so MAGA farmers chased off immigrant farmworkers because Trump said they were taking American jobs, now they can’t find anyone to pick their crops. Funny how the pick-yourselves-up-by-the-bootstraps crowd suddenly needs someone else to do the work

[u/Conscious-Quarter423]

[u/Lucius-Halthier]

I remember during his first term when he started his rhetoric, VICE did a piece where they went to job employment centers, asked people who came out if they were blue to find a job today and when they said no they offered them a job. They showed them farms and ranches where they would pick crops or milk cows and they all said no. These were people looking for a job and were offered a job to work agriculture and they all said no.

Our farms only survive because of government subsidies and cheap migrant labor, but those same people who needed them voted for the person who got rid of their workers and who undercuts them with policies like giving 20 billion to libertarian friends in Argentina, about 90 percent of all tariff money that came in during his first term went to bailing out farmers after Chinas soybean retaliation.

I genuinely think that they want us to be a feudal system again, but instead of lords and kings it’s billions and tech bros using the populace as serfs.

[u/henryeaterofpies → u/Lucius-Halthier]

I bet people would take these jobs if they paid better but often they exploit illegal immigrants to pay less than minimum wage.

[u/carolineecouture → u/henryeaterofpies]

Well, yes. But they haven't tried that, I don't think.

[u/Gone213 → u/henryeaterofpies]

You see if the pay was fair, theyd have to pay upwards of $35 an hour to get people to farm the land.

[u/LeftToaster → u/Lucius-Halthier]

Farmers are the real welfare queens

[u/Consistent-Fig7484 → u/Lucius-Halthier]

I think Peter Thiel has said this is exactly what he wants. Not in a veiled or implied way.

[u/CHANN3L-CHAS3R → u/Lucius-Halthier]

100% agreed. Like, even if you pretend 'ethics' don't matter for the sake of the "undocumented immigrants in the labor force" discussion, that actually makes the whole thing scarier because removing the care-for-people from the equation only makes the actual end goal more clear, imo.

The American economy was founded on, and continues to run on, exploitable labor. That is, jobs which are dangerous, labor-intensive, and often cause the worker to develop one or more chronic conditions over their lifetime. Ideally, a person would be compensated fairly for this, but that's not how you make profit. Ideally, one makes profits by turning resources into better resources, but you make so much MORE profit when those first resources are paid for in pennies.

While the class we exploit changes based on current social mores and legal frameworks, America has never moved away from the exploitative-labor model. Whether here or overseas, we can't have dirt-cheap goods without making sure the resources they're made from stay at a shit-cheap price.

So... what's the game plan here re: removing "illegal" immigrants? What exploitable labor force have we prepared to slot in their place? If we're wanting Americans to work those jobs, how are we going to manage the upwards monetary ripple-effect of fair compensation? Are we going to use a home-grown exploitable labor force, and if so, how do we replace millions while treating our citizens right AND keeping our economy stable?

If the aim IS homegrown exploitation, how does that tie in to the recent wave of mass surveillance and -- while homelessness itself is not illegal -- the further criminalization of things that mostly only homeless people do (ex., sleeping in public areas)? Consider the fact that Americans are increasingly living paycheck-to-paycheck and it's not getting better; within the context of everything else, it's starting to feel like a purposeful tactic and not the results of rolling an extant plan out too fast or, as my side of the aisle likes to crow about, stupidity and ego.

Either I'm not seeing the bigger picture, or I am, and I really don't want to it to be that second one.