Posted On: Wednesday - September 3rd 2025 9:57AM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Economics
Don't worry, readers. This will not be a research paper for a graduate level Econ Seminar. First off, there wil be no Calculus. We use the word "differential" in its basic sense, but students are used to seeing it only in the context of the imaginary but useful, infinitesimally small line segments, arcs, areas, and volumes of all sorts in, well, differential Calcuseless*. No, we'll just have basic arithmetic here, and also, because this is not a graduate level economics research paper, there will be no Conclusion full of bullshit.
One could extrapolate the hand harvesting of produce to lots of manual labor that America is said to be dependent on, with NO OTHER WAY. UNPOSSIBLE! Some of these industries would be roofing, yard care, chicken plucking, chicken trucking, you name it. It's only the produce picking that's been done by illegal alien labor for so long, that most Americans really can't remember American's doing the work. Therefore, we'll discuss produce.
VDare, who I really hope will come back online soon**, had writers using the sardonic phrase about the "crops rotting in the fields" regularly. They understood that Big Ag makes more profit using cheap labor, but, no, Supply & Demand says that crops won't be rotting in the fields. (VDare founder Peter Brimelow, BTW, had a successful career as a finance guru, sometimes on TV!)
At this point, before my anecdotal knowledge of the actual rate/cost of picking tomatoes and cucumbers, let me say that I'd completely forgotten our post (I mean, we've got 3,337 of 'em) Holy Moley, we're out of Guacamole! written April 2nd of '19, so 6 1/3 years ago. For some reason, as I got ready to write this post, I had a vision of an avocado... then of a research paper about the harvesting thereof. Let me excerpt a fair portion of it (my post, not the research paper):
As to the question of the labor costs per avocado, I'm not going to use rectal extraction today - I spent 20 minutes (MAX) looking into this and came up with ONE THIN DIME per piece addition in labor costs from increasing the pay by $10/hr, with an extremely conservative estimate. Look at the bottom, below the asterisk line.Note that I copied that link to the 1967 time and motion study.
Now, I know that buck a piece one may pay for avocados on sale is not the price the growers charge. However, even if they must raise their wholesale prices by that whole big dime, it's still only a 10% rise at the store. We wouldn't even notice.
[SNIP}
The thing about this particular fruit is that it is expensive per unit, unlike apples for instance. How much labor cost is involved in picking avocados? This time-and-motion study> from 1967! investigating the benefits of using what we now call a Snorklift, is pretty easy to read. I can only imagine picking rates have gone up since then, with various other improvements short of robotic automation. Just with 1967 data, though, tone can note a pick rate of ~ 18 piece per minute. This time accounts for moving from spot to spot and tree to tree, AND everything else involved (transport, sorting, stacking, everything). The study gives numbers all in boxes, which can vary from containing 20 to 80 pieces. Let's just get a real conservative number by using 20/box. In this time-study, with the use of the Snorklift (and things have only improved) and including all time involved, the observers came up with 6 minutes required to pick 20 pieces.
Now, you see, this is not just rectal extraction here. Just 3 pieces per minute still means that, even with rest breaks, a guy can pick 150 avocados in that hour in which he's making either $5 or $15, depending on whether we want to destroy the American nation or not. Call it 100/hour. I keep rounding down for ease and conservatism, so I come up with either 5 cents or 15 cents (NICE ROUND NUMBERS). That's a difference of ONE THIN DIME. If one did not round everything toward conservatism, and accounted for improvements in methods, well it's probably a nickel or LESS.
OK, as they say, "Now do cucumbers." You got it. See, I picked them for a couple of weeks. Even then, we two were the only White guys, and the rest were Mexicans. This was long ago and, as one might surmise, my Dad's idea.
To digress just a little, did we get along? Nah, not really - they spoke only enough English to do the job, and one day they stole our lunches off the bus.
However, we had been excited to make, in a time of under $3 minimum wage, a buck per bucket of cucombres (well, that's how the Mexicans pronounced it, so it kind of stuck for a while). That was until we saw the buckets. If you are imaging a pail, such as one might use at the beach, the prospect of being able to fill 5 or maybe even 10 of these things an hour - easy, right? - had us enthusiastic beforehand. $5 or $10 an hour! We'd have a whole lot of money, and it'd be well worth being in the hot summer sun all day for this big money. No, but, see, these buckets were about 2 feet wide and a foot deep, and since volume goes as the cube of the... [We promised there would BE no Calculus! - Ed.]
Some basic numbers: We made about a buck or buck and a half an hour. We quit after 2 weeks. OK, more pertinently, I would hazard a guess that each bucket held over a hundred cukes. Another way of looking at that is one could easily pick 5-10 pieces a minute. Even accounting for moving around, resting a big, etc. that 200-300 pieces/hr doesn't quite match my memory of our measly pay pay and the bucket size. It's just been way, way too long.
Let's be conservative and go with 200 cukes/hr and $2 made, so a penny a piece. In today's money, call it a dime apiece. (Interestingly, that matches the avocado-picking cost.) IOW, the Mexicans, Guatemalans, whoever, doing it now, might be paid $10/hr, maybe $15.*** This is closer to 5-7¢, in the ball park here.
Let's talk price differential here, between this alien labor and some rate that American workers could actually live with.*** Look, picking cucumbers was never supposed to be part of a career path. As a summer job for young men who could take it, or even for a period of other-joblessness, could it suffice? How much would make it worth it in today's greatly-decreasing currency? $30/hr? I think Americans would do the work, if they could imagine that Americans COULD actually pick produce.
That's difference of 7¢ per cucumber, a factor of 2 to 3. That latter factor sounds bad, and for the employer it IS a big hit, hence the bitching and the pushing on Trump to say something highly stupid about it all. OTOH, still, how much of the farmer's cost is harvesting? I don't know that.
What I do know is how much of the retail price for cucumbers is that differential of 7¢ a cucumber. My wife's been doing the bulk of the shopping at Aldi's for years. They may not be on sale today, but 79¢ apiece is the price for decent sized cukes with seeds. (I guess you can do better by the lb.. but only a little.) So, the cost differential in retail pricing is about 10%. That's the difference the American consumer would notice (or NOT****) when he goes to the grocery in some new era without that illegal alien cheap labor, after Deportation Nation.
No, nunca! Cucombres will not be rotting in los fields! And screw you, too, cholos, for stealing our lunches that day. (Man, Peak Stupidity can really hold a grudge! Who knew that one day long ago in the hot summer sun, that'd I'd be writing a blog post to avenge myself? Who knew there'd be this internet thingy to write it on either?)
OK, I was gonna do tomatoes, because we picked them too, but ahhhh, manana, amigo. Next post, let's look at services. Because of President Trump stupid (hopefully, BS) talk about agriculture and hospitality, I'll write something about hotel housekeeping staff.
* I write that humorous disparaging form in jest, from an otherwise bright student from long ago who just didn't get it. (You tend to hate a subject, and think less of it, when you don't get it.)
** The latest great news about VDare's nemesis, fat-assed Leticia James, is that not only has she been lying about her property for tax purposes, but she has had a criminal fugitive niece of hers holing up in her Maryland house. Will the Black! Get-out-of-jail card help her out on this one? At least she will be highly distracted.
*** That's untaxed, but let's get to that in the 3rd post of this series.
**** I've written before, in this post about hardware that, compared to monthly rises in prices due to inflation, changes of 10% on small items are barely noticable. These hikes would stay proportionate. Of course, on one's whole grocery bill, were it mostly produce and other items harvested now by cheap labor, he'd see the same 10% increase.
Comments:
Moderator
Thursday - September 4th 2025 6:46AM MST
PS: I believe that without reading a Psych Today article, SafeNow. Yes, most people want to have meaningful lives (does that include most black people - not so sure about that), and a career that's useful to society is part of that.
This kind of work is not very meaningful in that sense, although if it does end up being all one can do for work (with whatever talents/smarts one is give), I don't see that as a worthless life by any means. However, for most of us, doing this kind of work is for getting by when more meaningful work is not presently available or attainable.
The kind of stuff that gets you laid in a woke society is not something I could partake in for long. Yes, about everything men do is indirectly or directly for the purpose of getting laid, well most of our lives. It's nice if these things could be satisfying in other ways and good for society. Women don't chase after produce pickers, generally, no...
Unfortunately, many women have been led to believe that certain careers that are not actually good for society are ones in which the choice men are. Rich, ambulance-chasing lawyers... need I say more? It's about status, and what's high status or not is I guess not easily changeable by us. The Chinese, IMO, are really bad about this. Women would rather have some government official that makes all his money past his official $1,200/month from bribery over some hard-working welder or shop owner or a man doing any other honest work.
This kind of work is not very meaningful in that sense, although if it does end up being all one can do for work (with whatever talents/smarts one is give), I don't see that as a worthless life by any means. However, for most of us, doing this kind of work is for getting by when more meaningful work is not presently available or attainable.
The kind of stuff that gets you laid in a woke society is not something I could partake in for long. Yes, about everything men do is indirectly or directly for the purpose of getting laid, well most of our lives. It's nice if these things could be satisfying in other ways and good for society. Women don't chase after produce pickers, generally, no...
Unfortunately, many women have been led to believe that certain careers that are not actually good for society are ones in which the choice men are. Rich, ambulance-chasing lawyers... need I say more? It's about status, and what's high status or not is I guess not easily changeable by us. The Chinese, IMO, are really bad about this. Women would rather have some government official that makes all his money past his official $1,200/month from bribery over some hard-working welder or shop owner or a man doing any other honest work.
M
Thursday - September 4th 2025 4:48AM MST
PS
There's several reasons that much of the inventions for automation have been developed in the US in the past.
One large reason is that historically, the US has had relatively few people. This required laborers to be paid lots since they had many choices.
This has changed in those areas where you can relatively cheaply import laborers from other places that have more people.
If you have to walk from Guatemala to pick cucumbers, many people won't do it, if they even know that there's jobs available.
If you have your cousin (or his cousin) telling everyone by cellphone about the jobs, and you can get a ride on someone's pickup truck (so it's a day's journey instead of three or more weeks), you get a lot more people doing it.
Where there are lots of people, other means have been employed to constrain the labor pool.
One measure was guilds, where only a few got to be trained to do the tasks, and you had to pay (lots) to advance.
Another was caste. Many of the tasks available could only be done by people of a certain caste (or sub-caste). It works much better if you invoke pollution (which is religious in origin) if you do the wrong thing; people are much less likely to do it anyway.
There's several reasons that much of the inventions for automation have been developed in the US in the past.
One large reason is that historically, the US has had relatively few people. This required laborers to be paid lots since they had many choices.
This has changed in those areas where you can relatively cheaply import laborers from other places that have more people.
If you have to walk from Guatemala to pick cucumbers, many people won't do it, if they even know that there's jobs available.
If you have your cousin (or his cousin) telling everyone by cellphone about the jobs, and you can get a ride on someone's pickup truck (so it's a day's journey instead of three or more weeks), you get a lot more people doing it.
Where there are lots of people, other means have been employed to constrain the labor pool.
One measure was guilds, where only a few got to be trained to do the tasks, and you had to pay (lots) to advance.
Another was caste. Many of the tasks available could only be done by people of a certain caste (or sub-caste). It works much better if you invoke pollution (which is religious in origin) if you do the wrong thing; people are much less likely to do it anyway.
SafeNow
Thursday - September 4th 2025 3:03AM MST
PS
My instinct suggested to me that recent generations of Americans have an increased desire, compared to the old days, that work be “meaningful”; contribute to the well-being of society. A quick trip to AI and to that august journal, Psychology Today, told me that I was correct. So it’s not just the money.
But the above begs the question, because now one must ask, is picking vegetables woke. In a way, I guess it is…vegetables help keep th.e community healthy. Still, it might not be meaningful enough to get you laid..
My instinct suggested to me that recent generations of Americans have an increased desire, compared to the old days, that work be “meaningful”; contribute to the well-being of society. A quick trip to AI and to that august journal, Psychology Today, told me that I was correct. So it’s not just the money.
But the above begs the question, because now one must ask, is picking vegetables woke. In a way, I guess it is…vegetables help keep th.e community healthy. Still, it might not be meaningful enough to get you laid..
Moderator
Wednesday - September 3rd 2025 5:01PM MST
PS: Yep, nobody put 2 + 2 together, I guess, about the cause for all our troubles.
"Karma is a biotch."
Indeed!
"Karma is a biotch."
Indeed!
The Alarmist
Wednesday - September 3rd 2025 1:48PM MST
PS
You think the USA would have learned its lesson about externalities from its first foray into mass cheap labor, but ....
America, Detroit is your future in every city you will ever have.
☯️
Karma is a biotch.
You think the USA would have learned its lesson about externalities from its first foray into mass cheap labor, but ....
America, Detroit is your future in every city you will ever have.
☯️
Karma is a biotch.
I would be the first to deny the anti-Luddite argument that, well, we'll have enough people designing, building, and fixing all the machines, that there will be just as many jobs as there were for pickers. Of course not. The jobs there would be, however,, were they not in China, or in America done by imported H1B visa Indentured Servants (!!), would be better, but there'd be fewer. That'd have been fine in an America that had leveled off in population probably 20-40 years ago without the immigration invasion.
I don't say we need people to do the manual labor at all, but it's the fact that certain people are HERE doing it and then being supported in other ways by the American public with more unemployment for them and taxes is what I don't like.'
Guilds and labor unions are another story...