What if? That's the whole idea of it. It's what keeps highly profitable (to the employee) jobs churning...
Nobody would work in the conditions needed for diamond extraction or sweatshop clothing making for example, if it wasn't for dire poverty.
Nobody would work in the conditions needed for diamond extraction or sweatshop clothing making for example, if it wasn't for dire poverty.
This is why military contractors in war zones, Arctic crab fishermen, and prostitutes make a lot of money.
This is econ 101; supply and demand. You know it too. You're (presumably) not impoverished, but you'd work in diamond extraction or a clothing sweatshop, if you were paid enough.
Going fishing on one of those boats is on my bucket list, once I'm not so flabby. I think it would be a hell of an experience.
In fact, this was the case during the industrial revolution. A pair of pants would cost a full week's wages. This is why people back then owned like 2 to 4 outfits.
It's amazing how many people just can't comprehend how the world can realign so different things become 'normal'. Like, "nobody would ever pay that for clothes". What, you think they'd go naked if there was no alternative?
When I say "nobody would do it" I don't mean "regardless of any condition whatsoever". Even if there wasn't poverty involved, slaves would obviously do it too (and they were ones doing such things, historically, right until the end of the colonies -- and in fact still in several places, using various conscription schemes).
Nor did I mean "regardless of working conditions". E.g. if they make it as easy as pressing a few buttons, many would have no issue doing it, even for a low wage.
The idea is that people wouldn't do the job under the current working conditions AND wages -- if it wasn't for dire poverty. "Supply and demand" is not some contradiction to that, rather it is the very mechanism required to take advantage of dire poverty to give those wages.
And of course "supply and demand" is rarely a "natural" and "neutral" thing -- you can skew it in a thousand ways. From passing special laws to keep people down and prevent development, to killing people's farmlands to make them come to the big industrial city to find some low paying factory job to survive.
I've always liked the idea that you should never turn down an offer or request. Instead, you should name your price. Sometimes that price might be functionally equivalent to turning down the offer, but there's always a tiny chance that someone might agree to your (probably laughably unreasonable) terms.
(I should really watch The Magic Christian again)
Of course they can pay enough. Just not when there is competition from other farms using illegal immigrant labor.
You know as well as I that if all illegal immigrant labor simply disappeared, the American farming industry would not just shut down and leave everyone to starve. They'd pay as much as they needed to hire Americans, and consumers would pay as much as needed to sustain that.
e.g. here it's hundreds per hour for a girl who would barely beat minimum wage otherwise.
$5 in South Asia is mostly mythical, but even where it would be true, that's a large multiple over what they could make otherwise.
Much to everyone's surprise, it's not. People from the region attest to the fact.
> Even where it would be true, that's a large multiple over what they could make otherwise.
Only if you factor in that these women are uneducated, poverty-stricken and job prospects are low.