I'm guessing it's more about the wages than a cultural shift. There are plenty of harsh jobs Americans take. The difference is the wages are better:
Tom Surtees is tired of hearing employers grouse about their lazy countrymen. “Don’t tell me an Alabamian can’t work out in the field picking produce because it’s hot and labor intensive,” he says. “Go into a steel mill. Go into a foundry. Go into numerous other occupations and tell them Alabamians don’t like this work because it’s hot and it requires manual labor.” The difference being, jobs in Alabama’s foundries and steel mills pay better wages—with benefits. “If you’re trying to justify paying someone below whatever an appropriate wage level is so you can bring your product, I don’t think that’s a valid argument.”
“They gotta come up with a better pay system,” says Rayford. “This ain’t no easy work. If you need somebody to do this type of work, you gotta be payin’. If they was paying by the hour, motherf—–s would work overtime, so you’d know what you’re working for.” He starts to pace around the car. “I could just work at McDonald’s.”
Why Americans won't do dirty jobsBottom Salaries
Among the positions that employed at least 1,000 people in steel mills, the lowest-paying were usually unskilled labor. For instance, the 3,300 production helpers working in steel plants were the lowest-paid workers, at $31,450 on average, according to the bureau. The 2,490 laborers and movers were paid $35,050 on average.
Salary of Steel Plant WorkersIf these agricultural/retired care workers were paid at the same rate as workers in a steel mill, I'm guessing their staffing problems would vanish. But going from $13k a year no benefits to $35k a year with benefits is a 2-3 times increase in payout. Long term care costs are already hefty. Increasing them by 2-3 times might not be feasible.
A Wall Street Journal article gives an overview of a topic we discussed briefly before: an escalating crisis in the long-term care business. As we explain in more detail below, the entire industry massively underpriced policies that cover nursing home and other types of long-term care for the elderly. They are now playing catch-up with hefty rate increases.
7.3 million individuals, equal to nearly 20% of the people over 65, are grappling with the dilemma of what to do about long-term care sticker shock. Some examples from the Journal’s story:
In the past two years, CNA Financial Corp. has increased the annual long-term-care insurance bill for Ms. Wylie and her husband by more than 90% to $4,831. They bought the policies in 2008, which promise future benefits of as much as $268,275 per person. The Wylies are bracing for more increases.
Many adults don’t realize until they approach retirement age that Medicare does not provide for coverage in what are called long-term care facilities, such as assisted living (where the residents aren’t hospitalized but need help with some activities, like bathing or getting dressed) and nursing homes. Medicaid does, but it has strict financial eligibility limits (among other things, you will effectively be required to exhaust your financial assets). And based on reports by readers, facilities that accept Medicaid patients often do not provide a high standard of care.
Insurers rushed to fill this gap in a serious way about 40 years ago. Long-term care policies will reimburse the cost of care in approved facilities, or in many cases with approved home health care services, up to a daily maximum amount. Policies typically also have a maximum total payout amount (which may be expressed in other terms but amounts to the same thing).
The problem was twofold. One was that the insurers had no experience in offering this sort of policy and made unduly optimistic assumptions, such as how many people would lapse (stop paying before they used the policy), how long they would live, and how many days of care they would consume if and when they needed care. Ironically, when my father was looking at whether to get a long term care policy over 30 years ago, he was frustrated at his inability to get data to make any sort of an informed decision. It turns out the insurers themselves didn’t have enough of a track record to be doing any better than guessing, and they guessed wrong.
It turned out that nearly everyone underestimated how long policyholders would live and claims would last. For example, actuaries, insurers and regulators didn’t anticipate a proliferation of assisted-living facilities. And they assumed families would do whatever they could to avoid moving loved ones into nursing homes, holding down policy claims.
By the late 1990s, assisted-living facilities were widely popular. Especially at well-run ones, staff members looked after policyholders so well that they lived years longer than actuaries had projected. Residents “are taking their medications; they are not falling,” says Mr. Bodnar, now a senior executive at Genworth.
The rate of individuals buying new policies has plunged now that insures are charging more for them:
Fewer than 100,000 long-term-care insurance policies were sold in the U.S. in 2016, and sales fell to about 34,000 in the first half of 2017. Both those totals are the lowest in more than 25 years. The business peaked in 2002 with about 750,000 sales.
People approaching 60, which is usually the latest these insurers will write policies, don’t have good options.
Given the plunge in people buying these policies, the US is clearly moving towards the neoliberal answer of “Die faster!”
The Long-Term Care Crisis: Premiums Exploding, Leaving Seniors With “An Awful Choice”I can see produce prices going up and consumption going down because farm workers are paid decent wages. But what does "consumption will drop" look like for retired care?
The oil barrel is half-full.