Anyone know if this was taken completely out of context, or what context it was in? Or is McCain actually batshit crazy to think I wouldn’t pick cabbage for 50$ an hour?
Inb4 Rainjack says cabbage picking would be too hard for me.
He didn’t say no American citizen would do it. He was saying the – I presume reporters – in the audience would not and could not, and actually I’ll bet he was right that they would not do it.
Of course many Americans would do it at that pay. But many would not. If the audience was reporters, I’d bet that if any even thought he wanted to do it and tried it, he’d quit, crying and whining the first day.
The context clearly is the exact people he was speaking to, not extrapolating it to everyone in America.
McCain is crazy. He can just pay a Mexican $.25/hour to pick cabbages. He lives in a state with tons of them. He could get his whole crop to market for under $50.
He doesn’t understand the first rule of economics at all: only pay $.01 higher and only charge $.01 less than competition.
My prediction is that his cabbage farm is going to take a loss this season.
My prediction is that not one of the audience he was speaking to in fact proved willing to do it even at that price.
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
He didn’t say no American citizen would do it.[/quote]
Well that’s exactly what I was wondering. It’s so short that there is clearly some context missing, but I can’t find a video or transcript that has footage of what he was responding to and what the conversation was up to that point.
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
My prediction is that not one of the audience he was speaking to in fact proved willing to do it even at that price.[/quote]
Many of the audience members of the “BDIC Legislative Conference” probably make more than that. $50/hour is only $100K/year.
Gotta wonder how shitty his benefits package is that he has to pay $50/hour to get people to pick cabbages.
Why would any American work for 50 cents an hour when they can get paid much more to sit at home and squeeze out babies?
[quote]on edge wrote:
Why would any American work for 50 cents an hour when they can get paid much more to sit at home and squeeze out babies?[/quote]
Because they lack ovaries?
my question is.
is there really a cabbage picking job in AZ that pays 50 dollars an hour?
thats way too high pay for way too easy of work.I need to find the number.
[quote]beebuddy wrote:
Anyone know if this was taken completely out of context, or what context it was in? Or is McCain actually batshit crazy to think I wouldn’t pick cabbage for 50$ an hour?
Inb4 Rainjack says cabbage picking would be too hard for me.[/quote]
He probably wanted to say like 4.50 and hour and misspoke or some such mistake.
Similar to Obama’s 57 state mishap. I just ignore this shit and remember how these guys are nearly CONSTANTLY talking to reporters. Bound to slip up somewhere.
[quote]on edge wrote:
Why would any American work for 50 cents an hour when they can get paid much more to sit at home and squeeze out babies?[/quote]
The glory of a job well done is payment enough for some. You ever notice the look of pride on a janitor’s face after he’s done cleaning your piss off a urinal?
You should all be saying “thank-you” to crack-whore junkies who give birth to our future janitors and high-school guidance councilors. We would have to employ lots of cheap Mexican labor without their efforts.
McCain’s point is I think related to something that I’ve thought for a long time that American society has gone wrong.
I firmly believe that regardless of having an intent to go into a white-collar or other profession, every man early in his life ought to work a labor job if for no other reasons than character development, learning how life is, learning physical discipline, learning to appreciate what you have later when you “have it made,” etc.
It’s bullshit having high school kids go straight to college on Daddy’s money, then straight to Wall Street or another profession – not that there is anything wrong with being in profession, none whatsoever, that is not the point – and thinking they are well-rounded.
Much better to work a labor job for some years than to know nothing but school and going straight into a profession or straight into journalism, etc.
Most likely the audience has never worked a hard physical job in the hot sun a day in their lives and is totally unwilling to do so. Hence the extremeness of the offer in terms of dollar amount. Not even for that would they put up with the “indignity.”
It’s all too common for American men to have never worked a labor job in their lives. I really think this is a mistake for our society.
Not that there’s a way to force it different, other than that parents could avoid coddling and “protecting” their grown kids so much.
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
I firmly believe that regardless of having an intent to go into a white-collar or other profession, every man early in his life ought to work a labor job if for no other reasons than character development, learning how life is, learning physical discipline, learning to appreciate what you have later when you “have it made,” etc.
[/quote]
And every janitor should get to spend one summer internship being a filthy-rich white male so that he (or she) can learn to be more ambitious.
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
It’s all too common for American men to have never worked a labor job in their lives. I really think this is a mistake for our society.
[/quote]
Actually I don’t think it’s that uncommon, at least in the midwest. And it never helped me one bit in any case. 
I don’t know if he misspoke.
Many politicians live in a bubble. I remember how a mayor in my town in Germany had to guess the correct prices for everyday articles like milk, bread etc.
Some of his guesses were over five times more expansive. (Adios, votes!)
The same with rich kids I knew. Totally ignorant to the price of living.
And since senile McCain was born into what can be called modern nobility/elite, it may very well be he’s totally out of touch with decent wages.
That also is possible, as with then-President GHW Bush marvelling at a laser scanner at the supermarket, having never seen one and finding it utterly new.
It’s not uncommon, though it’s also by no means always the case for people with multi-millions to wind up insulating themselves from the reality of things like going to the supermarket. They have that done for them, and as a result become out of touch in a number of ways. I have no idea if McCain continued shopping in the supermarket while still a Senator and not running for President (it obviously would not be feasible now.)
He might not have simply out of the has-to-be-extremely-annoying-or-frustrating-sometimes celebrity-glomming-onto behavior of so many people. Who wants to have a hundred different people act like they know you and expect you to want to talk with them every time you go to get a few eggs or whatever. But I have no idea as to his actual practice. It could also be that he saw it as an important part of keeping himself “out there.” Some politicians do, e.g. Bloomberg (mayor of New York City) rides the subway to work. No idea.
However, it seems clear to me that McCain’s entire point depended on it being an outrageously high figure. It would demonstrate nothing to quote a figure so low that, even for the easiest job in the world, no one in the audience would accept, as would have been the case if he’d named minimum wage or for that matter $10/hour or whatever.
Well I found a little more of it, and unfortunately he was spouting the nonsense about “there are some jobs Americans won’t do.”
I am not anti-McCain, though I strongly dislike the idea of Palin being president, and this year my vote is going to be based completely on who I agree with economically. That might be McCain/Obama or it could be third party. At this point I am now starting to lean against McCain, mostly because of Palin, but he isn’t helping himself with this rhetoric. Having worked a paper-route since I was 12 and having worked in multiple factories and on multiple farms in my life, I get a little emotional at the suggestion that there is work I won’t do. There are very few jobs that I wouldn’t do solely based on the job itself, BUT there are a shitload of jobs I won’t do based on the pay!
Nobody wants some sort of idealistic labor-revolution, but this video reminded me of something that annoys me about this country, and that is the way we allow employers to get away with underpaying illegals and therefore proper Americans!
Maybe we should go after employers harder? What can be done?
I ask this in earnest… What could be done to improve the wages in this country without government intervention like minimum wage legislation? I really want to know what you all think. Like I said, this is how I will be voting and I don’t feel I’ve discussed this issue enough.
I suggest a program which advances in “seriousness” with time, for example as follows.
- As soon as can legally be done after passage of the legislation: Fines of say $20 per day for hiring an illegal alien for every day hired since the effective starting date.
Thereafter, after every 30 days daily fine increases by some amount, say $5. So if the increase is $5, then for example after 6 months the fine is $50 per day, after a year it is $80 per day, after two years it is $140 per day, after three years it is $200 per day, etc.
It would probably be reasonable to have a cap, such as maximum fine that could be accured for any one month period is $5000.
A fairly substantial percentage of illegals routinely shuttle back and forth between their home country and the US anyway. It’s not that they find it impossible to get back on their own, they often choose to do so actually but then come back. We don’t have to spend money deporting them. And if we did, a Greyhound ticket should suffice.
Perhaps illegals would be given a Greyhound ticket in return for providing testimony resulting in collection actions against their employers. The resulting collected fines would more than pay for the Greyhound tickets.
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Ramp up to a reasonable level the number of legal green cards available. It is absolutely ridiculous that if we “need” the number of foreign laborers that many say we do, these same persons should be preventing or not acting to provide green cards to criminal-record-free, no-apparent-security-risk applicants applying from outside the US. What, it’s better to have them come here illegally???
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At some point make it a criminal offense to hire illegal aliens. Put not employee the manager but everyone responsible in the chain all the way up to the CEO in prison.
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End government benefits to illegal aliens. Where emergency medical care is needed to save a life, provide it but when condition is stable enough to return to their home country, including if we have to pay to send an ambulance across the border, send them back rather than pay tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical bills for each such illegal alien.
This program would end the problem, and without any shock to the economy. It would gradually become less and less feasible and finally infeasible to hire illegal aliens. Accordingly, they will return to where they can be hired, as they have a proven willingness to travel to find a paying job.
As for increasing wages other than solving the problem of illegal aliens altering supply and demand, each person needs to figure for himself or herself how to provide a service or goods that others find worth paying more for than what the person is currently receiving.
Doesn’t work to force employers to pay people money higher than the received value of the work. It might be a socialist utopia to force that, but overall everyone becomes worse off.
[quote]beebuddy wrote:
Nobody wants some sort of idealistic labor-revolution, but this video reminded me of something that annoys me about this country, and that is the way we allow employers to get away with underpaying illegals and therefore proper Americans! [/quote]
I don’t think you “allow” anything of the sort.
Kinda like drugs, people will do it regardless of what a dumb law says. You might also consider that the wages of “proper Americans” were inflated to begin with.
Furthermore, it’s not just illegals that are competing with you, there are plenty of documented workers willing to work for a fraction of the price. You know, folks that studied for free somewhere and didn’t accumulate debt for example. Also, the average person in the world has much less needs than the average American. It follows that they’ll be willing to work for much less.
You can mitigate the issue, if you really wanted to, by cutting off the influx of migrant workers (good luck with that given the grip big corps. have on your political scene!), and you could put those troops you got all over the globe on border patrol (good luck with that as well, the folks making bombs will certainly resist).
Your country squanders a shitload of money. If you want your quality of life improved, get them to redirect that flow towards constructive things (and no, killing people and arming dictatorships is not!).
[quote]lixy wrote:
beebuddy wrote:
Nobody wants some sort of idealistic labor-revolution, but this video reminded me of something that annoys me about this country, and that is the way we allow employers to get away with underpaying illegals and therefore proper Americans!
I don’t think you “allow” anything of the sort.
Kinda like drugs, people will do it regardless of what a dumb law says. You might also consider that the wages of “proper Americans” were inflated to begin with.
Furthermore, it’s not just illegals that are competing with you, there are plenty of documented workers willing to work for a fraction of the price. You know, folks that studied for free somewhere and didn’t accumulate debt for example. Also, the average person in the world has much less needs than the average American. It follows that they’ll be willing to work for much less.
You can mitigate the issue, if you really wanted to, by cutting off the influx of migrant workers (good luck with that given the grip big corps. have on your political scene!), and you could put those troops you got all over the globe on border patrol (good luck with that as well, the folks making bombs will certainly resist).
Your country squanders a shitload of money. If you want your quality of life improved, get them to redirect that flow towards constructive things (and no, killing people and arming dictatorships is not!).[/quote]
So in essence just create 2nd class citizens and make it official?