mostly black.
Hello.
Am I to understand this? Goldy says:
So while I suppose we could, with great effort and expense, seal off our borders and deport millions of immigrant laborers, we all better be ready to give up those 99-cent value menus in return.
So is he, like McDermott, advocating that we keep oppressing an entire group of people just to keep our costs down? Basically create a permanent servant class so we can save a couple dollars?
I can see valid points on both sides of this issue. The ’10 dollars for a head of lettuce’ argument is NOT one of them. This one disgusts me because it shows that people who are wanting equal rights for all are being hypocrites to save money.
At least I should thank them for being unintentionally honest about how they really feel about illegal immigrants…
it must give you guys headaches to simultaneously
a) believe there are too many people
b) know that Latinos on their own are far more than ZPG folks (easily replacing their parents)
c) suburban sprawl is our enemy, but importing people only adds to that
d) mexicans staying at home would be more “green” than coming here– the richer you get, the less green you get (sorry, its true)
Hmmm…? Proud Pyrite Goatist disappeared… Still waiting on that attendance numba!
Actually, it’s pure Compton and Watts. Rove had and has nothing to do with it.
Pukebucket leftist’s Rove Rage is troubling. His rage suggests a deeply troubled mind, a twisted mind in turmoil. Get professional help, leftist, before it’s too late. We’d suggest that you seek a broken and contrite heart at the confessional, but you’re probably smitten with twisted lust for the priest.
# 14: Historically, (and I’m going from memory from old sources here) the largest household consumption in the U.S. pre-WWII was on food (about 33%) and clothing (between 25% and 50%). Of course, there are lots of variations depending upon income class, urban vs. rural, etc. But the overriding factor was the relatively cheap housing costs, especially since so much of the U.S. was living in rural areas at the time.
The large proportion of income being taken up by clothing drove the mechanization of clothing manufacture in the 1800’s, from Eli Whitney’s cotton gin to the giant weaving looms of Britain and New England (originally powered by water, then steam). The cost of a medium-quality pair of shoes could easily cost one or two month’s wages, resulting in considerable friction between low-cost she manufacturers (often employing immigrant labor, i.e., the Irish), and shoe craftsmen who formed guilds, and later Unions, to fight against their cheaper (and shoddier) competitors. The earliest court cases in the U.S. revolving around organized labor involved shoe manufacturing companies seeking injunctions & obtaining injunctions against unions withholding their labor from such factory shoe-making mechanisms.
Now the shoe and clothing business in the U.S. is pretty much dead, with only a few small exceptions. If you check the labels in the stores, you would be hard-pressed to find clothing items manufactured in the U.S., they are almost all manufactured elsewhere (mostly China, but also Mexico, Vietnam, Malaysia, etc.). Since they pay their workers a pittance, the cost of clothing has gone down in general over the past fifteen years, especially when you factor in inflation. But this is rather a sad statement on the death of a proud industry within the U.S. In high school, I worked on the loading dock of a Buster Brown factory, loading boxes of children’s clothing into trucks between 4:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. every weeknight.
As for food, the U.S. produces quite a lot of it within it’s growing seasons, and California provides a very long growing season allowing two or even three crops per year of some types. But another factor in the low price of food is the relatively cheap cost of importing fresh food from other countries. The advent of the 747 and the incredible cargo space it opens up has made it possible to have fresh produce of every sort on the grocery store shelves year-round. The market for canned vegitables, and especially frozen vegitables, has steadily declined as a result.
So now (2010) you have 50% plus of a household budget going to housing, with less than 25% for food and maybe 10% to 20% going to clothing. But this is also a bit misleading, in that pre-WWII figures generally assumed there was one wage-earner, except in the cases of a family farm where everyone worked on the farm in one capacity or another. Since the mid-1970’s, we generally have two wage-earners supporting the household. So 50% of household income going to housing is actually more like 100% of one person’s salary, while the other person pays all the other bills (utilities, cars, food, clothing, gas, etc.). Of course, the average house for sale is a lot bigger than it was in the 1930’s or 1960’s, but that’s the subject for another post (one I’ve made before about allocation of resources towards luxory housing brings up the cost and lowers the availability of non-luxory housing).
Way back @6, Puddy drooled assholicly (so what else is new?):
As reported in the New York Times (emphasis added),
I saw no reference to Al Sharpton, but he’s rather insignificant (except in the fevered “minds” of wingnuts like Puddy) compared to the leaders of the NAACP and the Urban League.
Puddy’s wrong once again…