Brilliant, you farmers just pull a million or more out of your butts for machinery.
Shows how clueless politicians are wrt to economics.
I would tell you the proper answer but don’t want him to steal it.
We’ve got 90 million working-age Americans NOT working now.
America incurs massive debt for the huge nanny-state to encourage people NOT to work and employers NOT to hire. Fix that first.
I am surrounded by small Wisconsin farmers - both dairy and produce. Those that I know do not hire immigrants. They hire local and pay decent including room and board. The huge factory farms, which are trying to put the smaller family farms out of business are the ones hiring the immigrants.
Nice demonstration of Cruz not understanding economics. If labor costs < capital costs for a given job, then it doesn’t make sense to replace the workers with machines. And I imagine for the most part that agriculture has already been mechanized when and where it can be.
Is Cruz proposing a giant new subsidy for all these magical new machines?
I’m in Tillamook OR at their creamery often, and their dairy farms have started to bring in automated milking equipment. There are so many advantages to it, and the milk is tested before it leaves the milking head.
The cows prefer them, as they get to decide when they need to be milked.
Some agricultural processes can be automated, some cannot.
If the agricultural industry thinks that the illegals they hire now will work for the same low wages after they become “legalized”, they are fools.
There have been over 50 million abortions in this country and now there are over 40 million immigrants in this country. The work needs to be done and the taxes paid to fund the district of corruption. Robots do not pay taxes. Robots will not be used and the government will not provide incentives as long as the robots do not pay taxes.
I’m in favor of mechanization as an alternative to politicians. Difficult to see what benefit Congress is. I’d rather get an email once a week asking me to vote on a half dozen issues. Conservative media is a fraud. Since the rise of the administrative state, separation of powers is dead. Admin agencies legislate, execute and exercise judicial powers over their own actions. The failure of overpaid blowhards like Limbaugh, Hannity, BeckLevin and Savage to address underscores their complicity in perpetuating misery for those of us actually capable of self-governance. Just say no.
It’s going to happen whether we like it or not.
They have machines that shoot lasers into strawberries to determine if they are the proper ripeness before picking.
There is 40% unemployment in the Central Valley of California. Yet, they keep on bringing in unskilled labor from Mexico.
Anyone that still thinks this is about cheap labor is wrong.
Did he take farming at Princeton....or maybe he debatated about farming?
The problem with people from Harvard is they think they know it all.
These “migrants” are now demanding computer jobs - seriously. They demand bank teller jobs. They demand priority construction jobs... on and on.
What they come to take as far as jobs is NOT just in the grape fields. Wake up. And all the public schools are catering to them, INCLUDING ADULT “EDUCATION”, and they are favored in many positions simply because they speak Spanish.
We are becoming Mexico. Soon the police will be totally corrupt like in Mexico. And that will be the end.
Sounds like it would be a win-win.
Fewer opportunities for illegals.
More jobs for unemployed black youth.
In Australia, they use automated pickers in their wine industry much more than we do in America. This is because there is no handy migrant labor force. So Cruz has a point.
But ... “heavy capital investment -or- illegal immigrants” is not a choice that should even exist.
In the current environment of ubiquitous illegal migrant labor, you could argue that a single farmer cannot compete with his neighbors unless he uses the same or cheaper methods.
Recently, some farmers in NC were charged fines in the millions for using illegal labor, which is one way to make sure they are no longer a “cheaper method”.
If all the illegals are deported, then none of his neighbors can use the old “cheaper method” and will have a level playing field again.
If legal labor is taxed while illegal labor is invisible to taxes, that makes the illegal labor “cheaper”. Maybe a solution is not to tax any labor. Fund SS/M and general fund via tax on business gross revenue and imports rather than American workers’ wages (also tax rebates for exports like Germany and China do). Prices would go up, but so would after-tax paychecks, which would benefit legal workers more than the illegals whose pay was always untaxed.
There are lots of ways to remove the incentives for illegal alien labor besides automation.
Ooooor - make the able-bodied welfare crews get out there and get sweaty and dirty and tired for their stipends.....seems that Ted buys in to the “some jobs Americans just won’t do” meme and thinks mechanization will ruffle fewer feathers than telling folks that there is a human solution that will also serve as a training platform for the lazy leeches.