8 ms·

I wonder why people here praise free competition on a global market as a primary value when they talk about their products and services, but support competition

I wonder why people here praise free competition on a global market as a primary value when they talk about their products and services, but support competition limiting when it comes to the labor market in their own country.

baddox 10y ago
Pure self-interest, I would imagine.
mvpu 10y ago
It's not about competition limiting, it's about unfair pricing and abuse. It's not fair to replace a local worker with a foreign worker because they're cheaper. And, there are tons and tons of staffing firms who systematically abuse the H1B program - they funnel workers from different countries (especially India), often mistreat them / threaten them / underpay them.
- paradite 10y ago
  > It's not fair to replace a local worker with a foreign worker because they're cheaper. I think you just disagreed with the concept of globalization. Granted that human resources are more complex than other resources. However, judging by your use of term "unfair pricing" on human, you seem to make no distinction between them in this discussion.
- Klockan 10y ago
  > It's not fair to replace a local worker with a foreign worker because they're cheaper. Why not? I'd argue that it is more unfair that an American worker gets paid many times more than an Indian worker even when they do exactly the same job. Letting those Indian workers come to America and compete on more equal terms is among the fairest things you can do.
  - anjc 10y ago
    Fair to who?
    - keerthiko 10y ago
      That's a perverse question. The word "fairness" implies to all parties involved, typically by uplifting whoever would be disadvantaged in the system pre-fairness-implementation. You probably meant "advantageous to who?" and the answer to that is obviously the employer, and to a lesser extent the migrant worker. Capitalism is about favoring businesses (employers) in general, hoping for trickle-down benefits to individual consumers, so allowing hiring immigrant workers for lower wage seems consistent with capitalist principles.
      - anjc 10y ago
        Ok so then you feel that it's possible that it may increase net-fairness, but that it could be be unfair to some parties? So with regards to the indictment described in the OP, it would be very clearly unfair if indigenous workers were displaced due to the illegal availability of cheaper non-national workers, right? I don't see how it's a perverse question.
        aianus 10y ago
        Imagine some guy was hired at $50/h to flip burgers and a few years down the line he gets fired in favor of a cheaper worker. Which part was unfair? The part where he was making $50/h flipping burgers or the termination? Edit: what if the reason he was making $50/h was because he lobbied his government to restrict burger flipping work authorization to people born within 2km of his home and he was the only one qualified?
        anjc 10y ago
        The analogous part that's unfair would be the illegal importation of cheaper labour from emerging economies who will flip burgers for a wage that doesn't allow for an acceptable standard of living (meaning that they can only afford rent if they share bedrooms with strangers and so on). The reason for increased issuances of visas is corporate lobbying too, and most American workers have very little protection in terms of rights and lobbying, so your comparison is flipped around to describe the opposite of reality.
- witty_username 10y ago
  > It's not fair to replace a local worker with a foreign worker because they're cheaper. It's as fair as buying something for cheaper when you can. In fact, it's probably more fair as globalization lifts foreign workers out of poverty. A richer local worker loses while a poorer foreign worker wins and the U.S. overall wins.
  - humanrebar 10y ago
    "richer" Being middle class in a third world country and being poor in a poverty-stricken American zip code are different enough that it's not even worth deciding who has it worse.
    - witty_username 10y ago
      I'm not sure if your assertion is relevant because the jobs for H-1B are not that poor I think. Your assertion may be wrong; it depends on what is "poor" in a poverty-stricken zipcode. The median per capita income in India is 616$. PPP adjusted that is 2351$. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States#Income_distribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_... shows people at the 6.48th percentile in the United States earn $2500.
  - mattmanser 10y ago
    Is it really fair? That rich people benefit from the laws and protections of the U.S., without having to deal with the corruption and laws of India. But they can then import cheap workers to displace the very people who paid for those protections to even exist in the first place? It seems a breakdown of the social contract to me. I think there's definitely two ways to look at this one.
    - witty_username 10y ago
      > That rich people benefit from the laws and protections of the U.S., without having to deal with the corruption and laws of India. But they can then import cheap workers to displace the very people who paid for those protections to even exist in the first place? If the tax system is so broken that the poorer are paying for the richer's protection, then fix the tax system so that the rich person pays the "correct/fair" amount. For example, remove most of the deductions and other rules and replace it with a simple flat tax. Anyways, why are you saying "rich people"? Ordinary people own these companies and purchase from these companies. They benefit.
- csomar 10y ago
  > It's not fair to replace a local worker with a foreign worker because they're cheaper. See. This is the problem. Is it fair to buy a Toyota because it's cheaper than a Cadillac? You either accept globalization or you don't. Globalization brings nice and bad things. You can't just have your cake and eat it to. Doing that will result in inefficiencies that in the long term will kill your internal economy. Imagine the USA didn't have access to outsourcing. Industries would have collapsed instead of bringing the top level jobs the US citizen enjoys now.
  - Neliquat 10y ago
    Except more toyotas than caddys are built in the USA. The workforce follows the money.
Zelmor 10y ago
Because they are acting in their own best interest and rationalize away the cognitive dissonance.
- drchiu 10y ago
  Succinct and true.
- Retric 10y ago
  Not really, land and culture is not fungible. Having say a minimally corrupt judicial system is the kind of thing you risk with unlimited migration. I also don't believe in totally free markets. A flat 10% import terrif on ALL goods and services promotes home grown capital intensive industry where appropriate. Sparking long term growth, while allowing counties to import and export goods where appropriate.
  - everybodyknows 10y ago
    Yes, the common culture is a country's most precious possession. But H-1B immigrants on the whole are supportive, not corrosive to American culture. They work hard and value education. Any native-born American (like myself) who has known second-generation Chinese- or Indian-Americans has seen what good citizens on the whole they are and would be happy to have them as neighbors.
- icantdrive55 10y ago
  The back story of every person who consistently makes more than $200k in the private sector. It's just hippocracy. It's always disgusted me. I see it in every profession--from the financial to medicine, and the 501C3's. It's gotten worse since going to church is seen as a crime in certain parts of the country. I have never met a wealthy family that isn't full of it.
frozenport 10y ago
The current system is already competition limiting! We're not selecting the best workers but rather we're choosing workers based on special interests. The easiest fix is to actually have competition, and make employers bid on visas.
malloryerik 10y ago
I probably hold a minority opinion, but I wish that the US would take millions of immigrants every year, up to even ten million(!). And people from OECD countries could come automatically as they pleased, ideally like a Schengen Area that extended throughout the whole OECD, with hope of eventually including the entire world.
- anjc 10y ago
  Yeah I'm not sure you've paid attention to the effect that this has had on employment levels in several European countries, and on adherence to employment legislation.
  - malloryerik 10y ago
    I'm not sure how European unemployment can be blamed on Schengen.
    - anjc 10y ago
      Western European unemployment. Check out the demographic increases in western European countries. Ireland's population has increased 50% in 10-15 years and a majority of it is accounted for by immigration from poorer countries within the Schengen. Now the disparity in wealth between even poor and wealthy European countries isn't anything like the disparity between countries at a global level, but you reckon that anybody should be able to move to the US to work.
      - NetStrikeForce 10y ago
        > Ireland's population has increased 50% in 10-15 years and a majority of it is accounted for by immigration from poorer countries within the Schengen. Hence why unemployment is going back to pre-crisis levels in Ireland, right?: http://www.tradingeconomics.com/ireland/unemployment-rate http://www.tradingeconomics.com/ireland/unemployment-rate This is like your third comment bashing Freedom of Movement inside the EU without single proof to back it up. I'd like to let you know I have downvoted those three comments of yours for being not only wrong, but for trying to spread false information. If you support that it's not false, please produce the evidence. I am open minded about the topic. > Now the disparity in wealth between even poor and wealthy European countries isn't anything like the disparity between countries at a global level, but you reckon that anybody should be able to move to the US to work. The wealth gap between poor and wealthy EU countries is closing down thanks to the Single Market. That's the idea behind it, get together countries with wealth disparity and help the poorer become stronger, which in turn helps the rest by adding more wealthy buyers to your market. It's a win-win and it has worked wonders.
anjc 10y ago
There's no contradiction here. You're mixing up two markets, and many concepts (you seem to be ignoring law, for example).
orless 10y ago
The point is not limitation of the labor market, the point is plain a simple fraud, like submitting fake "end-client letters" to the government.
Chathamization 10y ago
Economist Dean Baker has been making this point, and its an important one. While most in the upper class seem to be adamant that people in, say, manufacturing must compete with low cost foreign workers (free trade is good, protectionism is bad), they are more than happy to continue the protectionism that more educated workers (people like them) enjoy. There are a lot of people that are fine with protectionism, but think it should only apply to the people like them. They think that those lower down on the ladder need to find new professions, even if they're in their 50's. Dean Baker: > Unfortunately, almost none of the people who pronounce themselves devotees of free trade actually do consistently advocate free trade policies. Rather they push selective protectionist policies, that have the effect of redistributing income to people like them, and call them "free trade." ... > In the United States, the "free traders" in most cases also support the protectionist restrictions which severely limit the ability of foreign trained doctors and dentists and other high-end professionals from working in the United States. As a result of these protectionist measures doctors in the United States earn twice as much as their counterparts in other wealthy countries, costing us around $100 billion a year in higher health care costs. http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/the-free-traders-do-not-believe-in-free-trade-46-765 http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/the-free-traders-do-not...
- denzil_correa 10y ago
  > While most in the upper class seem to be adamant that people in, say, manufacturing must compete with low cost foreign workers (free trade is good, protectionism is bad), they are more than happy to continue the protectionism that more educated workers (people like them) enjoy. Everyone wants regulation for "others", free market for themselves.
julie1 10y ago
I guess we all support competition. Loyal and fair. H1B is to get workers without loans from places where diploma have been paid often by public taxes. Without loans you are more competitive than a worker having to reimburse them. H1BrainDrain also have a power of captation of publicly founded research that can be patented. (That's why young PhD are so interesting) It also undermines the competitivity of countries which miss their engineer and have to pay twice the knowledge they founded. It also ostensibly discourage the workers from unionizing since they have no way of controlling a pool of workers that can leverage the offer. On the macroscopic level H1B is possible because there is a distortion of competition on the job market. H1B is heavily biasing the capacity of negotiation on the work market in favour of the companies which uses them. A market in which you can not win and must play is not a fair game.
- ComodoHacker 10y ago
  > H1BrainDrain also have a power of captation of publicly founded research that can be patented. (That's why young PhD are so interesting) I didn't get this point. Could you elaborate?
  - julie1 10y ago
    Formation costs money. Losing a gifted student can set back the agenda of a university having almost strong enough results to publish. When you have the person actually having the bleeding edge knowledge, you can fund him or her to end the work and either publish it (prior act) or develop a usable result that can be patented. But most of the effort, especially in countries with public education, has been supported by the taxes of the locals. It is not USA the problem here. Europe and other place with public education are a bunch of bullied that are masochistic and love to be stolen. When a company claims that it will only steal from foreign entities for your national interest, and never you because you are a special snowflake, it tend to lie. A pathological thief will steal everyone as long as he is not stopped.

baddox 10y ago

Pure self-interest, I would imagine.

mvpu 10y ago

It's not about competition limiting, it's about unfair pricing and abuse. It's not fair to replace a local worker with a foreign worker because they're cheaper. And, there are tons and tons of staffing firms who systematically abuse the H1B program - they funnel workers from different countries (especially India), often mistreat them / threaten them / underpay them.

paradite 10y ago
> It's not fair to replace a local worker with a foreign worker because they're cheaper. I think you just disagreed with the concept of globalization. Granted that human resources are more complex than other resources. However, judging by your use of term "unfair pricing" on human, you seem to make no distinction between them in this discussion.
Klockan 10y ago
> It's not fair to replace a local worker with a foreign worker because they're cheaper. Why not? I'd argue that it is more unfair that an American worker gets paid many times more than an Indian worker even when they do exactly the same job. Letting those Indian workers come to America and compete on more equal terms is among the fairest things you can do.
- anjc 10y ago
  Fair to who?
  - keerthiko 10y ago
    That's a perverse question. The word "fairness" implies to all parties involved, typically by uplifting whoever would be disadvantaged in the system pre-fairness-implementation. You probably meant "advantageous to who?" and the answer to that is obviously the employer, and to a lesser extent the migrant worker. Capitalism is about favoring businesses (employers) in general, hoping for trickle-down benefits to individual consumers, so allowing hiring immigrant workers for lower wage seems consistent with capitalist principles.
    - anjc 10y ago
      Ok so then you feel that it's possible that it may increase net-fairness, but that it could be be unfair to some parties? So with regards to the indictment described in the OP, it would be very clearly unfair if indigenous workers were displaced due to the illegal availability of cheaper non-national workers, right? I don't see how it's a perverse question.
      - aianus 10y ago
        Imagine some guy was hired at $50/h to flip burgers and a few years down the line he gets fired in favor of a cheaper worker. Which part was unfair? The part where he was making $50/h flipping burgers or the termination? Edit: what if the reason he was making $50/h was because he lobbied his government to restrict burger flipping work authorization to people born within 2km of his home and he was the only one qualified?
        anjc 10y ago
        The analogous part that's unfair would be the illegal importation of cheaper labour from emerging economies who will flip burgers for a wage that doesn't allow for an acceptable standard of living (meaning that they can only afford rent if they share bedrooms with strangers and so on). The reason for increased issuances of visas is corporate lobbying too, and most American workers have very little protection in terms of rights and lobbying, so your comparison is flipped around to describe the opposite of reality.
witty_username 10y ago
> It's not fair to replace a local worker with a foreign worker because they're cheaper. It's as fair as buying something for cheaper when you can. In fact, it's probably more fair as globalization lifts foreign workers out of poverty. A richer local worker loses while a poorer foreign worker wins and the U.S. overall wins.
- humanrebar 10y ago
  "richer" Being middle class in a third world country and being poor in a poverty-stricken American zip code are different enough that it's not even worth deciding who has it worse.
  - witty_username 10y ago
    I'm not sure if your assertion is relevant because the jobs for H-1B are not that poor I think. Your assertion may be wrong; it depends on what is "poor" in a poverty-stricken zipcode. The median per capita income in India is 616$. PPP adjusted that is 2351$. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States#Income_distribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_... shows people at the 6.48th percentile in the United States earn $2500.
- mattmanser 10y ago
  Is it really fair? That rich people benefit from the laws and protections of the U.S., without having to deal with the corruption and laws of India. But they can then import cheap workers to displace the very people who paid for those protections to even exist in the first place? It seems a breakdown of the social contract to me. I think there's definitely two ways to look at this one.
  - witty_username 10y ago
    > That rich people benefit from the laws and protections of the U.S., without having to deal with the corruption and laws of India. But they can then import cheap workers to displace the very people who paid for those protections to even exist in the first place? If the tax system is so broken that the poorer are paying for the richer's protection, then fix the tax system so that the rich person pays the "correct/fair" amount. For example, remove most of the deductions and other rules and replace it with a simple flat tax. Anyways, why are you saying "rich people"? Ordinary people own these companies and purchase from these companies. They benefit.
csomar 10y ago
> It's not fair to replace a local worker with a foreign worker because they're cheaper. See. This is the problem. Is it fair to buy a Toyota because it's cheaper than a Cadillac? You either accept globalization or you don't. Globalization brings nice and bad things. You can't just have your cake and eat it to. Doing that will result in inefficiencies that in the long term will kill your internal economy. Imagine the USA didn't have access to outsourcing. Industries would have collapsed instead of bringing the top level jobs the US citizen enjoys now.
- Neliquat 10y ago
  Except more toyotas than caddys are built in the USA. The workforce follows the money.

Zelmor 10y ago

Because they are acting in their own best interest and rationalize away the cognitive dissonance.

drchiu 10y ago
Succinct and true.
Retric 10y ago
Not really, land and culture is not fungible. Having say a minimally corrupt judicial system is the kind of thing you risk with unlimited migration. I also don't believe in totally free markets. A flat 10% import terrif on ALL goods and services promotes home grown capital intensive industry where appropriate. Sparking long term growth, while allowing counties to import and export goods where appropriate.
- everybodyknows 10y ago
  Yes, the common culture is a country's most precious possession. But H-1B immigrants on the whole are supportive, not corrosive to American culture. They work hard and value education. Any native-born American (like myself) who has known second-generation Chinese- or Indian-Americans has seen what good citizens on the whole they are and would be happy to have them as neighbors.
icantdrive55 10y ago
The back story of every person who consistently makes more than $200k in the private sector. It's just hippocracy. It's always disgusted me. I see it in every profession--from the financial to medicine, and the 501C3's. It's gotten worse since going to church is seen as a crime in certain parts of the country. I have never met a wealthy family that isn't full of it.

frozenport 10y ago

The current system is already competition limiting! We're not selecting the best workers but rather we're choosing workers based on special interests. The easiest fix is to actually have competition, and make employers bid on visas.

malloryerik 10y ago

I probably hold a minority opinion, but I wish that the US would take millions of immigrants every year, up to even ten million(!). And people from OECD countries could come automatically as they pleased, ideally like a Schengen Area that extended throughout the whole OECD, with hope of eventually including the entire world.

anjc 10y ago
Yeah I'm not sure you've paid attention to the effect that this has had on employment levels in several European countries, and on adherence to employment legislation.
- malloryerik 10y ago
  I'm not sure how European unemployment can be blamed on Schengen.
  - anjc 10y ago
    Western European unemployment. Check out the demographic increases in western European countries. Ireland's population has increased 50% in 10-15 years and a majority of it is accounted for by immigration from poorer countries within the Schengen. Now the disparity in wealth between even poor and wealthy European countries isn't anything like the disparity between countries at a global level, but you reckon that anybody should be able to move to the US to work.
    - NetStrikeForce 10y ago
      > Ireland's population has increased 50% in 10-15 years and a majority of it is accounted for by immigration from poorer countries within the Schengen. Hence why unemployment is going back to pre-crisis levels in Ireland, right?: http://www.tradingeconomics.com/ireland/unemployment-rate http://www.tradingeconomics.com/ireland/unemployment-rate This is like your third comment bashing Freedom of Movement inside the EU without single proof to back it up. I'd like to let you know I have downvoted those three comments of yours for being not only wrong, but for trying to spread false information. If you support that it's not false, please produce the evidence. I am open minded about the topic. > Now the disparity in wealth between even poor and wealthy European countries isn't anything like the disparity between countries at a global level, but you reckon that anybody should be able to move to the US to work. The wealth gap between poor and wealthy EU countries is closing down thanks to the Single Market. That's the idea behind it, get together countries with wealth disparity and help the poorer become stronger, which in turn helps the rest by adding more wealthy buyers to your market. It's a win-win and it has worked wonders.

anjc 10y ago

There's no contradiction here. You're mixing up two markets, and many concepts (you seem to be ignoring law, for example).

orless 10y ago

The point is not limitation of the labor market, the point is plain a simple fraud, like submitting fake "end-client letters" to the government.

Chathamization 10y ago

Economist Dean Baker has been making this point, and its an important one. While most in the upper class seem to be adamant that people in, say, manufacturing must compete with low cost foreign workers (free trade is good, protectionism is bad), they are more than happy to continue the protectionism that more educated workers (people like them) enjoy. There are a lot of people that are fine with protectionism, but think it should only apply to the people like them. They think that those lower down on the ladder need to find new professions, even if they're in their 50's. Dean Baker: > Unfortunately, almost none of the people who pronounce themselves devotees of free trade actually do consistently advocate free trade policies. Rather they push selective protectionist policies, that have the effect of redistributing income to people like them, and call them "free trade." ... > In the United States, the "free traders" in most cases also support the protectionist restrictions which severely limit the ability of foreign trained doctors and dentists and other high-end professionals from working in the United States. As a result of these protectionist measures doctors in the United States earn twice as much as their counterparts in other wealthy countries, costing us around $100 billion a year in higher health care costs. http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/the-free-traders-do-not-believe-in-free-trade-46-765 http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/the-free-traders-do-not...

denzil_correa 10y ago
> While most in the upper class seem to be adamant that people in, say, manufacturing must compete with low cost foreign workers (free trade is good, protectionism is bad), they are more than happy to continue the protectionism that more educated workers (people like them) enjoy. Everyone wants regulation for "others", free market for themselves.

julie1 10y ago

I guess we all support competition. Loyal and fair. H1B is to get workers without loans from places where diploma have been paid often by public taxes. Without loans you are more competitive than a worker having to reimburse them. H1BrainDrain also have a power of captation of publicly founded research that can be patented. (That's why young PhD are so interesting) It also undermines the competitivity of countries which miss their engineer and have to pay twice the knowledge they founded. It also ostensibly discourage the workers from unionizing since they have no way of controlling a pool of workers that can leverage the offer. On the macroscopic level H1B is possible because there is a distortion of competition on the job market. H1B is heavily biasing the capacity of negotiation on the work market in favour of the companies which uses them. A market in which you can not win and must play is not a fair game.

ComodoHacker 10y ago
> H1BrainDrain also have a power of captation of publicly founded research that can be patented. (That's why young PhD are so interesting) I didn't get this point. Could you elaborate?
- julie1 10y ago
  Formation costs money. Losing a gifted student can set back the agenda of a university having almost strong enough results to publish. When you have the person actually having the bleeding edge knowledge, you can fund him or her to end the work and either publish it (prior act) or develop a usable result that can be patented. But most of the effort, especially in countries with public education, has been supported by the taxes of the locals. It is not USA the problem here. Europe and other place with public education are a bunch of bullied that are masochistic and love to be stolen. When a company claims that it will only steal from foreign entities for your national interest, and never you because you are a special snowflake, it tend to lie. A pathological thief will steal everyone as long as he is not stopped.