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This is one of the largest strawberry growers in the nation. His field harvesters in Florida are on H-2A visas.

"It's the only means of getting workers at the farm right now", says Wishnatzki. "But it's totally outdated."

Even for a company as large as them, the cost has become crushing, he says.

They have to pay a recruitment company, visa fees, housing workers, pay for meals, and transportation.

Unless something changes soon, he says, "berries are going to become an item that's going to be a luxury, not something people buy every time they go to the grocery store like they do now."

guest wrote: ↑

Fri Apr 26, 2024 10:15 pm

Guest wrote: ↑

Fri Apr 26, 2024 8:39 pm

How will these people behave when the welfare system crashes?

I sincerely hope it doesn't come to that. But, since you asked, the answer is "they will behave very badly." In liberal states with large population centers, they will wreak great havoc. In some other states, currently regarded as "backward" by the elites, they will be neutralized within a few days. While many other problems associated with collapse of the financial system will still be present, that particular problem will cease to exist. Count on it.

Guest wrote: ↑

Fri Apr 26, 2024 8:39 pm

How will these people behave when the welfare system crashes?

Higgenbotham wrote: ↑

Fri Apr 26, 2024 1:23 pm

Poorhouses Were Designed to Punish People for Their Poverty

https://www.history.com/news/in-the-19t ... -poorhouse

aedens wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 09, 2016 11:21 am

7-Year Cycles That Crush The Uninformed

Higgenbotham wrote: ↑

Fri Apr 26, 2024 12:57 pm

14 years ago, the high was on April 26 and the flash crash was 10 days later. The lower high at the 50% retrace today is compelling.

In the comments section a few weeks ago you remarked that a key moment for you was when you realized that “collapse” wasn’t going to happen to our society, but rather that we face a long and uneven “decline.” Your argument was put forth in at least one of your books “The Long Descent,” which sits on my shelf heavily notated and underlined. I’m curious though, even as I understand your argument for decline as faced by our civilization and every other historical civilization, it seems our modern society is much more fragile than historical civilizations, with our dependence on steady electrical power, just in time delivery product inventories , etc.

Would you please expand on this distinction a bit and offer an explanation as to why you don’t believe our modern fragility could be a factor in sudden collapse?

I routinely field two questions from people about decline. Yours, asking whether I’ve taken into account the fragility of modern industrial society, is one. The other, its equal and opposite, asks whether I’ve taken into account the capacities modern industrial society has to deal with crisis. My answer to both is the same: yes, I’ve taken both these into account, and they cancel each other out. Industrial society is uniquely robust in some ways and uniquely fragile in others, but it’s rising and falling in lockstep with every other civilization in recorded history.

Poorhouses Were Designed to Punish People for Their Poverty

In a time before social services, society’s most vulnerable people were hidden away in brutal institutions.
BY: ERIN BLAKEMORE
UPDATED: SEPTEMBER 14, 2023 | ORIGINAL: JANUARY 30, 2018

When Anne Sullivan came to Tewksbury, she wasn’t yet the renowned “miracle worker” who would teach Helen Keller to communicate. It was 1876, and 10-year-old Annie was a blind child living in abject poverty. Her years at the poorhouse—a facility designed to house poor people in a time before social services— were “a crime against childhood,” she later remembered.

Residents at the Massachusetts poorhouse milled about like forgotten animals. As Anne and her brother slept on the institution’s iron cots in a gigantic dormitory, rats ran up and down the spaces between beds.

In 1883, a massive investigation exposed the conditions at Tewksbury—but the institution was far from unique. Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, poorhouses were a reality for society’s most vulnerable people. These locally run institutions filled a need in a time before Social Security, Medicaid and Section 8 housing became a reality. They also exposed the stigma and shame society placed on those who were unable to support themselves.

The concept of the poorhouse originated in England during the 17th century. Municipalities were expected to care for their poor, and made a distinction between people who were old and unable to care for themselves and the able-bodied. People who were able to work were expected to do so—and could be imprisoned if they refused.

They lived in workhouses, bare bones facilities designed to make poverty seem even less attractive. In these facilities, poor people ate thrifty, unpalatable food, slept in crowded, often unsanitary conditions, and were put to work breaking stones, crushing bones, spinning cloth or doing domestic labor, among other jobs.

In the United States, the idea emigrated along with English colonists. In 1660, Boston built its first workhouse—a brick building intended for “dissolute and vagrant persons.” Massachusetts’ poor people had more than the workhouse to fear: Towns could also banish poor people or even auction them off to the lowest bidder. “Warning out” allowed towns to exile poor newcomers or make it clear they were not willing to pay to support them.

The vendue system allowed cities to auction off poor individuals to private bidders. The individual who bought the poor person then put them to work in exchange for reimbursement of what it cost to clothe and feed them. Sometimes, people had another option—asking the Overseer of the Poor, a town official, for relief. In some cases, the overseer would provide them with town-sponsored food, clothing or firewood.

By the early 19th century, the poorhouse system had won out over warning or vendue—and their construction coincided with an increasingly negative attitude toward poor people. These facilities were designed to punish people for their poverty and, hypothetically, make being poor so horrible that people would continue to work at all costs. Being poor began to carry an intense social stigma, and increasingly, poorhouses were placed outside of public view.

aedens wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 09, 2016 11:21 am

7-Year Cycles That Crush The Uninformed

Senffner is part of a cohort known as "peak boomers," or boomers born between 1959 and 1964 who will start turning 65 this year. According to a recent report from the Alliance for Lifetime Income's Retirement Income Institute, this group encompasses over 30 million boomers, marking the "largest and final cohort" of that generation entering retirement.

The report found that 52.5% of peak boomers have $250,000 or less in assets, forcing them to deplete their savings and rely on Social Security benefits to stay afloat in retirement.

According to the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey, just over half of Americans over 65 have incomes of $30,000 or less a year, meaning existing only on Social Security likely won't cut it.

While Senffner has years of experience in the workforce, she hasn't been able to land a full-time job despite filling out dozens of job applications. The only full-time jobs she's seen have tended to be more physically demanding, like working at a grocery store, which she's unable to do.

She said that many of her peers are struggling with the same dilemma — they either cannot find work in fields they're qualified for, or they have to work at an entry-level job with a low wage.

"The only people that are hiring older people now are places like Home Depot and Walmart," Senffner said. "I just say to my friends as a cautionary tale, if you are my age and you have a job, you better stay with it, because nobody is hiring you."

Still, with the low wages and sometimes physical demands of entry-level work, it's often not an option for those close to retirement. AARP recently released the results of a January survey that found that one in five older adults do not have any retirement savings, and over half of them don't think they'll have enough money to get them through retirement.

"Everybody my age is a little worried right now," Senffner said.

"I know so many people my age that just don't know what they're going to do," she continued. "Other countries take care of their older people, and we should be able to do it, too."