This diary is an extended comment on "E-Verify: Lamar Smith's fact-free defense" supposedly written by Markos Moulitsas. Markos may be a very good progressive and a caring and nurturing person. But his AND Lamar Smith's economics are well of the mark. I wanted to correct the actual economics of the issue for all to see and to debate.
In the real world Markos gets a lot of this stuff right. He primarily gets the FACT that the price of American produce is set by imported produce. Wages have little or nothing to do with the price of goods produced on the farms. If the land will not produce adequate output to pay the wages AND THE DEBT SERVICE ON THE FARM then the bank will end up with the farm and the farmer will be tits up. But let us turn our hearts and minds away from the plight of the particular farmers who will suffer the foreclosure and look at the macro effects. In reality land is a farm because it has limited use for anything else. It will not support wholesale or retail business because it is not close enough to a population center. McMansions are not in demand either and if energy prices rise then rural land will not support a commuter migration from the cities.
The bottom line is that if it means that the land must be absolutely FREE in order to pay decent wages then that would be the case. The land is NOT produced. It is there by natural happenstance and left totally alone it will become more and more fertile over time. There is no COST associated with land other than the cost imposed by "ownership". Hence, all state governments should tax raw land at 90% of value and use that revenue source as opposed to any other. Such a tax system keeps the banks from carrying the land on the books of the banks at inflated prices. And though the current farmers will get screwed, so too will the banks. The GOOD farmers will move to some other land or they will reacquire the same land at much reduced prices and the produce will then be available at competitive rates (with foreign competition) while paying decent wages. The RENT is the problem, not the wages.
But the problem of illegal immigration cannot be managed on a state by state basis regardless of real economics because the work force is highly mobile and migrant. They will simply move to a neighboring state and drive down the wages in the neighboring states. And YES!!! They do drive down wages and they do so even more because of the "ownership" of the NON - PRODUCED land.
See also: Land Rent
And http://greatervoice.org/...