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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The big money and corporate donors to the Democratic Party would never allow someone like AOC or Bernie to lead the party.
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?
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.
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’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.
If that’s what you were saying re: USAID cancellation eventually raising food prices, you have quite a few leaps of logic in there.
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.
does no one else see the ethical quandary of relying on cheap exploited labor for our food?
Leadership, yes. I would argue it is intentional. Citizens… well, clearly not some half of the electorate.
We tried to resolve this with legislation and the right wing crazies killed it each time. It’s not like the average Democratic voter wants an undocumented underclass. The business interests do. And the GOP leadership gets to fund raise on the caravans.
Most Americans want a better life for these people. Step one isn’t to spend a trillion dollars to deport them all.
Absolutely! But at the same time, it highlights the income inequality the majority of Americans are experiencing.
I am a little shocked that healthcare is in the top 3. How many undocumented nurses are there? How do they obtain licensure? Or is this all just support staff?
Keep in mind, the current gov isn’t just interested in “illegal” immigrants, but any non white people they can figure out a way to deport.
Many nurses are here on work visas.
According to this document from 2021, most of them are “assistants” and “aides” of various types, although it seems there are a few thousand registered nurses and other licensed healthcare providers and technicians. Maybe they get licensed on a visa and then overstay the visa?
Also Home Health aides, orderlies and other non licensed positions
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
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
In a sane world that would work.
I don’t think that’s the world we’re in anymore.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
Wow, she doesn’t gaf about them at all, she just wants them to stay so she can get lower prices on produce??
It’s just good rhetoric. Many people voted for trump because they somehow thought he’d make things more affordable for them. Pointing out that he’s doing the opposite is good. It also gives self-interested people a reason to care about immigrations issues.
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.
Not the person you initially responded to, but my understanding is that even with immigration reform we’ll still have legal and illegal immigration. In the country we’ve had fairly strict immigration policies for over 100 years.
I don’t think the democrats want open borders, so what happens to the illegal immigration debate after 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?
I never implied those are the only options. I only specifically said I have no issue with deporting illegal immigrants, which is what’s currently happening. Why should we permit illegal immigrants to stay in the country and/or attempt to gain legal residence?
It sound like a lot of people are upset that if we get rid of our indentured servants and slaves, then we won’t be able to afford all the useless shit we buy constantly.
You very much did, and you very much are continuing to present hyperbolic examples as reasonable interpretations.
An illustrative but lazy counterpoint might be: Why aren’t you more comfortable with putting immigrants in concentration camps? Don’t you see how open borders would harm this country?
No human being is “illegal.” This is a very overused and thinly-veiled way to admit you’re a racist while expecting others to miss the context.
Dang you got me.
You really thought no one knew?
but I’m struggling to find a reason we shouldnt deport illegal immigrants.
Are you specifically concerned about illegal immigration, or just immigration in general? Because if it’s the former, that’s a silly distinction because the government (we the people, aka Elon Musk) decides what is illegal or not. If the next wave of politicians decides we should have actually open borders, then there would be no such thing as “illegal immigration”.
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.
Do you have specific examples in mind where immigrants are exploited? If you do, look at those examples and ask yourself: “could we pass laws to protect these people from abuse?”, and you’ll find that the answer is obviously yes.
Maybe your definition of “abuse” is that they need to work harder to earn less? Well, that’s the society we live in. Capitalism has its problems, but it has worked good enough for us for the past 248 years. For the immigrant, US minimum wage is likely far better than whatever they received in their home country, and I suspect most would happily take that deal. I think that’s what they’d call “the American dream”, as their children will be able to go to school and have a better future than they did.
…If your issue is with immigration in general, then I don’t know what to tell you. That’s entirely opinion based, and nobody knows what the correct answer is (despite what they might claim). 100% open borders has risks, 100% closed borders has risks.
I guess I’m just silly for thinking breaking laws to get into a country is a bad thing.
Bro did all the thinking for you and you still can’t grasp it smh
Right, he made the great point that maybe we could pass laws to protect people we dont even know are in the country. That makes a lot of sense. Illegal immigrants are a protected class now!
I’m frustrated that everything trump does gets misrepresented to the point where people are just shouting random fears into the void. Apologies for refusing to jump to conclusions like the rest of the circle-jerkers on this platform.
I am opposed to quite a lot of what trump does but kicking people out of the country who didnt arrive legally isn’t one of them, because I simply can’t think of a reason why people who broke into the country deserve the right to stay.
You lack empathy. And you need to understand that you are only a victim here for being a sociopath, not for simply discussing trumps actions.
And you lack a coherent response, unless you think name-calling is effective. Good thing all of you taught my why I was wrong.
You’re not engaging in any good faith arguing here. I made a good faith argument that your focus on the “illegal” label is arbitrary and pointless, and even invited a discussion on immigration in general, but instead you came back with some terrible takes and snark. I can’t tell if you’re a troll or a bot.
Good thing all of you taught my why I was wrong.
Is that why you came here? To have people teach you why you’re wrong? Because if you already know you’re wrong, why are you spending so much effort arguing against people telling you what you already know? It’s Saturday dude, spend it with friends and family, not bitterly debating politics with strangers on the internet.
So you don’t care about immigration, you only care about the “illegal” aspect of it? Does that mean you’re pro-immigration reform, so that more people can immigrate to the US without “breaking laws”?
I seem to remember there’s a word for people who feel that all laws must be followed no matter how unjust. I think it starts with an F.
I have no issue with people immigrating legally.
So, you believe in imaginary lines drawn on maps that allow people to prosecute others simply for walking a few feet in a specific direction?
In some contexts yes.
Good to know! I also hate illegal immigration, which is why, at least on this issue, I’m voting for democrats for the foreseeable future. The republican party is hell bent on increasing the amount of illegal immigrantion in this country, and I just can’t support that. Of course, the dems would never go so far as to eliminate illegal immigration completely (by adopting open borders), but I’m confident they’re at least more open to finding a middle ground that makes most people happy.
Could you give more detail on why the republicans are going to increase it? Are they doing it on purpose?
I’m not going to keep explaining it to you. If you still don’t get it, try asking ChatGPT to summarize this thread for you.
I don’t disagree with you, and I think that’s why people call for immigration reform. We need to look at what we want to do about immigration as a nation.
One thing I’ve never understood from democrats perspective is that there is a reason to control how many people can immigrate to ensure the country can support those people.
What I’ve never understood about Republicans is why go after the immigrants and not the companies hiring their labor. Make the penalties brutal for hiring illegal immigrants and youll solve many issues with immigration.
It does seem like both parties go to far on either side with it, when you put it that way.
I can’t speak for others, but I learned a few years ago that the immigration process is difficult and expensive. Trump made this significantly worse during his first term.
We wouldn’t have so much illegal immigration if the barriers weren’t so high.
In the hope they become legal, productive members of society. Would that not help all parties involved?
Not when you’ve got over 350 million people and the world’s most expensive health care.
Country full huh?
I’d say over populated in regard to this discussion.
