Mexican Slavery

I don't think I have ever brought up this topic before.  It is one of the most controversial topics today.  It also turns out that a vast majority of people, on both sides, have no clue what it really entails.  Today, I am going to discuss illegal immigration.

The other day, I was reading about illegal immigration, for a class I was taking.  I forget what the article was about, but I started reading through some of the comments left by readers.  One lady said that she was against illegal immigration, because it takes jobs away from legal American citizens.  She then showed her complete ignorance by stating that she has a friend who would gladly take one of the construction jobs currently held by an illegal Mexican immigrant.  The construction industry in the U.S. is fairly well regulated.  Certifications are required for many types of construction work, and most locales have at least three levels of construction code requirements (Federal, state, city, and/or county).  Even for construction jobs that do not have Federal requirements, many states require that anyone with less than journeyman status work under a journeyman as an apprentice (I did this on a few occasions doing insulating work with a friend).  On average, more than half of construction workers are skilled workers.  If they are Mexican, they are very much legal.  Maybe some shady backwoods construction jobs hire illegal immigrants, but reputable construction companies don't.

So, the question then is, if there are so many illegal immigrants here, what are the jobs that they are taking?  Many are working for small businesses that are not willing to pay minimum wage.  It is pretty hard for an illegal immigrant to complain that they are getting ripped off, when they will certainly be thrown out of the country if they do.  I wonder if this lady's friend is willing to work as a bagger or cashier at a small grocery store, for $2.50 an hour.  That is not where most of the jobs are though.  My research found that a vast majority of illegal immigrants in the U.S. are working in one of two industries.  In Washington state, many work in the logging industry.  In general though, a vast majority work in agriculture.  Now, keep in mind that in the U.S., minimum wage does not apply to most agricultural work.  The vast majority of illegal workers (including those who return to Mexico after harvest season is over) in the U.S. are doing agricultural work, which pays $2 to $4 an hour and does not violate minimum wage.

Now we can say that Mexican immigrants are taking thousands of agricultural jobs from legal U.S. citizens right?  This is actually false.  It also turns out that most Americans will not do agricultural work, even if they cannot find any other work.  One farm workers organization listed jobs for agricultural work with some very large unemployment organizations, and out of tens to hundreds of thousands of unemployed Americans notified of the openings, a grand total of three responded.  These are not jobs that Americans would have if the Mexicans did not do them for cheaper than minimum wage.  These are jobs that Americans refuse to do.  The evidence shows that most unemployed Americans would rather go on welfare than work in agriculture.  The immigrants are not stealing jobs.  They are filling a need for labor that no one else is willing to do.

It gets worse though.  It also turns out that the reason the above mentioned organization of farm workers started posting job openings is that many Mexicans won't do farm work anymore either.  Many of the jobs were filled by Mexicans who live in Mexico and come to the U.S. seasonally to do farm work.  The economy in Mexico has improved somewhat, and now many Mexican farm workers have found that they can get higher quality and better paying work staying in Mexico, than working on farms in the U.S.  One farmer complained that the lack of workers was going to cause part of his berry harvest to go bad before they could be picked.  Similar worries have been heard from other farmers as well.  As the economy in Mexico has improved, jobs on U.S. farms have opened up.  Unfortunately, few Americans (three, specifically) are willing to do that kind of work.  As the Mexican economy continues to improve, we can expect to loose more and more farm workers.  Here is the catch: Farm workers are essential to our ability to produce food.  Now, last time I checked, 60% of the food produced in the U.S. is exported.  So, decreasing production by 60% would not cause us to starve, but it would cause other countries to have food difficulties, and it would force a lot of farms to close, which would eliminate all of the administrative jobs that are held by legal American workers.  Obviously, if food production dropped more than that, people in the U.S. would start to starve.  In short, without Mexican farm workers, we would loose a large number of jobs that Americans are willing to do, we would loose a major export, we would probably have to start rationing food, and some people would starve because they would not be able to afford the new prices for food.

All of this brings up a lot of questions.  The obvious one is, how can we cut down on illegal immigration without destroying our ability to produce enough food for everyone?  The solution is even more obvious: Illegal immigration is only illegal because it is illegal.  Since it is defined by the fact that it is illegal, making it legal would eliminate the problem entirely.  Now, I am not necessarily for opening the borders and walking away.  We could, however, make it much easier for honest Mexicans to immigrate.  We could even just make it easier to get short term work visas for farm workers.

A second, less obvious question this brings up is, why is minimum wage different for agricultural work?  Also, farm workers don't get overtime pay either.  Why?  The idea with minimum wage is that it is designed to make sure that workers get enough wages for their work to pay for living expenses.  The idea with overtime is that more than 8 hours of work a day (or 40 hours a week) is excessive labor, and the employee deserves extra pay for the difficulties caused.  Do farm workers somehow have a lower cost of living, such that lower pay is justified?  Is farm work so easy that overtime should not apply?  The answer is very obviously "no."  If we limit farm workers to legal workers (whom the law is designed for), they have the same cost of living as anyone else.  Working in agriculture does not magically decrease cost of living.  The overtime thing is worse.  The reason Americans won't do farm work is that it is grueling labor.  Farm work is some of the hardest physical labor available in the U.S.  If anyone deserves extra pay for excessive work, it is farm workers.  So, the question "why" still stands.  The answer is, farming is not as profitable as many other businesses (or, it was not, back when this particular part of labor law was designed; modern industrial farming techniques have dramatically increased profitability of farming).  The justification is, this type of business needs the lower minimum wage, and farm workers work 12 to 16 hours a day, almost every day they work.  As such, the cost to pay workers fair wages is supposedly too much for farms to handle.  Does this really justify blatantly ripping them off though?

This reveals an ethical dilemma.  We need food.  In fact, food is one place where normal market profit maximization techniques are obviously wrong.  Profit maximization math balances demand with price.  The problem with doing this for food is that when demand decreases, it means that people are not buying the product, often because they cannot afford it.  For food this means that people starve.  So, if profit is maximized, around 25% of people will not be able to afford food (this be based on common trends with other products; in the U.S., given that a vast majority of people are in the lower class, it might be closer to 50% or more).  Maximizing profit for food forces people to starve.  So, the dilemma is this: Allow the food industry to be entirely capitalistic, require farms to pay fair wages, and have a significant percentage of the population starve, or allow farms to pay wages worth far less than the average compensation given to slaves in the Old South (they at least got room and board), to keep food costs low enough that everyone can afford it?

What this really comes down to is, when is the U.S. really going to outlaw slavery?  Americans recognize that farm work, at current legal wages, is not much different from slavery.  This is part of the reason Americans will not take farm jobs.  Many Mexicans are used to conditions worse than slavery, so seasonal slavery on a farm, that actually pays, is better than what they are used to.  That still does not make it right though.  (Note, if you are sitting there thinking, "It's only slavery if they are forced to work," look up "chattel slavery."  That is what you are comparing it to.  Chattel slavery is not the only kind of slavery.  Voluntary slavery is still slavery.)  We managed to outlaw blatant chattel slavery long ago.  Now we are battling a different kind of slavery that is much more insidious.  Until we recognize it as slavery, the American Dream will be a false hope available only to those who already have it.  Let's free the Mexican slaves!

Poverty and Minimum Wage

I read a study recently about poverty.  It claimed that the legal definition of "poverty level" does not match the legal definition of "poverty" in the U.S.  Specifically, for the government to consider a U.S. citizen or family to be under the poverty level, the household must be making less than somewhere around $20,000 a year (I think the actual figure is within a thousand of $23,000).  The study looked at cost of living all around the U.S.  Because cost of living is different in different places, the poverty level should also be different.  Using the legal definition of "poverty," the study found that the actual poverty rate averages over $30,000 a year.  There were a few places where it was as low as $25,000 a year, but there were many places where it was very close to $40,000 a year.  Given the legal definition of "poverty rate," which is used by many government welfare agencies, there as almost a $20,000 gap where people who  need government welfare cannot get it.  Imagine the dilemma of the guy who is making $19,000 a year, gets all of the food for his family through food stamps, and is paying only half the normal rent in subsidized housing.  What happens when his boss offers him a promotion that adds $5,000 a year to his salary?  If he accepts, he will make $24,000 a year.  Unfortunately, this will not cover his $30,000 a year expenses.  Further, loosing the food stamps takes out $3,000 a year from his income, and loosing qualification for subsidized housing takes out another $5,000 a year.  If he does not take the promotion, he stays at $19,000 a year, but food stamps give him $3,000 for food, and the housing subsidy gives him $5,000 for his family's apartment.  Before the raise, his gross income is actually $27,000, only $3,000 short.  After the raise, his gross income is $24,000.  He would be $6,000 short this way.  The only way he can take a promotion is if his salary is increased by more than $8,000 a year (plus the additional taxes, which he will now have to pay with his increased income).  What are the chances that he will eventually be offered a raise big enough to justify accepting it?  Approximately nothing.  Most employers do not even offer a $3,000 raise for a single promotion.  This guy will probably be stuck barely in poverty ($3,000 short) for the rest of his life, because any raise that would help him progress out of poverty will disqualify him for welfare and cause him and his family to starve and be thrown out on the street.  I guess the American Dream only exists for those who are already rich or the lucky few geniuses who can pull off a massively successful invention and manage to keep the rights long enough to get paid.

This gap between the legal definitions of "poverty" and "poverty level" is not the only gap that causes a major problem.  There is a similar gap between Federal Minimum Wage and the legal definition of "poverty level."  Current Federal Minimum Wage is $7.25 an hour.  Now, the legal work week is only 40 hours, according to Federal Labor Law.  There are only four professions which can legally be required to work more than this (other businesses can ask their employees to work more hours, but if the employees refuse, they cannot do anything that could be construed as punishment or retaliation).  There are also only 52 weeks in a year.  Doing the math, we find that Federal Minimum Wage enforces a yearly wage of only $15,080, for a full, legal work week.  This is only 75% of the Federal definition of "poverty level."  The Federal government itself is practically encouraging entry level businesses to keep their employees in poverty.  Worse, the actual poverty level is closer to $30,000 a year, which means that in reality, the government is allowing businesses to pay only half what a person needs to survive.  This is encouraging an 80 hour work week, with the additional overhead of working for more than one employer.  Further, most minimum wage jobs only schedule employees half time, to avoid paying benefits.  This means that the government is actually encouraging an 80 work week, split between four jobs.  Note that each job has extra overhead for taxes, administration of the businesses, and often extra travel time.  This is absurd.  How stupid do law makers have to be to miss this problem?

So, there are a few possible solutions.  The worst is to increase the legal work week to 80 hours and remove laws requiring benefits.  This would solve all of the problems for the businesses (besides extra hiring costs to replace dead employees).  This also happens to be 16 hours a day, 5 days a week.  The 40 hour Federal limit was placed to solve this problem, and it would be inhuman to change it back.  Also, if benefits are removed, the poverty level should be raised another $5,000.  The second solution is to fix the government definition of "poverty level."  This will allow more people to get on welfare, which will help to mitigate the problem.  Unfortunately, this will cost a lot of money, and if the government cannot get up the nerve to tax large businesses more, it will result in economic disaster.  Note that this solution should be used, but it will not fix the problem by itself.  The third solution is to raise minimum wage such that working full-time in any job will pay enough to stay out of poverty.  This will still not help people that cannot find jobs or that cannot find 40 hours of work each week, but it will take a huge number of people out of poverty.  The ideal solution would be both of the last two.  Fixing the definitions problem will make welfare work for everyone who needs it.  Fixing minimum wage will get a huge number of people off of welfare, which will balance the effect of fixing the definitions.  In this system, the guy above will already be out of poverty, if he is working full-time.  If he is not, he will be able to remain on welfare until he is entirely out of poverty.  This will allow him to accept the promotion without endangering himself and his family.

Now, there will certainly be some negative repercussions to this.  Businesses that base their profit margin on underpaying employees will probably fail (we will loose a lot of fast food places; is that really a bad thing?).  Initially unemployment will increase, which will increase the burden on welfare.  Ultimately though, this problem must be addressed.  If we do not start taking welfare money from the businesses that are causing it to be required, our government will eventually default on its debts, which will destroy its ability to borrow money.  This will force a massive lightening of government, which will probably result in a depression like the world has never seen before.  We might as well start now, where it will actually fix some major problems, instead of waiting until we are on the verge of government collapse.

Because I am black

Just to be clear, I am not black.  The phrase I reference in the title, "It's because I am black" is a phrase that should never be uttered by any black person trying to gain fair treatment.  This particular post was prompted by at least one incident mentioned by Oprah Winfrey.  Evidently on two occasions, when she was in Europe, she was refused service.  She claims that both of these incidents were examples of racism.  The first was in France, where she entered a store several minutes after it had closed, and the store clerk told her he could not serve her because the store was closed.  The second, in Switzerland, was in a store that sold handbags.  When she displayed interest in a 35,000 Franc (about $38,000US) handbag, the clerk suggested some less expensive options.  Oprah claims that both of these were cases of blatant racism.

The first case was clearly not racist.  No matter how racist the store clerk might have been, I find it extremely unlikely that he (or she...) would have acted any differently for a white person, or even a French white person (the French are notorious for being less than polite to foreigners).   The clerk might have been racist (there is no evidence of this), but his actions certainly were not.

The second case is not quite so clearly not racist, but if you consider the facts, there is a plethora of more reasonable explanations.  The first is that the clerk might do this for all customers.  It is possible that shoppers have left the store without looking back when they discovered the prices of the more expensive items.  Offering lower priced alternatives could be a good marketing strategy for retaining less wealthy customers.  While this is probably more likely than racism, it is still not that likely.  A more reasonable explanation is that Oprah was probably wearing a rather out of date style, and the clerk assumed that this meant she could not afford something more recent.  I can suddenly hear a lot of people becoming indignant, maybe saying, "Oprah would never wear something out of style."  Maybe that is true, but it is essential to consider how fashion evolves.  On average, Europe is about 20 years ahead of the U.S. in fashion (much like Japan is about 20 years behind the U.S.).  Oprah could have been wearing the latest U.S. fashion, and she still would have been 20 years behind in Europe.  If the clerk were not used to serving rich Americans, the she would probably have mistaken Oprah's clothing for thrift store clothing donated by some rich person making closet space.  Now, while I think shopping at thrift stores is wise, even for the rich, I could easily see the clerk take this as a sign of being less than very wealthy.  If she was getting a commission, I could easily see why she would suggest something cheaper to someone wearing apparently cheap clothing.  There are several other possible, non-racist, reasons that the clerk might have offered cheaper alternatives, but racism is about the least likely reason.  (Note that the shop owner claims that the event never happened.  It is possible that Oprah was just making up a story for the occasion.  Rich people seem to do that a lot.)

So, now for the point of this article: Crying racism makes black people (or people of any race) look bad.  Oprah is enforcing a stereotype that black people will cry racism whenever they think it will help them get their way.  Sadly, this bad habit of prominent black people has made it cliché to "play the race card" even when legitimate racism is taking place.  What they don't seem to understand is, this encourages racism.  Many employers are afraid to hire black people, because they fear law suits over racism where none exists.  It sometimes seems to be a lower liability to choose not to hire black people than it is to hire qualified black people at the risk of unfounded racism law suits.  Further, it is rather hypocritical to constantly cry racism when you are trying to get equal rights with everyone else.  Maybe these people think that if they constantly point out their race, everyone will magically forget about race.  A strategy that has seemed to work far more consistently is to forget about race entirely and act like you belong.  I have worked with people of different races before, and the most respected are the ones who act insulted at the insult when people are rude, instead of pretending like every little comment is racist.  These people respect others and first assume that rudeness is unintentional, and when that is not possible, they assume the rudeness is directed at them and not their race.  One benefit of this is that even when someone is being racist, it takes race out of the equation.  This makes rudeness more personal, which is not what racist people typically want.  When people are racist, they are directing their rudeness at a group instead of an individual.  This feels less wrong than directing rudeness at an individual.  When the target of the rudeness ignores any racial element, it makes the rudeness personal, which makes racist people uncomfortable.  In other words, acknowledging racist behavior, whether intentional or not, actually encourages racism, while refusing to acknowledge the racial element discourages it.  (Note that this is true of modern society, but it was not in early America.  This is because targeting rudeness at specific racial groups was more socially acceptable then.  When a large number of people support racist behavior, racist people are less likely to feel guilt when the insult is made more personal.  Now, racist behavior is not as socially acceptable, so turning an insult personal is a far more effective way of discouraging racism.)

This is just one way that many American blacks separate themselves from everyone else (not just whites).  Another one (which I hope Oprah is intelligent enough not to be involved with) is gangs.  Black ghetto kids are taught young that blacks are oppressed.  They are taught that they will never be treated as well as whites.  They learn that they can have "families" that will help them, by joining a gang.  They are essentially making their own culture, and they are rejecting American culture.  The problem is first, they are wrong.  Plenty of black people have gotten out of poverty and even slavery.  Some of the most famous black Americans in history started out as slaves (look up George Washington Carver, who invented peanut-butter and was involved in setting up one of the first learning institutions for black people in the U.S.).  Gangs generate crime, and this crime makes black people look bad.  Yes, it is a stereotype, and stereotypes are not always accurate.  If you think you can convince the majority of people to discard stereotypes though, you are delusional.  The single most effective way to destroy racism is to become a functioning part of society, and to prove the stereotypes wrong (actually, this is more of changing the stereotypes).  For ghetto black kids, this means staying out of crime, graduating from high school, and finding a way to go to college (even if it means scholarships and loans; just make sure to pick a profession that will pay off the loans quickly; consider engineering, we need more engineers anyhow).  For Oprah and other prominent black people this means stop pointing out race every time you feel insulted.  If someone insults you, take it personally, do not blame your race (or better yet, blow the insult off; if blacks were stereotyped as extremely difficult to offend, employers would feel more comfortable hiring black people than white people).  If you want to be treated like everyone else, quit pointing out all of the differences.  There are times when discussions about race are appropriate.  When you have just been insulted in a totally non-racial way is not one of those times.

One other thing: The employees at the stores Oprah mentioned have more right to be insulted than she does.  Racism is a serious thing.  Accusing people of racism without substantial evidence is extremely rude.  Imagine if you refused to do something for someone and they accused you of being a pedophile, a porn addict, or a drug addict.  Racism is somewhere among those in seriousness.  Oprah very seriously insulted these two people, and she is lucky she did not cause an international incident.  Famous people have a responsibility to represent their home country in a good light.  Oprah's rather heinous behavior has reinforced another stereotype, that Americans are rude, unfeeling, egotistical jerks.  Thanks Oprah for making both black people and Americans look bad, all in one shot.