Nina Hartley, a porn star, told Schlosser: "You'd be surprised how many producers and manufacturers are Republicans."
The majority of women in the films earn about US$400 a scene. At the moment, there is a surplus of women in California hoping to enter the industry.
The Internet has provided a fresh and profitable outlet. In 1997 about 22,000 porn Web sites existed; the number is now closer to 300,000 and growing.
More than a million illegal farmworkers are employed in the US, with the average worker being a 29-year-old from Mexico.
The total number of illegal immigrants is estimated at about 8 million and many are being paid cash in a shadow economy.
Many live in primitive conditions: a survey in Soledad, in the heart of California's agricultural territory, found that 1,500 of them, one-eighth of the town's official population, were living in garages. There are mutual economic benefits.
"Migrant work in California has long absorbed Mexican surplus labor, while Mexico has in effect paid for the education, health care and retirement of California's farmworkers," Schlosser wrote.
"Maintaining the current level of poverty among migrant farmworkers saves the average American household around US$50 a year," he wrote.
The advantages to the employer are clear, most notably in LA county, where an estimated 28 percent of workers are paid in cash.
Schlosser believes that the shadow economy will continue to thrive as long as marijuana and pornography remain illicit.
"A society that can punish a marijuana offender more severely than a murderer is caught in the grip of a deep psychosis," he concludes. "Black markets will always be with us. But they will recede in importance when the public morality is consistent with our private one. The underground is a good measure of the progress and the health of nations. When much is wrong, much needs to be hidden."
RSS