It may have been $19 for a senior packer in a union shop in a large northeastern city at a meat packing plant where the chief customer was corrupt gov't institutions who didn't mind overcharging.
I bet Lou Dobbs doesn't complain when he pays $2.99/lb for beef when it might be $7.99 if we were still overpaying a relatively low skilled worker.
the labor cost component is hardly that. its the same false argument as with lettuce.
if we didn't have this cheap labor, these meat plants would invest in automation and machines to do this work. the cheap labor prevents investment in technology.
Dobbs is a mouldy old fatass who Im surprised to see complaining about anything that lowers the cost of food.
The price of meat hasn't been affected by the change in wages. The profits of the meatpackers has however.
In the Midwest meatpacking was a respectable job that a man could raise a faimily on. Today, illegal slaves.
Americans prefer to bitch about the price of lettuce and not pay for goods that give their fellow citizens a good wage, so they can then afford to drive their expensive foreign made fancy cars.
"I bet Lou Dobbs doesn't complain when he pays $2.99/lb for beef when it might be $7.99 if we were still overpaying a relatively low skilled worker."
You pay one way or another. Frankly, I'd rather pay more for my goods and services if more Americans could have decent paying jobs and health insurance than pay thru the nose in taxes for special teachers for children of illegals, for socials services for illegals, for the federal incarceration of illegals, etc. Besides, how much of the savings do you really think gets passed on to us? Most of the savings end up in the business owners' pockets. They make more money off of the illegals and we end up paying for the illegals.
Her's a clue: that $2.99/lb beef costs MUCH more than $2.99/lb.
In Arizona, the typical family of five pays $4,000 per year in taxes and hidden costs to support the illegal alien families that supply "cheap" labor.
I can remember beef being rather expensive in the 80's. It seems that today's price of 6.99-7.99lb say.. for a NY-strip was about the same as it was in the 80's. Someone corret me if I'm wrong.
That's Indiana prices too.
It looks like for beef to go up that much ($5) per pound if the wage climbed from $9 to $19 an hour ($10 increase) that a meat packer would only be packing two pounds of beef per hour. That doesn't sound right!
I bet a meat packer can easily pack 100 lbs of hamburger per hour and with a little automation that could be raised to 1000 lbs per hour.
If a meat packer can handle 100 lbs of beef per hour, then a doubling of wages from $9 per hour to $19 per hour would only have a 10 cents per pound impact on the price of meat.
I like meat and eat some everyday. But I would happily accept a 10 cent per pound price increase if it meant getting all the illegals off of our social services and out of our country so I was not being taxed to subsidize cheap labor.
FIVE DOLLARS PER POUND? You must be out of your mind! Do you really think that a meat-packer processes couple pounds of meat per hour?
We are paying that, but it's hidden in taxes via crime, social services and the likes.
Must be a commercial meat grinder can only grind about 3 lbs. of mean an hour, eh???