Re: NPR Guest Warns Against Living Wages With Fantasies of $16 Apples (fwd)

[robert <http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert>]

Ah.  Good call.

 > From: Noelle <noelle>
 > Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2016 12:38:11 -0800 (PST)
 >
 >  > From: [** utf-8 charset **] FAIR<http://www.fair.org/~fair>
 >  > Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2016 16:33:51 +0000
 >  > 
 >  > Former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff thinks we need to keep 
 >  > exploiting immigrant labor.
 >  > To comment on Donald Trump&#8217;s naming retired Marine Gen. John Kelly as 
 >  > his Department of Homeland Security secretary, NPR&#8216;s Morning Edition (
 >  > 12/9/16) brought on George W. Bush&#8217;s Homeland Security chief, Michael 
 >  > Chertoff.
 >  > A more independent observer might have brought up Kelly&#8217;s oversight of 
 >  > the US&#8217;s Guantánamo internment camp, where he has defended the 
 >  > force-feeding of hunger-strikers, a procedure condemned by human rights 
 >  > groups as torture.
 >  > But Chertoff didn&#8217;t even mention Guantánamo, focusing instead on the 
 >  > need to keep allowing immigrant workers into the United States because you 
 >  > can pay them less:
 >  > I think the reality is, if you look at a large number of jobs being done by 
 >  > people who come across illegally, they&#8217;re doing jobs no one else wants 
 >  > to do. I guess you could pay, you know, $15 or $20 an hour. But then an 
 >  > apple would cost, you know, $16. And that&#8217;s not going to work 
 >  > economically.
 >  > That makes senseâ??if you think it takes roughly an hour to pick one apple. 
 >  > As FAIR alum Peter Hart noted on Twitter (12/9/16),  &#8220;Is this #
 >  > fakenews or just stupid?&#8221;
 >  > This would not be hundreds of dollars worth of apples, even if you paid 
 >  > farmworkers a living wage. (cc photo: Jim Naureckas)
 >  > A more serious look at the costs of paying a living wage to farmworkers, 
 >  > immigrant or otherwise, appeared in the New York Times a few years backâ??
 >  > and happened to use apples as an example. UC/Davis labor economist Philip 
 >  > Martin (9/30/11) wrote:
 >  > If pressure to verify employeesâ?? legal status resulted in a&#8230;40 
 >  > percent wage increase, average hourly earnings would rise to $14.10. If this 
 >  > were passed on to consumers, the 10 cent farm labor cost of a pound of 
 >  > apples would rise to 14 cents, and the $1 retail price would rise to $1.04.
 >  > For a $15 wage, the math isn&#8217;t hard; it would mean apples would cost a 
 >  > nickel more a pound. A pound is roughly 2â??4 apples, depending on their 
 >  > sizeâ??so Chertoff is exaggerating the price increase involved in paying 
 >  > farmworkers a living wage by roughly 600 to 1,200 times.
 >  > Not every NPR source needs to be an expert on agricultural economics, of 
 >  > courseâ??but it would be nice if Morning Edition could get someone to 
 >  > discuss Trump&#8217;s Homeland Security pick who didn&#8217;t believe 
 >  > exploiting immigrants was necessary for Americans to be able to afford food.
 >  > 
 >  > Jim Naureckas is the editor of FAIR.org. He can be followed on Twitter: 
 >  > @JNaureckas.