Cog wrote:Ah but there is a big difference in your setup in Panama and the way it would turn out in the USA. There are not multiple government agencies in Panama enforcing work safety, medical, and education rules for your workers. You have negotiated a fair deal with them and that is the end of it. Free market unrestrained capitalism.
But that dog won't hunt in the USA. There is no end of do-gooder federal agencies, lawyers, and other assorted a-holes who won't leave well enough alone. You will have to give those foreign workers all the treats of healthcare, education for their kids, a minimum wage, housing, OSHA safety regulations, and the list goes on and on.
The little republican in me is agreeing with you. More than you know.
Being at the end of a 4WD road the government agencies that do inspections have never made it up here. Sanitation department inspecting our restaurant. Never happened. Labor office inspecting if we are paying SS# to our workers. Never happened. Building inspectors. Never happened. Government utility agency checking to see if we are illegally using the government subsidized propane for commercial purposes. Never happened.
One of the reasons we have a love hate relationship with the 4WD road is that it keeps those public maggot inspectors off of our land. These agencies are not given 4WD vehicles. The only government agency with 4x4's that visits us is the environmental agency (ANAM). And they are our friends.
Examples of heavy lifting physical labor on our operation that few Americans today can still perform
1) Picking Coffee ($ 3 paid per 5 gallon bucket)
2) Carrying sacks of harvested coffee and bananas up steep slopes from field to road.
3) Chain saw operator processing timber
4) Hauling blocks of heavy tropical timber out of the wet forest to nearest road
5) Digging drainage ditches with shovels and picks along road
6) Pouring cement with 5 gallon buckets, shoveling stone, sand and cement, hand mixing without machine
7) Using a machete to clear pastures of weeds
Go back 2 generations and this was standard work in agrarian life in the USA. Not anymore. Many Central Americans can still do these tasks in a post fossil fuel age.
The other day I talked to some of our workers. All of their children are not following in their footsteps, they want urban jobs and they want to migrate to the big cities here in panama... So all of this talk I am bringing up regarding Central Americans doing heavy lifting is disappearing fast in Panama and Costa Rica and urbanized Mexico. Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala and rural Mexico are the only specific countries where the demographics will keep a large segment of the population doing heavy labor. As these countries industrialize so to will they go the same route as Americans and become increasingly soft as they choose urban life.