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I agree with you but I would also say these systems are complicated. Raising wages can also lead to raising prices and at the end of the day what people really
by snarf21 8y ago
I agree with you but I would also say these systems are complicated. Raising wages can also lead to raising prices and at the end of the day what people really want is more buying power. People want manufacturing jobs back in the US at $30/hour rates for people with no experience but then also want to buy these kinds of goods at the dollar store. These things are very incompatible. People always want it both ways. People also want the perfect job 5 minutes from where they already live (understandably) even though it may be cheaper to have people in WV do that same job.
Even thinking about more practical things like food harvesting, these jobs can pay ~$15/hour but they are REALLY hard work as that rate isn't guaranteed but rather performance based. If we had to pay even $25/hour to attract unemployed US workers to do these jobs instead of migrants, this would cause a likely doubling of the cost of all the produce you buy. We all have to ask, "Are we willing to pay double for fruits and vegetables to create decent paying jobs for other citizens?" I think the answer is that we are clearly not. The same question goes for services we use constantly like Amazon and Uber. The people doing the work are vastly underpaid and that is exactly where our savings come from!
For tech, I think the training path is the right thing. Employers do have to be careful to not spend tons training people just to have them leave. I firmly believe the right answer is apprenticeships. People do work as they learn and their wage rises slowly with the experience and ability to create value. The risk of them leaving is minimized as they have already created corporate value.
- darawk 8y agoI think what you're really hitting on there is the global competitive equilibrium. If we couldn't hire migrants to pick fruit, our farm businesses simply couldn't compete on price (also subsidies). But standard economic theory would say "don't compete then! do something else".
- war1025 8y agoThey had a piece on NPR a week or two ago where a vegetable farmer said he'd love to hire locals instead of migrants because you have to pay to house the migrants, which actually makes them more expensive. But none of the locals want to do the work.
- darawk 8y ago> But none of the locals want to do the work. "...at the price he wants to pay".
- war1025 8y agoMore so the price the market would bear, but yes. There is also no denying that people are less willing to do hard labor than they used to be.
- darawk 8y ago> More so the price the market would bear, but yes. That really depends on the elasticity of demand for that thing. Usually when a thing costs more to produce than you can sell it for, we say that the market shouldn't produce that thing then, so there's nothing to complain about. > There is also no denying that people are less willing to do hard labor than they used to be. By which you mean "less willing to do hard labor as cheaply", presumably.
- war1025 8y agoNo I mean strictly less willing to do hard labor. The social safety nets in America may not be great, but most people would prefer to deal with that rather than do back breaking labor. And if you are not in that situation, you would rather do a different job that would pay equivalently. It used to be that your options were do what you had to or starve. Not starving is a good motivator.