Which would mean food gets more expensive, right?

Regardless of the fact that a lot of poor people don't live in the areas where most of those jobs are but they do get their produce from there..

The top 4 counties in the US for agriculture production are all in the central valley in California.

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reliabilityguy 3 days ago | parent [-]

> Which would mean food gets more expensive, right?

Which in turn will create more pressure to increase the salaries until it reaches the equilibrium that satisfies everyone.

The alternative is to use de-facto slave labor just for the sake of cheap food?

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hvb2 3 days ago | parent [-]

You're missing an important piece here.

The lower your income is, the bigger the % you spend on necessities like food. So when those go up, the lower incomes are again hit the hardest as they spend a higher percentage of their total income on it. And these are necessities not nice to haves

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reliabilityguy 3 days ago | parent [-]

> You're missing an important piece here.

I am not. You are confusing transient effects with the equilibrium state.

Btw, for low wage employees everything is a significant % of their wage. The only meaningful way to increase their wages is to decrease the supply of cheap labor. This is exactly what happened during Covid where no one was willing to work for $8/hr and the wages went up.

When people realize that their wage doesn’t guarantee good living they will look for a better job or demand a raise.

	▲	hvb2 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Supply and demand aren't always in the same place... If a lot of the farm workers in California are gone how does that help the people in Nevada or Michigan that are unemployed... You think they're going to fill those positions? > When people realize that their wage doesn’t guarantee good living they will look for a better job or demand a raise Wow... When your job requires no education or training? I guess everyone who works 2 or more jobs in the us needs to talk to you. They're all missing this obvious point.