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Simply put, the vast majority of American workers have lost just about all their bargaining power. And yet not a word about tens of millions of people immigrat
by blfr 8y ago
Simply put, the vast majority of American workers have lost just about all their bargaining power.
And yet not a word about tens of millions of people immigrating to the US. As if supply didn't matter. It's unions and oligopolies. Sure.
- rplnt 8y agoTens of millions? That seems like a lot. Over what period?
- geezerjay 8y agoAccording to Wikipedia, the US takes about 1 million legal immigrants per year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_Stat...
- maxerickson 8y agoIt's because the economy isn't a fixed size pie. More people means more demand, especially in a consumptive economy like the US has (those scary trade deficits we run are clear evidence that consumption is higher than production). It's also not the case that borders can protect workers from competition. Especially in the long run.
- blfr 8y agoThe increased demand is the other side of the squeeze on regular people driving the housing prices up. So they lose bargaining power both with their employer and their landlord or developer. Meanwhile many other goods are manufactured outside of the US, benefiting primarily the mega corporations who can do international arbitrage on physical products. There's also the third side of the squeeze where the native workers desperately need to contrast themselves from the millions of migrants. They do it by going deep into debt to get a college degree from an American university, which then goes completely unused except for its signalling value the official rate hides more troubling realities: legions of college grads overqualified for their jobs
- maxerickson 8y agoThere's plenty of room to build housing, high prices are a result of bad policy. I agree that manufacturing capital will serve itself. I also agree that credentialism is a problem but I don't think it is particularly impacted by immigration.
- cjalmeida 8y agoOh, please. If your educated, English speaking, healthy, native born fellow can’t compete for jobs with an Honduran refugee that can barely spells his name; the problem might not be with the migrant to start with.
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoThe Honduran will be cheaper, and there's no competing with that for many labor jobs. Which are disappearing, which creates the problem. Labor a shrinking market demand and a growing supply, and we're not going to fix that.