Summary
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez warned that Trump’s mass deportation policy could lead to labor shortages and higher grocery prices.
Experts say agriculture, construction, and healthcare will be hardest hit, with farm output losses estimated between $30 and $60 billion.
Deportations could cost the U.S. economy up to $88 billion annually.
AOC argued that immigrant labor is vital to economic stability, urging Congress to pursue immigration reform.
I understand higher food prices is rough for the general public, but I’m struggling to find a reason we shouldnt deport illegal immigrants. I’m concerned that illegal immigrant labor is akin to H1b or prison labor, where the worker has diminished rights and is abused more than other groups.
Why are democrats or people in general in favor of illegal immigration?
You know what a “false dichotomy” is? If no, this is a beautiful example. Immigration reform is an entire world of options, “deport all the brown people” and “open borders and free subsidized piñatas for everyone” aren’t the only options like you’re presenting here.
The programs that work get killed because they require companies to pay on the books and at a reasonable rate and provide certain protections which effects company profits.
Nobody likes being told to stop exploiting something when they’ve been doing it for years…
This, I find most of people’s problems with “The Left” are based on their failure to understand what a False Dichotomy is
I had a friend of mine tell me that he didn’t support Democrats or Republicans because he felt the options were “I can vote Right and get politicians who wanna kill black people, or vote Left and get politicians who worship black people like Gods!”
and I had to be the one to tell him, that no one is out here worshiping black people as gods.
Well, maybe fans of Morgan Freeman in reference to his role as God in Bruce Almighty, but even then that’s just one black guy and not all black people.
He tried to say that “Some Leftists do…”, but ultimately he caved and realized how silly his claim was…
I still can’t get him to vote, though he claims he supports Democrats as a lesser evil option…
Which doesn’t really matter because he doesn’t fucking vote.
You literally avoided my whole question. Why do you want illegal immigrants here? I’d think youd want them here legally rather but maybe I’m just crazy. Is it just mean to deport people? If I was in Canada illegally and they arrested me and sent me back to the US, I wouldnt think Canada was a shitty country for it.
I addressed the premise of the question because it’s fundamentally flawed, any direct answer would have to tacitly acknowledge those flaws as valid or be intellectually dishonest.
Left-wing people aren’t in favor of “illegal immigration”, they are in favor of immigration reform.
And what do we do in the meantime while we dont have immigration reform? Pretend we do and ignore laws?
You know what a “false dichotomy” is? If no, this is a beautiful example. Immigration reform is an entire world of options, “deport all the brown people” and “Ignore all the laws” aren’t the only options like you’re implying here.
This is a very, very old topic. What have we been doing, before it was politicized into a fiery hot-button issue? What, historically, have we been doing that is effective?
Farms are just going to take it on the chin. They’re losing their labor with the mass deportations and they’re losing a hilariously large buyer of food with USAID being shut down.
So who’s ready for the new price on food?
And they’ll blame Democrats. And the Democratic Party won’t combat the misinformation because they suck at messaging.
IMHO, Democrats have gotten much better with their messaging over the past decade. People just don’t pay attention because diligently solving problems with substantial plans that take years to show effects isn’t sexy or exciting.
I stay pretty keyed in to what’s going on in congress, but I have to put effort into that. It seems like all the algorithms constantly want to shift my content to paying attention to all the crazy shit the GOP is up to and I’m constantly catching and stopping myself from getting sucked into rage porn.
People just don’t pay attention because diligently solving problems with substantial plans that take years to show effects isn’t sexy or exciting.
Yeah maybe… But they’re also so bad at even just pointing out the horrible shit Republicans are constantly doing.
They are OK at messaging, it’s just for people only consume conservative propaganda, because dems has to be bounded by truth, and cons can say whatever they want, and truth is just isn’t as exciting
Yup. I can see that one a mile out.
Reminder, losing a large purchasing segment decreases demand, which lowers prices until the market adjusts. I.e., it frees up agricultural output that they have to sell, which they’ll lower prices to make sell to other buyers (domestically or internationally).
which lowers prices until the market adjusts.
It depends on the market. If producing less food with the same resources costs more, prices will rise–especially on large commercial farms, which dominate the U.S. agricultural sector.
For example, a farm designed to grow 10,000 acres of beans can’t simply reduce production to 5,000 acres due to lower demand and expect prices to drop. The unused 5,000 acres still incur costs, and farmers won’t absorb that loss–they’ll pass it on as higher prices.
Additionally, some grocery chains buy produce through futures contracts. If these chains sell their futures for a profit, they secure produce at a bargain, cutting into farming profits. This discourages farmers from offering futures in subsequent seasons, forcing grocers to buy bulk products at higher prices instead of securing cheaper futures.
It depends on the market. If producing less food with the same resources costs more, prices will rise–especially on large commercial farms, which dominate the U.S. agricultural sector.
The part you quoted from what I said was in reference to an agricultural buyer being lost. There are other reasons to anticipate the costs of inputs increasing, but I’m going through analyzing factor by factor (descending analysis) and all of a sudden we’re jumping back up to the top to talk about something else.
Re: grocery chains (not USAID) and futures contracts - not sure how this ties in either, we’re talking about USAID, which AFAIK does procurement through a bidding process for direct purchases, not via futures.
So the issue is, that those are two different categories. USAID tends to be food stuff that the US massively over produces, dairy, corn, soy, ect. These are all categories that are highly automated and don’t require much labor (relative to other categories)
The places where the most migrant labor is utilized are things like fruits, vegetables, and meat processing. stuff that can’t be mechanized to the same degree as corn or milk. Stuff that doesn’t tend to get exported as part of USAID because it is in demand in the US.
True, well, I mean, take the effects I described and apply them to the respective agricultural sectors. We will very likely see price increases in fresh produce and some price decrease in corn, soy, wheat, dairy, etc. (I say “some” because the actual global demand for food hasn’t decreased, rather, the purchasing power has been decreased because some subsidization has been lost due to USAID absence).
The distributors will lower prices. Farmers will get paid pennies for what would be dollars. Farmers don’t sell their product directly. They get screwed before the consumer gets screwed. In this kind of a cycle prices drop in the short term, but as farmers can’t afford to plant as much going forward, there’s a supply crunch next season. The government used to do a lot to manage this cycle and smooth it out, by literally buying product.
No big deal in the long term though right? Well except we don’t have a competitive distributor or grocery market anymore. So when that crunch hits those prices are going up and they’re going to stay up. For reference check the recent greedflation that happened.
Worse there is a real risk of a dust bowl effect. Farmers who are strapped for cash don’t want to spend money setting their fields up to fallow properly. So the summer hits and the crops that are planted get buried in all that dust. Making the supply crunch even worse.
Then in a normal situation we’d still have the global supply chain to fall back on. But there’s a very good chance that food is going to have tariffs on it.
Farming isn’t like making a widget in a factory.
I know I’ve started buying some MREs…
It’ll take a minute to blow up into a full on crisis though. And please tell me you mean dehydrated food. MREs are … Uh… Not great.
I’m not sure what your main point is here. I was responding to you grouping together a labor shortage and a demand shock as - from what it sounded like - a reason to expect high prices. But demand shocks lower prices on the consumer side of food production, as opposed to raising them, because the food at that point exists, and whoever has it needs to sell it, more desperately than they were before.
My main point is this is well beyond the supply/demand chart you get in Econ 101. That more applies to distributors and grocers than it does to farmers. In most places the farmers aren’t in control of the price. The distributors are. This is how you get things like Dairy Farmers disposing of literal tons of milk. It was more expensive to send it than they would have been paid for it. In other words the price dropped so low it wasn’t worth selling it.
Of course that has knock on effects. That farm doesn’t magically get more money next year so their operations are constrained. Grain is worse than Dairy because it can be siloed for literal years. That means the glut will take years to resolve. Years with low or no income for grain farmers.
Are you seeing the problem yet?
No, I’m still not really sure what you’re trying to say. Your original post was about the price to consumers.
And as for the relationship between farmers and distributors, that really depends on the specifics of the purchasing agreements they enter into.
Dude I’m not going to start repeating myself. You have the chain of events that causes higher consumer prices, you just don’t want to admit it’s likely unless the government steps in to prevent it.
I know she’s been villainized by the right, but I feel like, at this point, she needs to be elevated to key leadership of the party. She’s the only one who seems to be able to speak to specifics. I just listened to Jeffries on Jon Stewart’s podcast and it was all of the same old generalities.
Seriously. They all said they felt better than before but the dude barely said anything worthwhile. So disappointing it’s the exact same hand wringing bullshit where they say “we just need to get the message out” instead of actually doing shit differently. Jon really did try to get more out of him but he stayed on message like 80% of the time like a true politician.
I just listened to Jeffries on Jon Stewart’s podcast and it was all of the same old generalities.
Especially after Stewart’s recent interview with her.
I can’t speak to every politician, but as a class, they seem to be elites that are disconnected from the average American.
AOC, having been a normal person, is able to bring the message that gets through to people without having it filtered through some sort of communication agency.
Would be a great time for bernie and AOC to make strides to start a new party, or other tactics to force dems to move left.
I hope they pass a bill to set age and term limits, alongside with voting reforms. Our political system was built for a mere 13 colonies that shared a coastline, not a continental civilization without telecommunication.
Those could be good ideas, although I dont like the idea of forcing out good candidates based on term limits.
I’m more concerned with fixing things like citizens united:
“In this case, the Supreme Court ruled that any laws that try to restrict the political spending of corporations and unions is a violation of the First Amendment’s right of free speech. This significantly impacted campaign finance laws.”
Term limits bring their own set of issues. I would do some more research on the subject before championing them.
I think we now have real-world examples of what being without limits can bring us. For example, a supreme justice holds their role until death or abdication. The vast bulk of the SC court cannot relate to “young” people. This is problematic, seeing how many of them were born before things like DEI, foreign content like anime, or the Internet were common. Plus, the justices tend to be confirmed by old people, which only reinforces the issue.
If there is an overhaul when it comes to SCs in particular, I think the following would be good:
1: Trash the current SC system.
2: Each state can elect a single Supreme Justice to represent them. This Justice is elected through a popular vote. SCs have a term limit of ten years, and an age range of 30-70. They may be impeached by their state through a popular ballot.
3: The justices have to have lived in their state for at least 10 years, and continue living there for the rest of their term.
4: Digital means for justices to meet should be implemented. (For congress as well), and live feeds of their discussion process for all to see. We should be allowed to see and record how the sausage of our laws is made.
5: The assets, wealth, and social media of a Justice should be an open record. We don’t want people like Clarance Thomas to be allowed to grift, especially not when the lives of so many people can be impacted.
By having each state having ownership of a single SC, we will have about 50 justices. This is good for having a wide variety of backgrounds and interests to be represented during judicial discussions, along with insulating against any one faction from pushing forward candidates.
Traditionally, we required our justices to be well versed in law and whatnot…but honestly, after the shitshow that is our current Supreme Court, it is clear that motivation trumps law and precedent. That Is why I suggest that justices be determined through a popular vote. If a justice is going to be motivated, it should be driven by the fact that they were chosen by the people of their state, not an political faction or leader.
I concur, US federal supreme court judges are appointed solely by the President. This makes these positions highly political and less about merit. Furthermore, fed circuit judges are appointed by fed SC judges, so the whole federal judicial system is just political tug-o’-war.
Cherry on top is a lot of civil judges, typically circuit-level as well, run unopposed in local elections. Their tenure tends to keep red-state law red and vice-versa. So much for US America being our self-proclaimed “Marketplace of Ideas”.
I agree with revolutionizing our current federal judicial system. It is severely outdated and regularly exploited.
I agree but she spends a lot of time reciting very rehearsed and morally charged statements that are great for sound bites. I don’t even disagree with them, but it’s what a lot of “elites“ do as well, so if she wants to separate from them then she needs to speak in a little more plain language when the cameras are rolling on her if you ask me.
Half the population is below average intelligence. As a politician you have to speak in a way that is both to the point and emotionally charging to get your point across as simply as possible. It’s the best way to actually reach the most people. You also have to repeat yourself ad nauseam. It’s just a pitfall of the job. Simultaneously, they have to treat people like idiots and not treat people like idiots.
It also works. Remember all those signs in yards this past election cycle that said “Trump: lower taxes, Harris: higher taxes” and “Trump: good for America, Harris: bad for America”? They were wrong, and simple and they worked.
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again, I don’t disagree with her at all. I like and support her. The issue is if she wants to separate herself from elites maybe she could consider a slightly blunter approach. Apparently people are really angry that I have a slightly different opinion on strategy.
She isn’t Trump. She can’t be Trump. I don’t want signs like Trump.
So what’s your issue? What does “not speak like an elite” even mean? Politicians speak like politicians and they do so for reasons I’ve already outlined. She isn’t talking down to you, she’s empathizing with you. What do you want her to say? You want her to talk like the room is filled with post-doctorates? How does that help a chronically under-educated populace who literally can’t afford get a good education, let alone pay attention to anything of substance after sifting through our hellscape of a media?
She isn’t Trump, of course. I don’t think anyone in Lemmy is asking for her to be. My point was that repeating yourself and speaking simply literally just won an election. “Me, good. Other guy, bad” as a message, works. Bernie has been repeating himself for longer than I’ve been alive. He’s been right about everything he’s ever said in the simplest of terms. Why do you think he keeps doing it? Because it’s still true, and people still need to hear that message.
Ok I get it you’re all mad and dogpiling. Let’s move on
I haven’t downvoted a single one of your comments. I’m asking questions I wanted answers to. Sorry people don’t like what you’re saying, but I’m trying to have a conversation.
That’s the game, she’s just doing her best to play it. Listen to her more casual interviews if you want a normal person, she gets seconds of the average person’s attention at a time
I understand she is playing the game and I’m not even against it. But if the goal is to separate herself from sounding like elites, it seems to me that’s a reasonable place to start. Get more granular and direct. Apparently that’s a really unpopular take?
To be clear I fully support her and I hope she runs for president soon to be perfectly honest
It’s not that it’s an unpopular take, it’s that you’re not going to get that from mainstream media. They only want snippets and blurbs to present to the people, so if you’re not able to articulate your point in a short sound bite, you don’t get to send your message at all.
You mean the same mainstream media that no one trusts anymore apparently?
We can’t use the old systems anymore dude.
I won’t disagree with that, but there are still lots of people who consume mainstream media. A lot of them also think that their choice of media isn’t mainstream, only other media.
Speaker of the House might have more power for her.
I would love to see it
She stands by what she says though. It may sound familiar, because it’s the same shit all the time. She doesn’t take lobby money, she doesn’t take pac money and she doesnt take corpo money. Her donations are working class citizens that fuel her campaigns. If you want her to speak simple language, go watch her John Stewart interview. It’s as plain and “common folk” speak as you can get.
I never said she didn’t stand by what she says or is otherwise inauthentic. I’m talking about communication style. I think she’s as real as it gets and believes what she says/acts on her values.
As I said another comment this is clearly just an angry dog pile. I’m just going to move on.
Given how clearly she’s stood up since day 1 here, I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s the first target for Trump’s Window-Pushing Squad
Sooner or later, the idiot is gonna take the biggest chapter from Putin’s book.
I fear for her safety, to be honest…
that’s exactly why the establishment limits her movements. she’s a threat to schumer and pelosi’s stranglehold on the money pipelines. what schumer and pelosi either don’t realize, or don’t care about, is they’re who the ultraradical right want dead first. they showed us as much on january 6th, 2021
She will never be allowed anywhere close to real power for the same reason they’ve kept Bernie from power for decades.
pelosi firmly believes octogenarian throat cancer is the future of the democratic party.
Well it was his turn, so…
The big money and corporate donors to the Democratic Party would never allow someone like AOC or Bernie to lead the party.
Tariffs too. It’s just a bit of “short term pain”…meaning, for about 4 years until someone comes in and reverses the horrible policies.
The consequences of trump will have residual effects. The damage cannot be undone in one fell swoop. The country is a big boat and it takes a long fucking time to change directions even if you immediately start steering it the other way.
Then there’s the whole topic of friends and allies wondering if we can be trusted in the long term. Why make deals with us if we’re gonna just elect a stupid asshole who will reneg on anything and everything that isn’t immediately beneficial to that specific person? A lot of countries likely considered drastic changes to policy with us, but decided to hold off until the 2020 election, and then breathed a sigh of relief when we didn’t reelect the dipshit. Fast forward four short years and see that we went back to the dipshit despite all obvious, available information saying that only a fucking moron who is trying to summon the end of the world would allow such a thing; would you trust a country that elected trump, took a break from him, and then elected him back in again? This really isn’t about lackluster democrats and their performance in elections; would you want to make long term plans with a person who was so chaotic? Denmark won’t forget us openly considering taking Greenland by force. Panama won’t forget us talking about taking the canal. Canada won’t forget us talking about annexing them. The EU won’t forget the tariffs. Mexico won’t forget the deportations. We’re alienating ourselves, burning through all of our political capital like trump burns through every business venture. He will fuck every relationship up and the dollar will be fucking worthless as a result if he doesn’t just fucking stop.
I legitimately have zero clue what the country and the world in general look like four years from now, but I can tell you that it will be bad and the bleeding will take years to stop and decades to heal. Even if this stopped today, Pandora’s box is open. If trump died on the toilet today, vance would continue what’s happening.
The entire line of succession isn’t even the problem. The experiment is over. Oligarchs and their pet autocrat run everything and they’re not interested in what you have to say about it. If they decide to just suspend all elections and appoint all elected offices and consolidate all power to the executive, what can really be done to stop it? It would take a revolution, but the bastard cops have fucking tanks with which to kill us all. No other country will come to help us because our military is far more advanced than all others and we’re geographically very easy to defend. Our own country has us by the balls and the twisting is just getting started.
I wish I could be so optimistic as to believe that things could be okay in four years. A lot of people will be deported and/or killed before then, so even if it did end up being okay for you or me, that’s still gonna be too late for them.
“If” someone reverses those policies. There are still policies created by Trump from 2016 that have not been reversed.
Private prisons looking at the 13th amendment:
“I wouldn’t say deported… More like, under new management.”
Surely they mean shocked by how affordable eggs are now, right??
How much could an egg cost? 10 dollars?
There’s always money in the egg stand!
egg
Her?
What?
But I hardly know her!
We left her in Mexico!
It’s as Ann as the nose on Plain’s face
Yeah another page in the orange manual of america’s destruction
How can he sleep at night knowing he’s selling us out to fucking China and Russia. They are salivating at our demise.
He’s got his daddy Vlad singing lullabies
Vladdy got his dick in trumps throat so hard he’s letting Elon run the show. #PresidentElon
Should be criminal
Stop giving Trump a heads up on his mistakes
Can’t get rid of him if we keep preventing his fuck ups for him
Same thing happened his whole first term
Pick an obvious huge blunder of his that isn’t going to cause global catastrophe for generations to come and just let it happen
Don’t help it happen, just silently let it happen.
The courts, congress, secret service, none of it will matter if 150+ million people rush the capital to dispose of this goon
Stop giving Trump a heads up on his mistakes
Can’t get rid of him if we keep preventing his fuck ups for him
I think you’re overestimating how much he listens to or cares for what the public thinks. He surrounds himself with yes-men and people beaten into submission. As long as they’re going to keep telling him that his policies are making America great, he’ll keep doing both whatever dumb shit he thinks of and executing the plans Putin and the Project 2025 authors give him.
Most of these idea aren’t even Trump’s, they come from deranged and corrupt special interest groups
Trump also has a team that manages his image. Mostly because this is what Trump really cares about the most, vanity.
If these two come into conflict, the image team will always win.
Whatever makes Trump look good, that’s all he cares about.
Letting him fuck up will force him into damage control and he will never admit being wrong which will only serve to dig himself a deeper hole
In a sane world that would work.
I don’t think that’s the world we’re in anymore.
I like AOC, but I don’t understand why she just says stuff and doesn’t do anything.
She could introduce new legislation everyday, be an obstructionist to the
neonazirepublican agenda.Get them on the record voting no to the simple things. Will this stuff pass? No, but that’s not the point.
Do something, don’t just say sound bites
Because to even reach the house floor those bills would have to go through Republican controlled comities. That wouldn’t even gum up the works, they would simply be ignored. So she focuses her efforts on education people on what is really going on, instead of what the corpo news outlets are spewing.
Will Americans learn that they dont need to buy meat, and it’ll be lighter on their pocket book and on the climate?
You do realize that the foods we are going to have a crisis over includes literally all the stuff you eat instead of meat too right
Just FYI, jagged_circle is a ragebait troll.
That tracks
Nope.
I am no vegetarian but I rarely buy meat, because I can make a succulent meal without meat. I enjoy the occasional BBQ but cooking with tofu and other protein replacements is just so much cheaper and healthier than buying shitty meats on the regular. Just enjoy the occasional, high quality meat
