February 10, 2005

How Much Is that Tomato in the Window?

The next time someone suggests that we need illegal aliens to pick our produce or lettuce would go to five dollars a head, please refer them to this 1996 study by a Professor of Economics and Agricultural Economics at Iowa State University:

How Much Is that Tomato in the Window?
Retail Produce Prices Without Illegal Farmworkers

The removal of illegal workers from the seasonal agricultural workforce would increase the summer-fall supermarket prices of fresh fruits and vegetables by about 6 percent in the short run and 3 percent in the intermediate term. During the winter-spring seasons, prices would rise more than 3 percent in the short term and less then 2 percent in the intermediate term. Imports would increase about 1 percent...

Posted to Immigration2005a at February 10, 2005 12:09 AM

Comments

One can tell who this vegetable prices propaganda is aimed at. If the cost of substandard immigrants is hundreds of billions a year, and the savings in produce prices several billion a year at a high estimate, it is certain types of people who would be more likely fooled. Those who have little idea how the welfare state has multiplied, and how indiscriminate its handouts have become, especially in terms of citizenship requirements, might be a bit older. Those who don't realize that food budgets are less than ten percent of even low incomes, would be older too. Deliberately pitching dishonest propaganda towards an elderly demographic is a routine proceeding of the unprincipled left.

Posted by: John S Bolton at February 10, 2005 01:53 AM