06.20.11
Douchebagging with Newsweek
Competing hard for the old Reader’s Digest demographic, Newsweek:
“To find out what pay U.S. workers will really accept for an hour’s work, and how that stacks up against other countries, NEWSWEEK turned to Mechanical Turk … The results: some Americans settled for a shockingly low 25 cents an hour—while counterparts in nations like India and the Philippines expected multiples more. Of course, the results also partly reflect how many workers in each country compete for work on Amazon’s system. But even against other wired places like the U.K. and Canada, Americans desperate to earn even a pittance were the cheapest around.”
Huffington Post exploits laborers desperate to get in print by offering them a byline without compensation while Ariana Huffington makes millions.
And we didn’t need Mechanical Turk and Newsweek to inform us. (Any mention of Mechanical Turf, btw, will automatically generate spam comment caught by the blog filter.)
Fifth-generation Georgia farmer Gary Paulk told local paper The Daily Journal that he has only been able to find half of the 300 workers he needs to pick his blueberry fields, and that’s after hiking wages 20 percent. Another farmer said he had to switch to (less efficient) machines when he couldn’t find enough workers for his fields this spring …
Anti-illegal immigration groups like FAIR argue that if illegal immigration goes down, wages would go up for farm jobs, and then native-born Americans and legal immigrants would want them. Farmers say they can’t afford to pay more.