4 ms·
I think it's easy to explain why wages have stagnated. The time wages started to stagnate coincides with women's lib, immigration policy changes, and free trad
by Consultant32452 9y ago
I think it's easy to explain why wages have stagnated. The time wages started to stagnate coincides with women's lib, immigration policy changes, and free trade changes. Women's lib dropped an extra 40% more people into the labor pool. Of course that's going to put downward pressure on wages. We changed our legal immigration policy to favor more poor people while simultaneously changing our illegal immigration enforcement policy to keep tons of illegal aliens in the country pushing wages down for the American poor. Trade policy has gutted a huge portion of the country in favor of the already wealthy elites on the coast.
The big economic question of the day should be asking how we've managed to keep wages at only the "stagnation" level rather than precipitously falling in the face of so much downward pressure.
- icebraining 9y agoUnder that theory, by 1960s there shouldn't be almost any jobs left, since the population grew 25x since the foundation of the country.
- Consultant32452 9y agoYou're arguing against a straw man. It's possible to support social and economic policies while recognizing that they have both positive and negative aspects to them.
- icebraining 9y agoWhat I'm saying is that having more workers is not by itself sufficient explanation. The US always had more workers YoY.
- Consultant32452 9y agoDo you believe that illegal immigrants have the same income distribution as the general population in the US?
- icebraining 9y agoNo. Can you clarify the connection?
- Consultant32452 9y agoIf you dump a bunch of people into the low end of income pool it's going to move the distribution curve.
- icebraining 9y agoAnd yet, despite massive immigration (from low income countries) for centuries, the US is one of the countries with highest salaries.
- Consultant32452 9y agoSure, once the people here today have had a century of assimilation I suspect they will not impact the income distribution curve. If you were happy with the income equality from a century ago, I'm willing to adopt the welfare and tax systems of that time so all the incentives are the same.
- pault 9y agoYour explanation presumes fixed demand.
- Consultant32452 9y agoNo it doesn't. Here's at least three alternative presumptions: 1. Demand is not perfectly elastic 2. Demand is perfectly elastic, but supply was increased more on the lower end of the income range which reshapes the income distribution. 3. Trade policy reduced demand in the middle of the income range.