Americans warned of grocery prices shock

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.
- Would be a great time for bernie and AOC to make strides to start a new party, or other tactics to force dems to move left.
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.
She will never be allowed anywhere close to real power for the same reason they've kept Bernie from power for decades.
- pelosi firmly believes octogenarian throat cancer is the future of the democratic party.
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.
Leadership, yes. I would argue it is intentional. Citizens... well, clearly not some half of the electorate.
Absolutely! But at the same time, it highlights the income inequality the majority of Americans are experiencing.
for sure. but maybe the losses would be less if they rolled out a 12 month plan to get papers for everyone instead?
- who's losses?
100% this.
I'm not a fan of the hamfisted way Trump and Musk are going about all this.
But at the same time, I look at this and have to wonder the outcome...
If agricultural corporations can't hire cheap undocumented Latin American people to work the farms, they will have to pay more to hire Americans to do the same job. Yes that will drive up grocery prices, but on some level, if that means more Americans are able to afford those groceries isn't that sort of maybe a good thing?
Every time I see a company complain of labor shortage, it is obvious to me that the problem isn't labor the problem is the company doesn't want to pay what the labor market demands. You tell me you can't find anybody to hire, so I ask if you offered $100/hr for this job would your inbox be overflowing with applicants? If the answer is yes, then the problem isn't that you can't find anybody, it is the supply and demand of the labor market and your only problem is you don't want to pay the market rate for labor. That's not the market's problem.
- They're not going to pay a decent wage to pick food. They're going to enslave you and force you to pick the food for the same wages as before, if not less.
  You keep expecting them to suddenly start playing by the rules. You don't matter anymore to them. They've written off the need to win your vote.

Surely they mean shocked by how affordable eggs are now, right??

How much could an egg cost? 10 dollars?

Private prisons looking at the 13th amendment:

“I wouldn’t say deported… More like, under new management.”

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.

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

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_therapy_(economics)

Yeah another page in the orange manual of america's destruction

How can he sleep at night knowing he's selling us out to fucking China and Russia. They are salivating at our demise.
- He's got his daddy Vlad singing lullabies

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
In a sane world that would work.
I don't think that's the world we're in anymore.

Will Americans learn that they dont need to buy meat, and it'll be lighter on their pocket book and on the climate?

You do realize that the foods we are going to have a crisis over includes literally all the stuff you eat instead of meat too right
- Just FYI, jagged_circle is a ragebait troll.
- Nope.
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 ~~neonazi~~ republican 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.

Wow, she doesn't gaf about them at all, she just wants them to stay so she can get lower prices on produce??

I think the question is to deport them or not. And if they had it better where they were they probably wouldn’t have left.
It's just good rhetoric. Many people voted for trump because they somehow thought he'd make things more affordable for them. Pointing out that he's doing the opposite is good. It also gives self-interested people a reason to care about immigrations issues.
- From experience, these morons will find a way to blame it on Biden. I have zero hope for Trump voters getting out of their delusions because they are in a social media induced feedback loop. There is going to be so much pain in the next 4 years

I understand higher food prices is rough for the general public, but I'm struggling to find a reason we shouldnt deport illegal immigrants. I'm concerned that illegal immigrant labor is akin to H1b or prison labor, where the worker has diminished rights and is abused more than other groups.

Why are democrats or people in general in favor of illegal immigration?

You know what a "false dichotomy" is? If no, this is a beautiful example. Immigration reform is an entire world of options, "deport all the brown people" and "open borders and free subsidized piñatas for everyone" aren't the only options like you're presenting here.
- The programs that work get killed because they require companies to pay on the books and at a reasonable rate and provide certain protections which effects company profits.
- This, I find most of people's problems with "The Left" are based on their failure to understand what a False Dichotomy is
  I had a friend of mine tell me that he didn't support Democrats or Republicans because he felt the options were "I can vote Right and get politicians who wanna kill black people, or vote Left and get politicians who worship black people like Gods!"
  and I had to be the one to tell him, that no one is out here worshiping black people as gods.
  Well, maybe fans of Morgan Freeman in reference to his role as God in Bruce Almighty, but even then that's just one black guy and not all black people.
  He tried to say that "Some Leftists do...", but ultimately he caved and realized how silly his claim was...
  I still can't get him to vote, though he claims he supports Democrats as a lesser evil option....
  Which doesn't really matter because he doesn't fucking vote.
- You literally avoided my whole question. Why do you want illegal immigrants here? I'd think youd want them here legally rather but maybe I'm just crazy. Is it just mean to deport people? If I was in Canada illegally and they arrested me and sent me back to the US, I wouldnt think Canada was a shitty country for it.
- I totally agree with your take on how deportations don't help.
  To play both sides, a lot of immigrants choose to work here for low wages in order to send money back to their families from their home country. They endure horrible conditions and don't expect much social mobility. Their families usually come from countries hurt by neo capitalism so I get why rekorse criticizes their role as being morally dubious for the citizens of the host country.
- I understand illegal immigration benefits the immigrants, thats a ridiculous point to feel the need to make. I'm asking why as a country, a state, or a community anyone would want illegal immigration. Legal immigrants are great, no problem with them.
  Right now people are freaking out because Trump has doubled arrests for illegal immigrants. Okay, so why's that bad? People bring up higher prices, and my response is that I dont want low prices if it depends on slave labor. How is the price of goods more important than how we treat other people?
  If those illegal immigrants could come her legally they would, they dont prefer breaking laws. Just because they can't make it here legally does not mean they are entitled to be here anyways. Americans wouldnt promote illegal immigration to another country, so why would they promote it tk their own?
but I’m struggling to find a reason we shouldnt deport illegal immigrants.
Are you specifically concerned about illegal immigration, or just immigration in general? Because if it's the former, that's a silly distinction because the government (we the people, aka Elon Musk) decides what is illegal or not. If the next wave of politicians decides we should have actually open borders, then there would be no such thing as "illegal immigration".
I’m concerned that illegal immigrant labor is akin to H1b or prison labor, where the worker has diminished rights and is abused more than other groups.
Do you have specific examples in mind where immigrants are exploited? If you do, look at those examples and ask yourself: "could we pass laws to protect these people from abuse?", and you'll find that the answer is obviously yes.
Maybe your definition of "abuse" is that they need to work harder to earn less? Well, that's the society we live in. Capitalism has its problems, but it has worked good enough for us for the past 248 years. For the immigrant, US minimum wage is likely far better than whatever they received in their home country, and I suspect most would happily take that deal. I think that's what they'd call "the American dream", as their children will be able to go to school and have a better future than they did.
...If your issue is with immigration in general, then I don't know what to tell you. That's entirely opinion based, and nobody knows what the correct answer is (despite what they might claim). 100% open borders has risks, 100% closed borders has risks.
- I guess I'm just silly for thinking breaking laws to get into a country is a bad thing.
I don't disagree with you, and I think that's why people call for immigration reform. We need to look at what we want to do about immigration as a nation.
One thing I've never understood from democrats perspective is that there is a reason to control how many people can immigrate to ensure the country can support those people.
What I've never understood about Republicans is why go after the immigrants and not the companies hiring their labor. Make the penalties brutal for hiring illegal immigrants and youll solve many issues with immigration.
- It does seem like both parties go to far on either side with it, when you put it that way.
I can't speak for others, but I learned a few years ago that the immigration process is difficult and expensive. Trump made this significantly worse during his first term.
We wouldn't have so much illegal immigration if the barriers weren't so high.
In the hope they become legal, productive members of society. Would that not help all parties involved?
- Not when you've got over 350 million people and the world's most expensive health care.
Multiple studies have shown that illegal immigrants commit crime at a lower rate than citizens, and have a positive economic benefit to the country. Shouldn't the question be why you don't want them here? Shouldn't you just want reform to get them documented and then move on with your life instead of supporting these hateful policies?