Or if you’re Megan McArdle, for whom quantitative data is really tedious.

Very few emplyees do have a meaningful choice of jobs, but these people are in a much worse situation, for various reasons.

The point is that this situations creates no incentive for the employers to improve the working conditions.

Your suggestion that they can always quit or move to Mexico is simply missing the point here. Yes, they can move to Mexico, they can sell their kidneys and so on, but cleary they having all these options doesn’t produce enough pressure on the slaughterhouse owner. It’s not working.

Yes, I’ve noticed that people casually throw away limbs any time they think it might pay.

I am at a loss for words.

I wonder if he was able to speak freely, or if he was asked this in the presence of management.

Yet taxi and limousine drivers, I bet, are rarely killed by the tools and equipment they work with.

And I’d wager that few meatpacking employess have been killed by a pistol-packing side of beef.

Your advice is terrible, though. Why would I want to work in a meat processing plant when I have a job that offers much better pay and working conditions? Why would I want to move to Mexico when I’m doing quite well here?

And yes, there is some rate at which trading hacked off limbs for cheaper hamburger is a good deal. If you don’t understand that, then you have no business making policy prescriptions.

Sure Brandon, one or two severed limbs here and there is a small price to pay for cheaper hamburgers. And the stupid buggers probably deserved it anyway…

Here’s an idea for those of you who think that this is a huge market failure: Pool all your capital together and buy a meat-processing plant.

Here’s a suggestion for you, Brandon. Get a job in a meat processing plant. If you get your arm chopped off – hey, the tort settlement will more than cover it and you’ll be laughing all the way to the bank. And if you don’t agree with that, you can always head down to Mexico and I’m confident that like the “vast, vast majority” of Mexicans, you too will find a way to avoid starving. Good luck, and enjoy our capitalist utopia!

Don Quijote (29):

It’s a free country, they are free to starve…

There are other jobs available. In the worst case, they could just stay in Mexico. Death by starvation is not unheard of there, but the vast, vast majority of Mexicans somehow manage to avoid succumbing to it. And I suspect that those resourceful enough to get across the border and find employment in the U.S. are at particularly low risk.

Considering that the principal causes of accidents is the pace at which the line moves, and that the pace is determined by the company, you must be kidding.

Then it may be that these accidents can’t be prevented efficiently. Slowing down the lines costs a lot in terms of lost productivity. That said, I doubt very much that who gets hurt and who does not is purely a matter of luck.

That dollar or two above minimum wage must surely compensate for the risks at hand.

It’s three dollars, according to Herbert. And that’s a big difference. Suppose they need $3.00 to cover taxes and living expenses. In that case, an extra $3.00 above minimum wage more than doubles the amount of money they can take back to Mexico. The idea that some people might rationally accept greater risk of injury in exchange is anything but absurd.

Here’s an idea for those of you who think that this is a huge market failure: Pool all your capital together and buy a meat-processing plant. Figure out how to make processing safer, or hire someone else to figure it out for you, and then do it.

Your superior working conditions should allow you to attract plenty of workers, and since they care about safety so much more than money, you should be able to get away with paying less and thus outcompete the other processors. Or you could forgo profits out of the goodness of your hearts. Whatever—-it’s your plant. Let me know how it works out.

Which facts do I seem to be missing Ms Galt?

The fact that the meatpacking industry is a very dangerous industry to work in since it has been deunionized? or the fact that you are a right winger who will excuse any thing as long as it leads to a higher profit margin?

To the rest of us, Bob Herbert seems to provide a more comprehensive picture.

The point of the article was not “is Smithfields farms a terrific employer?” It was “Are immigrants moving ahead?”

I understand, Henry, why you want to interrogate Smithfield farms (though I stand by my broader point: Bob Herbert is a left-wing columnist with an axe to grind, no more likely to produce an accurate picture of life at Smithfield than a similarly political right-wing columnist—a problem that I’m very sure you would have no problem recognizing in a right-wing columnist.) But that wasn’t really very relevant to the article. The Economist asked Mr Queiroz if he liked his job; Mr Queiroz said yes. I have no doubt that his job is a) an improvement over what he did in Mexico and b) an improvement over what he was doing before in America. As such, it’s very relevant to look at the safety of alternative jobs filled by immigrants, like . . . why, driving a taxi! Or working in a warehouse (more injuries than meatpacking). Immigrants spend their lives doing hard physical, repetitive labour in which it is very easy to get injured.

And “animal slaughter and meatpacking” is a category for people who slaughter animals, and pack the meat. Management is a separate occupation, so no, they aren’t lumping in the office guys with the guys wielding the knives.

Mr Quijote . . . I’m as fascinated by your certainty in the absence of any facts as I was by the other commenters earlier in the thread.