Kaus's Rotting Fields

Morning Edition started a series on the economy this week, highlighting the impact of the slowdown on regular people. Yesterday, the story focused on a developer. This morning, the story focused on a tree grower in California. Sales of fruit trees are slowing, which in the story is attributed to the crackdown on illegal immigration, which is resulting in shortage of workers to harvest the fruit. Apparently, NRP is on-board with the crops-rotting meme Mickey Kaus had predicted would catch on. The meme is referenced in a couple of posts on this link.

The Morning Edition series quickly took a turn from the subprime mortgage fiasco to story stealthily bashing the immigration crackdown. The subprime problem is trouble for the macro-economy, but is a fall in sales of fruit trees a sign of an impending marco-economic funk? I'm not so sure.