LetMePostMore

Faster or slower than setting up farm infra from near scratch to feed 140 million people?

The implication was that they could train their own doctors, not that they would import doctors from a 3rd world country.

Why aren't airlines drastically cutting back their scheduled flights if there has been such a drop in demand?

Poor countries, that make the poorest US state look like Monaco, have no problem producing doctors.

Also, as a general point, merely looking at total subsidy amount means nothing without looking at the reason for the subsidy. For example, if America builds a $10B early ICBM detection facility in Alaska, it will look like America is heavily subsidizing Alaska. Except, Alaska isn't actually a real threat to be nuked - NY, SF, LA, and DC are the ones that benefit.

Please show me any part of our modern world that has not gone wrong in some way at some time some how.

Literally what futures contracts were invented for.

How many famines have happened because ample food was readily available, but farmers didn't want to pay a slightly elevated wage to workers to pick the food?

In this scenario, some farmer is going to choose to pay $20/hr for farm workers, and rake in insane profits if there really is a famine. In fact, almost all farms would choose to pay more to collect their food and sell it at a large premium in the case of a food shortage.

That was basically my original point - OP made it sound like red states only exist via the largesse of blue states.

I'm not really sure why my points have received so much push back, but OP received basically none at all for offering essentially a symmetrical argument to my own.

Maybe we can't find enough labor because 50% of the workers are working illegally, voluntarily and involuntarily accept illegal working standards, and are suppressing wages far below what they should naturally be.

Is your argument that if we kicked every illegal immigrant out of America tomorrow, that Americans would just choose to starve instead of paying slightly more for food, and farmers would just let food rot on the vine instead of harvesting it?

National security doesn't stop being a thing if the US splits into two countries. It's just the national security interest of Blue America would not directly align with the national security interest of Red America. Blue America would probably still choose to maintain domestic food production for national security interests, but would just pay a whole lot more to subsidize the production than they are currently paying.

It's a fact(I guess?) that they are that percentage of farmworkers. It's not a fact that without them that farms would not survive in America.

There's a big reason why the US subsidizes domestic food production, and you'd be throwing that all out by relying on other countries for food. Good luck, let's hope Brazil and the US always see eye to eye on everything.

You're telling me that you believe the richest country in the history of the world, with some of the highest levels of mechanization and industrialization in the history of the world, with some of the most efficient agricultural production in the history of the world, cannot afford to grow food without essentially slave labor?

Yes, and it is hard to buy wheat when the price skyrockets due to interstate conflict. It's even harder to buy wheat when no one will sell to you.

The world is more than America, FYI. Also, the red states could sell the food to blue states, but just at a much higher margin than they currently do.

Also also, I'm not the one who invented this ridiculous scenario of every state for themselves, that was OP.

I'd rather have wheat and no money, than money and no wheat. I suppose the people who would buy Kansas wheat would be anyone who wants wheat. The US currently considers food security a vital part of national security. The blue states in this scenario can outsource their food production if they want, and hope there's never any conflict which stops those shipments.

Yes, too crowded, except for the 30% of the state north of Sacramento, and the entire east side of the state, and a big chunk of the Central Valley. But besides that 80% of the state that is mostly empty, it is way too crowded.

I suspect they are only counting people above-board coming and going, but I think there is good reason to assume the "undocumented" population is increasing(the known undocumented population is ~6%), so the net may be closer to zero than 400k.