Sep 11th, 2008 at 5:25 pm
You Can’t Do It
I’d heard the audio of this before, but here via Harold Meyerson is the first time I’ve ever seen good video footage of John McCain’s shocking claim that Americans would be incapable of working as lettuce pickers even if the job paid $50 an hour:
$50 an hour times eight hours per day comes to $400 per day. Five days in a week comes to $2,000 a week. Figure a fifty week year and we’re talking about a $100,000 job. Hard work? Sure. Something Americans would be incapable of doing? I doubt it. That kind of money may be chump change to a guy with eight houses who thinks that people earning $4 million a year aren’t rich, but I bet there are plenty of people who’d take the job.
85 Responses to “You Can’t Do It”
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September 11th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
Palin thinks we might need to have a war with Russia? Huh?
September 11th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
Yes, but you liberals would force them to pick arugula, which would make them sick or something because it is an elitist vegetable.
September 11th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
If this doesn’t appear in Obama ads, or at least 527 ads, in Michigan and Ohio, then I guess he really doesn’t want to win. I’d sure be tempted for $50.00 an hour, and I’ve got a Ph.D…
September 11th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
Did he clear it with Cindy? Since she’d have to pay for it.
September 11th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
Attention Obama campaign:
This clip should be running non-stop throughout the Rust Belt.
Or something like that. That clip is gold, though- it’d be political malpractice not to use it.
September 11th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
Also, he promised to pay that. But then went back on his promise.
Can’t trust the guy, apart from him being utterly foolish in saying this.
September 11th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
If Obama moves to the right of McCain on illegal immigration, he wins, hands down.
September 11th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Post an ad for $50/hr to pick vegetables, and you would be friggin DELUGED with job applicants, I guarantee you. Shoot, I’d apply, and I have an office job currently.
There’s got to be a way to turn this into a TV ad. It just reveals how completely out of touch with economic reality McCain really is.
September 11th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Shh!!! Matt! Exposing this as a lie might hurt your chances at getting amnes – I mean, “comprehensive immigration reform” passed.
I thought you were in favor of deluging us with as many uneducated Mexicans as possible, the better to help elect welfare-state ethnic special interest-pandering politicians – you know, the kind you love.
September 11th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
You just saw this? This video was through the blogosphere like two weeks ago.
And it needs to be in an ad. Lots of them, actually.
September 11th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
Obama should say:
I’m still waiting for McCain to make good on his promise to offer me a job!
September 11th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
I know the idea is to make McCain look out of touch but let’s not lose sight of the fact that a lettuce picker does not make anywhere near $50 per hour.
September 11th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
Ooh, I’m unemployed and would like to find out where this swanky $50/hr lettuce picking job is. I think I’m qualified enough, as I do have a Masters degree. Besides, the physical nature of the job would make sure I get into shape so positive externalities.
September 11th, 2008 at 5:57 pm
It’s kind of a perfect clip–McCain bashing Americans’ work ethic, getting testy with the crowd, and reminding immigration-conscious Republicans why they didn’t like him before. Did you hear that Sarah Palin did *nothing* to secure our borders with Russia and Canada?
As a little bit of a correction to MY: to pick vegetables year round, you don’t just have to work all day in the sun, you have travel all around the country and hope you can get work. So making $100K is a bit tough even at those wages.
September 11th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
From the post: “a guy…who thinks that people earning $4 million a year aren’t rich…”
When McCain said that you have to make $5 million a year to be considered “rich,” he was obviously joking (just as much as Obama was obviously not being sexist or offensive with the recent lipstick-on-a-pig comment). As an Obama supporter, I’m no fan of McCain in general, but I wish Obama supporters (and Obama himself, in his acceptance speech!) would please stop deliberately misconstruing this particular McCain quote. I think it undermines the power of real criticisms. There are other, more honest ways to show that he is out-of-touch (for example, this video!).
September 11th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
$100,000 per annum? That lettuce-picking better be as rough as knocking out a book on foreign policy.
September 11th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
This hypothetical is so fatuous. Is the premise that the people in the audience are incapable of hard work? I know a lot of people who would be willing to pick lettuce if they were being paid $50/hour. I know a lot of people who have worked as pickers at one time or another in their lives. The problem with jobs in agriculture isn’t that they are too hard, but they don’t pay enough! Many pickers are paid less than minimum wage under the table with no benefits. And, hours depend on when the crops come in so you might have a couple weeks of steady hours and then a lot of off time. Even if you were being paid $50/hour that would only last for the season so you’d never get to $100k/year total.
The problem with $5 million a year being a “joke” is that McCain doesn’t offer a true figure to counter Obama’s. He basically denies that the question has any bearing. But, it is a serious question. Both candidates to some extent promise to provide relief to the middle class, but if their definitions of the middle class vary drastically then that colors the proposals quite a bit.
September 11th, 2008 at 6:09 pm
Agree with Joe re: “$4 million a year” having been obviously facetious, and hence a non-starter. Even the houses thing is more substantive.
September 11th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
Picking lettuce in Yuma. Lettuce? Yuma? No wonder the stuff in the store is so bitter and so expensive. Lettuce is a cool season crop, 55-65 optimal, and likes lots of water, six inches of consistently moist soil.
If we are incapable of harvesting our own lettuce as currently grown, maybe we should find a new system of growing it.
Matt, I know you regularly argue that urban densities are the best way for future development but have you seriously considered how they foster an unhealthy dependence on huge agribusinesses and factory farms?
September 11th, 2008 at 6:15 pm
Didn’t anyone take him up on the offer?
September 11th, 2008 at 6:16 pm
No one is paying $50 an hour for that work. What would be effective from an Obama campaign standpoint is to ask McCain where American could apply for those jobs?
What’s the location? The employer? The phone number?
September 11th, 2008 at 6:16 pm
Even if it is seasonal work and you end up working for 3 months @ $2,000 a week, that’s $24,000! That is above the US poverty line for a family of 4…
September 11th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
Doesn’t this kind of imply that people actually hear real criticisms? The media has spent the last two days arguing over the phrase “lipstick on a pig”, and you guys are concerned that that “$5MM/yr” criticism isn’t entirely accurate. McCain launches an ad claiming Obama wants to teach explicit sex ed to kindergartners, but you’re worried about the 100% accuracy of making fun of McCain for that “$5MM/yr” comment? Really?
September 11th, 2008 at 6:22 pm
I think I agree with the policy McCain is trying to defend here. It isn’t that I couldn’t pick lettuce for a year for $100000. Its that I would be more productive being an engineer for a year and getting paid the same amount. In fact I would prefer to be an engineer for a year. Since most Americans would be more productive doing something other than picking lettuce, we should import low skill workers to do this work while Americans with a High School education do more productive stuff. This probably reduces wages for low skill American workers, but it makes the rest of us wealthier and helps the people who immigrate here. We should probably have universal health care and other government measures to help low skill American workers and make rich people pay for most of it.
September 11th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
The first time I heard about “You can’t do it, my friends” was in this will.i.am knock-off that came out during the primary:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUKINg8DCUo
Now that would make a nice campaign ad.
“Thanks for the question, you little jerk.”
September 11th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
I don’t like McCain… in fact I can’t stand him. That being said this attack seems pretty lame. I don’t know who his audience was but unless it was bunch of non union factory workers/miners/etc. I would have to guess he was probably right.
I don’t even think it was a Dusty Baker-esque quasi rascist remark.
Sure $50 an hour sounds great but thats no health insurance, no workers comp, its seasonal, and perhaps the most important fact is that the work is tough as hell….
Okay I guess $50 is pretty out of touch… but I don’t think $25 is and the simple truth of the matter is that $25 is still waaay more than the lettuce people get paid.
September 11th, 2008 at 6:34 pm
Hell, I work in the mainstream media and I’d take that job.
September 11th, 2008 at 6:35 pm
@ Emma
Hydroponics appears to be an alternative… however there has to be a catch… maybe space constraints? anybody know?
September 11th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
It’s just like his remark about being in Iraq for 100 years: the “serious” point he is supposedly making is in fact totally wrong. Americans can and would get the crops in, agri-business would simply have to pay a higher price for the labor. It’s true that a couple of weeks in the fields would probably kill me, but I’m middle-aged. But it would be a fine job for a young person–see the country, save some money–if the pay were decent.
September 11th, 2008 at 6:42 pm
This is a real testament to just how profoundly out of touch McCain is.
He’s absolutely right that picking vegetables in the sun is tough work. But there are a lot of other really tough jobs that Americans do. And they do them for a lot less than $50/hour.
September 11th, 2008 at 6:52 pm
According to the clip, it was workers from the Building and Construction Trades Department of the AFL-CIO.
Sure it is, but that’s what’s offensive about this. If he meant to say “I don’t think you guys would like doing this work for $25/hr”, then he should have said that. But that’s not what he said. He said for $50 hour, probably 50% more per hour than those guys currently make, they can’t do it. Can’t! In other words, foreigners are much stronger workers than Americans, because not only will they work for less, but they can physically do work that Americans can’t do.
I’m not sure (unless you’re all really McCain trolls, but I’ll take you at your word that you aren’t), why everyone is so concerned about parsing his statement and giving him the benefit of the doubt. If he can’t get his point across, tough shit. He stood there and told American workers that they weren’t good enough to do hard physical labor in exchange for a pretty good amount of money. It should be hung around his neck from here until November 4th. John McCan’t.
September 11th, 2008 at 6:58 pm
What the commentors are missing here is that if lettuce pickers were paid $50/hour, nobody could afford to eat lettuce and they would soon be out of a job.
September 11th, 2008 at 7:02 pm
I am fairly certain he meant $50 a day, but the fact that he’s senile is no reason not to beat him over the head with this stuff.
September 11th, 2008 at 7:02 pm
Shit, that’s twice what my graduate-degree holding ass makes. I’ll pick your goddamn arugula.
September 11th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
It’s incredibly rich, to say the least, to see “liberals” like MattY finally picking up this story almost two and a half years after those of us who actually oppose illegal activity picked up on it.
In the intervening time, some Democratic Party politicians are still linked to the MexicanGovernment, several non-profits in the Dem orbit have direct or indirect links to that government, most Dem politicians have gone out of their way to support massive illegal activity, and on and on.
But, thanks for pretending to care. It means so much.
September 11th, 2008 at 7:10 pm
I’ve done a fair amount of farm scientific fieldwork and I actually agree with McCain on this one. I’ve worked in the same fields, doing far less than the pickers do. Picking lettuce is so much more brutal than any office worker can guess. I genuinely belive that anyone who had access to a minimum wage job at air conditioned WalMart would never pick lettuce, not even for a $100K/year.
Picking lettuce is relatively high paid, although not $50/hour. That’s because it only lasts three months, unless you follow the lettuce from Monterey to Imperial when the season changes. But more than that, you only get two or three years of picking lettuce before your back goes. I don’t believe that any of the people talking about switching over from desk jobs would exchange a lifetime of back pain for a couple hundred thousand dollars.
The cliche about growers having to bring in laborers from other countries even when there is relatively high unemployment in cities in their own counties is accurate. It is brutal, body-destroying work in heat that frequently kills people. People who believe they have other options wouldn’t do it; people who didn’t grow up doing physical labor probably couldn’t do it at a professional pace for any length of time.
I’m not a McCain fan, but having personally worked next to field workers, I agree with him on this.
September 11th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
Somewhere there’s a retired Vietnamese colonel who is kicking himself for not implementing the ‘force Americans to pick lettuce for 3 months and pay them a high wage’ technique in order to break the Yankee imperialist dogs.
September 11th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
brooklynmatt Says: Post an ad for $50/hr to pick vegetables, and you would be friggin DELUGED with job applicants, I guarantee you.
See 24ahead.com/blog/archives/004938.html
BTW: that’s from April, 2006.
Also, the draft DNC platfm says: we will increase the number of immigration visas for family members of people living here and for immigrants who meet the demand for jobs that employers cannot fill
That’s simply a variant on what McCain said. It’s also very similar to something Bush said several times.
It’s going to be awfully difficult for the Dems to now adopt a pro-American stance on this issue due to the various statements made by BHO, but I welcome them to try.
September 11th, 2008 at 7:18 pm
It should be mentioned that his assertion here is not only false in that people in the audience were willing to take him up on the offer, but because Americans already do pick lettuce for much less than this.
Who did he think was out in those fields? Europeans?
Unless, of course, John McCain meant “white people” when he said “Americans. But, my friends, we all know that John McCain is not a racist, so that can’t be true.
September 11th, 2008 at 7:24 pm
Here’s a question for everybody here.
If Obama moves to the right of John McAmnesty on illegal immigration and makes a big deal out of it, it’s Game Over. Obama is President. If he doesn’t, it’s a horserace and he might lose.
So, why aren’t you talking about the one tactic that could wrap up the election for Obama?
September 11th, 2008 at 7:25 pm
Americans already do pick lettuce for much less than this
No they don’t. Many pickers are here on seasonal contracts. Some pickers may have moved here and naturalized, and more power to them if they have. In that case, yes, they’re Americans with a hyphen. But many haven’t, and in any case, no one picking in fields is a second generation adult.
September 11th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
I would definitely pick tomatoes for $100,000 a year.
September 11th, 2008 at 7:41 pm
Megan,
I suspect the reason that lettuce picking frequently kills people has more to do with the abysmal working conditions (not being allowed water breaks, being forced into substandard shacks, etc) that migrant laborers are subjected to, and less to the work itself.
I’ve worked with farmers before (agricultural extension in a third world country). It is quite physically demanding work, without a doubt, but it isn’t physically damaging in the same way as being, say, a coal miner or a logger. Farm labor isn’t degrading and debilitating by its nature, it’s degrading and debilitating because the irrationalities of liberal-capitalist modernity have made it so.
I have a friend in inner city Boston who grew up on a farm in the DR, and he once expressed to me the wish that he could return there and grow cassava for the rest of his life. It may be harder than working at a Wal-Mart but it’s a hell of a lot more spiritually fulfiling.
Emma,
Big cities in Latin America and Eastern Europe seem to do pretty well without relying on agribusiness- they still get a lot of their food from small farms, and sometimes even from urban gardens. That model might be worth a shot in the US too.
September 11th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
Math is elitist,
you’re elitist,
you can’t win this fight.
September 11th, 2008 at 7:54 pm
To pay my way through college, I worked in a glass factory on the tempering line for $8.30 an hour (1998-2000). We would work 12 hour shifts (2 days on, 2 days off, work every other 3 day weekend) with 2 20 minute breaks a day, in temperatures that would regularly hit 110 degrees (we were near the furnace), glass would shatter into pieces that creates potentially lethal puncture wounds, and two of us would take nearly 30 tons of glass off the line and put it on racks each day. I cry complete and utter bullshit on your claim that a minimum wage worker at Walmart (which I also did for 2 years) making $11K a year wouldn’t saw his own dick off to make $100K picking lettuce.
We aren’t talking about office workers giving up a $100K job for a $100K manual labor job. We’re talking about my buddies like Jody, Phil and Dan who are already doing a goddamned, backbreaking job for a helluva lot less and telling them they couldn’t/wouldn’t do this job for 3-5 times what they’re making now. We’re talking about the fact that a leading presidential candidate has no idea what sorts of jobs Americans already do and the wages they make while doing them. This has nothing to do with ‘merakins verus ‘dem other people and everything to do with McCain being completely out of touch with economics and the American economy.
September 11th, 2008 at 8:06 pm
If you think that Americans would not pick lettuce for $50 an hour, even if it was only for 3 months a year, you are completely out of touch, along with McCain. Have you ever seen the crab fishing series on Discovery? According to a business week article on the worst jobs with the best pay, the average pay of a crab fisherman is $29,000. People apparently also inspect sewers for average pay of $34,960.
September 11th, 2008 at 8:06 pm
Sorry, here is the link for my last post:
http://images.businessweek.com/ss/06/09/worstjobs_bestpay/index_01.htm
September 11th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
I’d do it as long as they’d let me pick on, say, a 2am to 10am schedule in order to avoid the heat of the afternoon. Hell, I think with enough sunblock and a big enough sombrero I would probably do it in the daytime too. It surely beats being, say, a baggage handler at Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix, where you’re in the same heat or worse on concrete, rather than around the cooling effect of soil and vegetation, and definitely making less than $50 an hour.
September 11th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
If Americans weren’t so thoroughly lied to, there would never be so much support for a serial adulterer who has lost track of how many houses he owns and says that anyone who earns less than $5 million a year isn’t rich.
Let’s send this total asshole packing in November with the most embarassing electoral defeat in modern American memory. It’s up to you to do it, just spread the word about how much this guy lies and how incompetent and greedy he is every day!
September 11th, 2008 at 9:08 pm
Let’s wrest the memory of the victims of 9/11 away from the plutocratic assholes and their idiotic, asshole goon servants by winning big in November!
September 11th, 2008 at 9:13 pm
In my youth, I used to unload boxcars full of lumber that had been sitting in the summer sun; the metal would burn your hand if your touched it. They had me crawl on top of the boards and start swinging them down onto the truck because I, as a teenager, was less likely to pass out from the heat.
I got paid considerably less than $50 an hour, as I recall. Minimum wage, in fact.
Naturally, I’m still psychologically scarred from having to do hard physical work, which violated my birthright as an American.
September 11th, 2008 at 9:19 pm
What a clueless ass. $50 an hour??? You can’t do it (my friend)??? Fuck you, and anybody else that thinks I wouldn’t take a job for a “working wage.”
September 11th, 2008 at 9:27 pm
“If Obama moves to the right of John McAmnesty on illegal immigration and makes a big deal out of it, it’s Game Over. Obama is President. If he doesn’t, it’s a horserace and he might lose.
So, why aren’t you talking about the one tactic that could wrap up the election for Obama?”
I thought it was pretty obvious that most of us here don’t actually want a President who’s to the right of John McCain on immigration policy. The clip really just demonstrates that John McCain doesn’t have the slightest damn idea what life is like for the working-class voters he’s trying to win over. Since McCain based his entire campaign around ignoring all the issues and pretending that Barack Obama is more of an elitist than he is, I’d say that’s fair game.
But perhaps more importantly, you might want to consider the possibility that it’s not a terribly bright idea for either candidate to run to the right on immigration, given the fact that this has rarely been a sound long-term political strategy in the United States of America. Losing the support of small businesses and Latino voters would seem a very large price to pay to pander to angry middle-aged suburban white guys who aren’t likely to vote for Obama anyway.
Frankly, I used to kinda respect McCain for his willingness to actually talk about practical solutions to the breakdown of our immigration system, instead of following the typical right-wing strategy of bleating about illegal immigrants every 2-4 years to rile up the base and then doing nothing for fear of offending their donor caste. But then McCain decided to win the Republican Nomination for President, and this side of him quickly jumped overboard with the other remaining shreds of his integrity.
September 11th, 2008 at 10:12 pm
Lots of clapping seals above. If some MexicanGovernment-linked group said the same thing as McCain, the same clapping seals would call those who opposed it racists. Let’s face it: the vast majority of Dems are sheep. Before they acted as useful idiots for the MexicanGovernment and corrupt growers, now with this post and a few similar they’re saying the opposite.
As for why their leaders won’t run to the American side of McCain on this issue, the answer is simple: they’re completely corrupt.
September 11th, 2008 at 10:12 pm
“You can’t do it. My friend.”
What a jerk. The more I see of him, the less I like him.
September 11th, 2008 at 10:16 pm
There are damn sure people doing tough work for no benefits and no job security for a heck of a lot less than 50 bucks an hour. How do I know, you ask?
September 11th, 2008 at 10:20 pm
Here’s a specific challenge for MattY: try to drive some of those linked to this guy out of the Dem party. There’s lots of them, however, including IL’s gov and even major bloggers like FDL, Digby, and Americablog.
Yes, that’s right: FDL, Digby, and Americablog are linked to someone who’s admitted to divided loyalties and who’s an advisor to the Mexicangovernment.
When I see MattY turn the spotlight on that connection, then I’ll think he’s serious.
September 11th, 2008 at 11:09 pm
I’m with TheF79.
I don’t know much about lettuce-picking, but I’ve done agricultural labor as the only gringo among migrant Mexicans, so I have no illusions about it.
Where I grew up, in Seattle, college students would work in the salmon canneries in southeast Alaska during the summers. Brutal, dangerous, unpleasant work, long hours, bad for your body. I have a friend who lost a finger.
Plenty of Americans do brutal, dangerous, body-destroying work – some for only part of the year for a few years during their youth, some for longer, for a hell of a lot less than $50/hr. McCain seems not to understand this. More offensive is his smug certainty about what other people will do. He doesn’t know. Lettuce-picking is presumably piecework rather than hourly, but offer anything line $50 and you’ll find plenty of takers.
As for immigration policy, I don’t see the same conflict some commenters do. I’m no republican but I don’t see anything wrong with stopping illegal immigration and raising unskilled wages. What I object to is wholesale deportation of people who have worked here for years with the tacit approval of the American political and economic system, and who often have spouses or children who are legal residents or citizens.
September 11th, 2008 at 11:35 pm
Lots of clapping seals above. If some MexicanGovernment-linked group said the same thing as McCain, the same clapping seals would call those who opposed it racists. Let’s face it: the vast majority of Dems are sheep. Before they acted as useful idiots for the MexicanGovernment and corrupt growers, now with this post and a few similar they’re saying the opposite.
The real problem is you. You are a repulsive idiot. I don’t think open borders works, I think the current system is crazy, etc… I also don’t want to join a confederacy with a bunch of fucking, lunatics who believe in a MexicanGovernment conspiracy. You are way, way, way, more noxious and odious than the effects of current immigration policy. You are the bigger problem and it makes me not give a damn about immigration.
September 12th, 2008 at 12:03 am
Is it possible to digg this article? If so how? Obama campaign needs to see this
September 12th, 2008 at 12:23 am
John McCain – “Americans can do anything they set their minds to. Except pick lettuce for a hundred grand a year.”
September 12th, 2008 at 1:34 am
In Brazil the minimum wage is something around 200 dollars a month, the climate is humid and hot. And most farmers pay less than that. The problem is not whether Americans are willing to do it, it´s whether Americans are willing to compete with the Third World.
September 12th, 2008 at 1:40 am
Considering that many Americans can´t stand to live without a air conditioner I doubt that many of them would endure menial work in the middle of the desert…
September 12th, 2008 at 1:46 am
Ed Marshall, you think you are better than 24aheaddotcom? Please tell me what the real-world difference between you two is.
I really get tired of this “I am against immigration but I am still a better person than those conservatives” line.
You are basically saying that you don’t like immigration just like him, but you are better because you don’t believe in a conspiracy and you are more verbally polite? The end result is the same: less immigrants. Thus, you are the same as him. Just like him, you believe that you have the right prosper in this great country just because of an accident of birth, but most people elsewhere do not. Just like him, you are a fucking lunatic, you are noxious, and you are odious.
September 12th, 2008 at 4:35 am
Perhaps a Roger and Me style ad in which people (Americans) who have worked a season picking in Yuma follow Cindy around demanding she pay the money her husband owes.
September 12th, 2008 at 4:58 am
Oh come off it. I don’t know what Ed Marshall’s personal views on immigration are. An intelligent guess would be he thinks the current system isn’t working, is too “open” but immigration as an issue is away far down on his list of priorities and the fact that most of the people who hyperventilate about “open borders” are Steve Sailer and similar goons makes him care even less. I think it’s pretty clear that whatever his opinion on the issue is, it’s clearly not motivated by the same bigotry & xenophobia that drives the type of people who think there is a mexican government conspiracy to invade the U.S. with hostile foreign agents. Beliefs and motivations do matter. I’m very pro-immigration and would favor an immigration policy more liberal and open than the one we currently have & I found nothing offensive in what he said.
September 12th, 2008 at 7:14 am
So, what I’m hearing is that most of you would rather Barack Obama lose to John McCain than that he win by taking the more popular side on the issue of illegal immigration, an issue that neither Obama nor you care much about _other_ than that you don’t want to be associated with all those horrible, evil, racist, low-class Americans who are harmed by illegal immigration. To avoid your being tainted by association with the wrong kind of people, it’s okay if Obama goes down to defeat.
Okay, I got it.
September 12th, 2008 at 8:29 am
Do you realize how expensive lettuce would be if you paid people $50 an hour to pick it? I think McCain’s point here is that the reason those jobs are hard to fill entirely with non-immigrant workers, beyond it being atrocious work, is that paying what most people would consider to be a fair wage for something so backbreaking would price lettuce into the luxury foods market. Its the same reason we use threshers and other machines to cut wheat and pick tomatoes; a grower cannot afford to pay a livable wage for the work and remain economically competitive.
And to those who say illegal immigrants “take” people’s jobs, that is a lie. It has always been a lie, it is a lie now, and it will always be a lie. If those jobs were filled, if there weren’t recruiters in Monterrey and Guatemala actively recruiting workers to fill those positions, then why would immigrants be traveling hundreds of miles, portions of it by foot, to fill those jobs? I can’t be sure that any of you will actually read it, but here is a post to a page that includes links to numerous studies from think tanks across the political spectrum that refute this argument
September 12th, 2008 at 8:30 am
Study
September 12th, 2008 at 10:28 am
nor you care much about _other_ than that you don’t want to be associated with all those horrible, evil, racist, low-class Americans who are harmed by illegal immigration
No, I don’t want to be associated with you specifically. I don’t think you are a champion of the poor. I think you are a low-grade racial agitator.
September 12th, 2008 at 11:40 am
Julian:And to those who say illegal immigrants “take” people’s jobs, that is a lie. It has always been a lie, it is a lie now, and it will always be a lie.
What isn’t a lie is that illegal immigrants depress wages. Any economic system requires “rules” When they are broken somebody suffers. Those who suffer now are hard working middle class American citizens who continue to see their real wages decline and we continue the move toward oligarchy. You can argue for a borderless world if you want but my guess is that dog won’t hunt.
I’ll take the $50 an hour. Right now my friend.
September 12th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
And the answer to immigrants depressing wages is:
unions.
Not having one group of workers throwing another group of workers under the bus.
Not lamenting “oh, the laws of the free market make it inevitable!”
Unionize, organize, go onto the construction sites. Go into the fields.
Beyond achieving justice, it will make it that much harder for illegal aliens to work for pittances.
September 12th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
My guess is that most laid off union workers would gladly throw the illegal immigrants under the bus to increase their wages or job prospects. If you want to eliminate borders or substantially increase the number of legal immigrants you can try to make that case. I don’t think it will work.
I still want the $50 an hour. Senator McCain?
September 12th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
He doesn’t know. Lettuce-picking is presumably piecework rather than hourly, but offer anything line $50 and you’ll find plenty of takers.
I think you’ll find plenty of takers too. But the problem is lettuce cannot be profitably produced at such high wage levels. So, even if this is not exactly what he meant, in a literal sense McCain is correct: American workers are not capable of working as $50/hr lettuce pickers because they’re not capable of finding such jobs because such jobs do not exist. I strongly suspect importing lettuce would make a lot more economic sense than automation, so, a successful effort to crack down on illegal labor would almost certainly translate into a precipitous drop in the domestic production of fruits and vegetables. When you think immigration is the source of all evil this seems like a small price to pay. When you think immigration is mostly a net benefit it just seems bizarre.
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