[sgtyork]

Right. I once worked for an international molasses company and yes I recall almond hulls and oils (not nuts) were a competitive product. I did a dogpile search and see lots of info about almond hull animal feed (also used for bedding) and not anything about the nuts themselves.

Very little of internationally traded molasses is used for human consumption. The majority goes to cattle feed. I wouldn't describe that as keeping the world wide price of human edible molasses' up, cattle nutrition was the preponderance of the market demand and human molasses producers paid the market price. When was the last time you used molasses to sweeten something?

The alternative use in the third world where most of it is produced is to spread it on the fields as a fertilizer because its a by product of sugar manufacturing and has practically no value at all. The point is that it is the total demand and supply that gives that commodity an international value.

What we see with illegal labor is artificially low costs distorting the demand for mechanization (too low) and the artificially low costs probably distort the demand for its products also. Maybe we just wouldn't buy as many green onions if it were 15 cents more a pound, we might substitute leeks or dried onions. Maybe we wouldn't eat out as quite as frequently if restaurants charged 10 percent more because they had legal employees. Maybe we wouldn't have had as big a housing boom if construction costs weren't driven downward by illegals on construction sites.

[MNJohnnie]

So maybe we would be like Europe and only have 1-2% GDP growth in a good year and creeeping unemployment crises as the Economy did not grow as fast as it needed. Then there is the explodin defecit crises since the growth in Govt spending would be vastly out stripping the economic growth rates. And maybe we would be slowly slipping into 3 world economic status and and a stagnet economy but HEY! We could all feel good cause we "got even" with those nasty lousy illegals! And as long as we felt good for "getting even" with all those nasty Illegals, we could still feel goo about ourselves which would make our Govt directed poverty and regulatory chains rest easy on us.

There are NO free lunches in Economics

[Beagle8U]

" When was the last time you used molasses to sweeten something? "

LOL, I use it often in cooking, and many of those actual almonds do go into animal feed. Most are fed to hogs.

[Phsstpok]

(molasses is) a by product of sugar manufacturing and has practically no value at all.

Isn't rum still made from molasses?  I wouldn't call that "no value at all." <g>