Americans warned of grocery prices shock
Americans warned of grocery prices shock
"If you think your groceries are expensive now, wait until the farms are empty," AOC said on the "Latino USA" podcast.
Summary
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez warned that Trump’s mass deportation policy could lead to labor shortages and higher grocery prices.
Experts say agriculture, construction, and healthcare will be hardest hit, with farm output losses estimated between $30 and $60 billion.
Deportations could cost the U.S. economy up to $88 billion annually.
AOC argued that immigrant labor is vital to economic stability, urging Congress to pursue immigration reform.
I know she’s been villainized by the right, but I feel like, at this point, she needs to be elevated to key leadership of the party. She’s the only one who seems to be able to speak to specifics. I just listened to Jeffries on Jon Stewart’s podcast and it was all of the same old generalities.
I can't speak to every politician, but as a class, they seem to be elites that are disconnected from the average American.
AOC, having been a normal person, is able to bring the message that gets through to people without having it filtered through some sort of communication agency.
I fear for her safety, to be honest...
that's exactly why the establishment limits her movements. she's a threat to schumer and pelosi's stranglehold on the money pipelines. what schumer and pelosi either don't realize, or don't care about, is they're who the ultraradical right want dead first. they showed us as much on january 6th, 2021
Given how clearly she's stood up since day 1 here, I wouldn't be surprised if she's the first target for Trump's Window-Pushing Squad
Sooner or later, the idiot is gonna take the biggest chapter from Putin's book.
I just listened to Jeffries on Jon Stewart’s podcast and it was all of the same old generalities.
Especially after Stewart's recent interview with her.
Seriously. They all said they felt better than before but the dude barely said anything worthwhile. So disappointing it's the exact same hand wringing bullshit where they say "we just need to get the message out" instead of actually doing shit differently. Jon really did try to get more out of him but he stayed on message like 80% of the time like a true politician.
Farms are just going to take it on the chin. They're losing their labor with the mass deportations and they're losing a hilariously large buyer of food with USAID being shut down.
So who's ready for the new price on food?
And they'll blame Democrats. And the Democratic Party won't combat the misinformation because they suck at messaging.
IMHO, Democrats have gotten much better with their messaging over the past decade. People just don't pay attention because diligently solving problems with substantial plans that take years to show effects isn't sexy or exciting.
I stay pretty keyed in to what's going on in congress, but I have to put effort into that. It seems like all the algorithms constantly want to shift my content to paying attention to all the crazy shit the GOP is up to and I'm constantly catching and stopping myself from getting sucked into rage porn.
They are OK at messaging, it's just for people only consume conservative propaganda, because dems has to be bounded by truth, and cons can say whatever they want, and truth is just isn't as exciting
The Democratic party in the US is so wimpy. The one thing I respect of Republicans is that they fight for what they want. Often it's dirty, bad-faith, bottom-dwelling (and sometimes straight up illegal) behavior, but it gets results in a country this dumb and gullible. Democrats need to learn to stop compromising on things they care about.
Yup. I can see that one a mile out.
Food Prices SKYROCKET After Biden-Obama DEI Pricing Scam For Transgender Immigrants
Reminder, losing a large purchasing segment decreases demand, which lowers prices until the market adjusts. I.e., it frees up agricultural output that they have to sell, which they'll lower prices to make sell to other buyers (domestically or internationally).
So the issue is, that those are two different categories. USAID tends to be food stuff that the US massively over produces, dairy, corn, soy, ect. These are all categories that are highly automated and don’t require much labor (relative to other categories)
The places where the most migrant labor is utilized are things like fruits, vegetables, and meat processing. stuff that can’t be mechanized to the same degree as corn or milk. Stuff that doesn’t tend to get exported as part of USAID because it is in demand in the US.
which lowers prices until the market adjusts.
It depends on the market. If producing less food with the same resources costs more, prices will rise--especially on large commercial farms, which dominate the U.S. agricultural sector.
For example, a farm designed to grow 10,000 acres of beans can't simply reduce production to 5,000 acres due to lower demand and expect prices to drop. The unused 5,000 acres still incur costs, and farmers won't absorb that loss--they'll pass it on as higher prices.
Additionally, some grocery chains buy produce through futures contracts. If these chains sell their futures for a profit, they secure produce at a bargain, cutting into farming profits. This discourages farmers from offering futures in subsequent seasons, forcing grocers to buy bulk products at higher prices instead of securing cheaper futures.
The distributors will lower prices. Farmers will get paid pennies for what would be dollars. Farmers don't sell their product directly. They get screwed before the consumer gets screwed. In this kind of a cycle prices drop in the short term, but as farmers can't afford to plant as much going forward, there's a supply crunch next season. The government used to do a lot to manage this cycle and smooth it out, by literally buying product.
No big deal in the long term though right? Well except we don't have a competitive distributor or grocery market anymore. So when that crunch hits those prices are going up and they're going to stay up. For reference check the recent greedflation that happened.
Worse there is a real risk of a dust bowl effect. Farmers who are strapped for cash don't want to spend money setting their fields up to fallow properly. So the summer hits and the crops that are planted get buried in all that dust. Making the supply crunch even worse.
Then in a normal situation we'd still have the global supply chain to fall back on. But there's a very good chance that food is going to have tariffs on it.
Farming isn't like making a widget in a factory.
does no one else see the ethical quandary of relying on cheap exploited labor for our food?
Sure, but it’s more in the “no ethical consumption under capitalism” kind of way rather than anything specific about the exploitation of the undocumented migrants. Exploitation goes into almost everything around us, and it’s something we have to deal with and work to improve unless we want to completely disconnect from modern society.
Just scanning the room around me, I wonder what the full labor history looks like in the value chain that produced my TV, the phone in my hand, my computer parts, the shirt on my back, AND the food in my kitchen.
If some of the farm labor that went into my food was from an undocumented immigrant that really wants to stay in this country and keep his or her job, I am not happy about the set of circumstances, but I also don’t want to rip that person out of their community and send them somewhere they do not want to go.
We tried to resolve this with legislation and the right wing crazies killed it each time. It's not like the average Democratic voter wants an undocumented underclass. The business interests do. And the GOP leadership gets to fund raise on the caravans.
Most Americans want a better life for these people. Step one isn't to spend a trillion dollars to deport them all.
Absolutely! But at the same time, it highlights the income inequality the majority of Americans are experiencing.
Leadership, yes. I would argue it is intentional. Citizens... well, clearly not some half of the electorate.
Tariffs too. It's just a bit of "short term pain"...meaning, for about 4 years until someone comes in and reverses the horrible policies.
The consequences of trump will have residual effects. The damage cannot be undone in one fell swoop. The country is a big boat and it takes a long fucking time to change directions even if you immediately start steering it the other way.
Then there's the whole topic of friends and allies wondering if we can be trusted in the long term. Why make deals with us if we're gonna just elect a stupid asshole who will reneg on anything and everything that isn't immediately beneficial to that specific person? A lot of countries likely considered drastic changes to policy with us, but decided to hold off until the 2020 election, and then breathed a sigh of relief when we didn't reelect the dipshit. Fast forward four short years and see that we went back to the dipshit despite all obvious, available information saying that only a fucking moron who is trying to summon the end of the world would allow such a thing; would you trust a country that elected trump, took a break from him, and then elected him back in again? This really isn't about lackluster democrats and their performance in elections; would you want to make long term plans with a person who was so chaotic? Denmark won't forget us openly considering taking Greenland by force. Panama won't forget us talking about taking the canal. Canada won't forget us talking about annexing them. The EU won't forget the tariffs. Mexico won't forget the deportations. We're alienating ourselves, burning through all of our political capital like trump burns through every business venture. He will fuck every relationship up and the dollar will be fucking worthless as a result if he doesn't just fucking stop.
I legitimately have zero clue what the country and the world in general look like four years from now, but I can tell you that it will be bad and the bleeding will take years to stop and decades to heal. Even if this stopped today, Pandora's box is open. If trump died on the toilet today, vance would continue what's happening.
The entire line of succession isn't even the problem. The experiment is over. Oligarchs and their pet autocrat run everything and they're not interested in what you have to say about it. If they decide to just suspend all elections and appoint all elected offices and consolidate all power to the executive, what can really be done to stop it? It would take a revolution, but the bastard cops have fucking tanks with which to kill us all. No other country will come to help us because our military is far more advanced than all others and we're geographically very easy to defend. Our own country has us by the balls and the twisting is just getting started.
I wish I could be so optimistic as to believe that things could be okay in four years. A lot of people will be deported and/or killed before then, so even if it did end up being okay for you or me, that's still gonna be too late for them.
"If" someone reverses those policies. There are still policies created by Trump from 2016 that have not been reversed.
Private prisons looking at the 13th amendment:
“I wouldn’t say deported… More like, under new management.”
Should be criminal
I am a little shocked that healthcare is in the top 3. How many undocumented nurses are there? How do they obtain licensure? Or is this all just support staff?
Keep in mind, the current gov isn't just interested in "illegal" immigrants, but any non white people they can figure out a way to deport.
Many nurses are here on work visas.
According to this document from 2021, most of them are "assistants" and "aides" of various types, although it seems there are a few thousand registered nurses and other licensed healthcare providers and technicians. Maybe they get licensed on a visa and then overstay the visa?
Also Home Health aides, orderlies and other non licensed positions
Stop giving Trump a heads up on his mistakes
Can't get rid of him if we keep preventing his fuck ups for him
Same thing happened his whole first term
Pick an obvious huge blunder of his that isn't going to cause global catastrophe for generations to come and just let it happen
Don't help it happen, just silently let it happen.
The courts, congress, secret service, none of it will matter if 150+ million people rush the capital to dispose of this goon
Stop giving Trump a heads up on his mistakes
Can't get rid of him if we keep preventing his fuck ups for him
I think you're overestimating how much he listens to or cares for what the public thinks. He surrounds himself with yes-men and people beaten into submission. As long as they're going to keep telling him that his policies are making America great, he'll keep doing both whatever dumb shit he thinks of and executing the plans Putin and the Project 2025 authors give him.
Most of these idea aren't even Trump's, they come from deranged and corrupt special interest groups
Trump also has a team that manages his image. Mostly because this is what Trump really cares about the most, vanity.
If these two come into conflict, the image team will always win.
Whatever makes Trump look good, that's all he cares about.
Letting him fuck up will force him into damage control and he will never admit being wrong which will only serve to dig himself a deeper hole
Will Americans learn that they dont need to buy meat, and it'll be lighter on their pocket book and on the climate?
I am no vegetarian but I rarely buy meat, because I can make a succulent meal without meat. I enjoy the occasional BBQ but cooking with tofu and other protein replacements is just so much cheaper and healthier than buying shitty meats on the regular. Just enjoy the occasional, high quality meat
I like AOC, but I don’t understand why she just says stuff and doesn’t do anything.
She could introduce new legislation everyday, be an obstructionist to the
neonazirepublican agenda.Get them on the record voting no to the simple things. Will this stuff pass? No, but that’s not the point.
Do something, don’t just say sound bites
Because to even reach the house floor those bills would have to go through Republican controlled comities. That wouldn't even gum up the works, they would simply be ignored. So she focuses her efforts on education people on what is really going on, instead of what the corpo news outlets are spewing.
Anyone in the federal legislature can introduce legislation that dies in committee. How exactly would that help? Its not effective obstructionism for a small committee to just ignore your bills every time. Most bills never even get a vote.
You are not proposing an effective strategy.
