The VDT’s pan of HB 87 gets national notice.
Why we don’t need a law that puts south Georgia farmers out of business
while profiting private prison company CCA at taxpayer expense.
Megan McArdle wrote in the Atlantic 21 June 2011,
Georgia’s Harsh Immigration Law Costs Millions in Unharvested Crops.
She started by quoting Jay Bookman,
who quoted the VDT.
She then goes into the economics:
The economics here aren’t particularly complicated, and I’m sure they
won’t be new to the sophisticated readers of the Atlantic, but they are
useful to look at and consider explicitly when thinking about issues
like this.
It goes like this. If you’re not going to let illegal immigrants do the
jobs they are currently being hired to do, then farmers will have to
raise wages to replace them. Since farmers are taking a risk in hiring
immigrant workers, you can bet they were getting a significant deal
on wage costs relative to “market wages”. I put market wages here in
quotations, because it’s quite possible that the wages required to get
workers to do the job are so high that it’s no longer profitable for
farmers to plant the crops in the first place.
Yes, that would be the problem.
A law that benefits private prison company CCA at the expense of
Georgia taxpayers while putting Georgia farmers out of business.
She concludes:
Continue reading →
Colquitt County’s Latino community is gearing up to make its presence known by, well, disappearing, at least as much as possible for the largest minority group.
For a year I’ve been asking for a list of jobs attracted by the
Authority. We welcome your marketing expertise so we’ll know
the Authority’s successes!
