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this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2025
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yeah I reckon we're about to see, after the deportations of immigrants and the sudden labor shortage caused by it, a lot of other Americans who are also considered "undesirables" being voluntold to get busy pickin' or get busy dying. We already force our prisoners to do slave labor, and you know what a hate-boner Republicans have for prisoners -- how do you think that stacks up against their hate boner for trans people? gay people? Or, why, just anyone who doesn't "vote correctly"?
the deportations of immigrants and the sudden labor shortage caused by it
I think you meant, "the round up of suspected immigrants (but we're not real careful about that), followed by the simultaneous difficulties of returning them to their homelands and national labor shortages; then the increasing "tax burden" of feeding and housing the immigrants with the continuing labor shortage leading to the "obvious and natural solution" of having the people awaiting deportation work in those understaffed jobs.
Which, if you know any history, is how Germany ended up with concentration camps.
There already looking at land Texas offered them.
yeah I just figured I'd prattled on long enough. I've watched enough documentaries on WWII and the holocaust to know how it started, and I'm fucking terrified.
I've already seen some of the Fox crowd calling for periods of national service, arguing that a year of "real work" would be good for today's lazy, screen-addicted youth. I can't see them getting an actual draft reinstated, but I can definitely see them making federal student loans contingent on "National Service." That would have the added benefit of making old people and rich people functionally exempt.
Only for the young people of course, them republican boomers already put in a honest days work. Uphill both ways.
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(3 replies)
I heard, there was a name for such a idea
🤔
What was it again?
☝🏻😃ah!
Concentration camps
🪦💀
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Prison labor volunteers probably.
Guilty of the crime of being poor most of the time.
Guilty of being addicted to the drugs the government has been feeding to your community.
Those fuckers keep delivering on their campaign promises.
if they want to
Key part of his statement. Hopefully it's not one that gets conveniently dropped later as our labor demand skyrockets.
I doubt 'if they want to' will be taken seriously from the start. Authoritarian regimes love throwing out meaningless restrictions that they'll never actually follow themselves.
Right. The "hopefully" is maybe a pipe dream, considering the incentives.
Why do I suspect they're going to follow a similar model that the ussr used with the gulags - only take the absolute worst aspects of what is ascribed to communism...
I think it's funny that no matter how bad the work shortages will get, it's never going to get to the point where conservatives actually acknowledge the root problem.
There are plenty of young men and women who would love to do hard work outside for decent pay, it's just that corporations like CHS depend on illegally cheap labor and inhumane conditions to make billions of dollars in revenue every year.
There's plenty of money in agriculture, just as there have always been. The scare of increasing food pricing is just a threat to preserve their profit model. Meanwhile we're still paying landowners 30 billion dollars a year not to work their land to maintain profitable prices on food.
Crop pickers should make $20+/hr, as should everyone. Relying on underpaid illegal labor forces only helps other corporations to underpay their workers too. We need living wages.
Oh, it gets worse.
Federal law currently allows the agency to issue certificates that let employers pay certain workers less than the federal minimum of $7.25 an hour based on the notion that their disabilities hinder productivity.
As things currently stand, many disabled people work in what are called sheltered workshops run by certified employers that pay as little as 25 cents an hour.
25 cents. What more could you want?
So back to migrant farmers, but without the pay.
I gotta say, I'd get a sensible chuckle seeing white folks picking cotton for no pay.
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Indentured servants
My bet is that this is going be an alternative to mandatory military service. Unless the US steals some ideas from the earlier days of the soviet union and makes soldiers dig potato fields.
Nothing beats good old prison labour
Nah. They're going to first start with prisoners. We already use prison labor; they start making prisons worse as an inducement to get people to work. Getting out early now requires some prison labor.
Now that the homeless can get arrested, they get processed in the system as well. As states are now incentivized to arrest people, policing becomes much harsher.
States then cut housing benefits to push more people on the street. Children are tried as adults to get them to work.
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Transcript:
Panels 1-4:
Stranger: Mr Block, you are the best worker of all the harvest hands. I know you are a patriot and I like you. I am the owner of this farm and I will make you manager. Your salary will be $500 per month. The job is easy. Take your pocket flag and when you see a harvest hand on the point of exhaustion, wave the flag before his eyes and appeal to his patriotism so he keeps on working. You can also use the flag at mealtime and make the men swallow the rotten grub without grumbling.
Panel 5:
Mr Block: I have been a Patriot all my life and I knew I would get my reward some day!
Farm Owner: You deserve it. Good bye Mr Block.
Panel 6:
Insane asylum employee: Did you see crazy Chris? He imagines he owns all the farms between the Atlantic and the Pacific.
"pick crops'
"Stewards for the Lord's Harvest"
MAGAd that more for you.
In 2022 the Department of Labor estimated, based on 1259 observations, that unauthorized workers make up 37-47% of agricultural workers (95% confidence interval).
Page 8:
Page 11:
Fifty-eight percent of crop workers interviewed had work authorization in 2021–2022. Among the 38 percent who were U.S. citizens, 83 percent were born in the United States, and 17 percent were naturalized citizens. The remainder of the work-authorized population consisted mainly of lawful permanent residents (18%) with 2 percent authorized through some other visa program.
Page 80:
The USA is cooked.
It's amusing that when you ask a "patriot" about the ideal society, they describe the Anarchist moon from the Dispossessed, but only for white people and without all the gay stuff.
I keep hearing about all of these men with no skills who have dropped out of the work force. Well here ya go guys!
Just like the Brexit "patriots", who signed up in their zeros to do farm work..
That's a weird way to refer to slaves
i took it as a reference to immigration controls and forced deportation
Oh that too, just that something tells me that slavery will become a bigger thing soon.
I can't support this vector of mocking what Trump is doing.
What we should be doing is paying whoever is picking our crops a decent wage, undocumented or not. If the wage isn't enough for any citizens or documented immigrants to take the job - that's capitalism at work and wages need to go up.
If prices are going to go up now because there are no undocumented immigrants harvesting for us, then we were already exploiting those people terribly in the first place. (And there really is no if here - I doubt anyone reading this is likely to disagree that we have exploited our undocumented population in this and other areas.)
Whatever the problems are to complain about with Trumps policies, high produce prices due to deportation is not (IMO) one of them. Status quo was already exploitation and unfair labor practices. Let's fix immigration (if we have a country left) when he's done, but let's work on the exploitation, too.
Humor is one of the few outlets for people who feel helpless.
Lmaooo it's like the A-Team all over again
Get out there in the fields, MAGA, let's see how you like it
Canada, America and Mexico should just form into one supranational state like the EU. Mexicans can be farm hands legally, like many Balkans come to Western Europe for seasonal farming, and the state gets development grants; American farms can get cheap labour without having to deal with headache inducing, Kafkaesque labour and immigration bureaucracy, ordinary Americans get free healthcare from Canada and American gun nuts could kill all the cartels they want. Meanwhile, Canada gets military protection from US and can holiday in sunny Cancun visa-free for Christmas.
Win-win!
No thanks! EU please invite us to your friend group. 🤣
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