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Companies didn't put pressure on the government. Progressive citizens did. These government programs happened despite massive corporate resistance. In fact thes

Companies didn't put pressure on the government. Progressive citizens did. These government programs happened despite massive corporate resistance. In fact these programs emerged right along the same time as the massive monopolies were being broken up by government and laissez-faire economics was being abandoned by the Supreme Court (before ultimately being rejected by the entire government). You get the rust belt because there has been a massive change of the American economy from manufacturing to high end service (finance, law, management, design). People can and should move to where opportunity is, America is and always should by a dynamic country of immigrants that move to where the economic opportunity is at the moment.

TomMckenny 8y ago
Progressive citizens might favor accepting refugees etc. But they certainly did no call for abusively expanding H1B to suppress wages.
- digitaltrees 8y ago
  H1B doesn't suppress wages. There is no evidence of that. In fact, the global brain drain to the US has given us a clear competitive advantage and allowed us to create new industries and massive companies. Immigration is a good thing economically and technologically. Refugees will contribute to the long term growth of the economy by being consumers and producers over their life and allow for economic growth. Look at countries that don't allow immigration, and have shrinking populations, how are their economies doing.
  - lovich 8y ago
    You bring in workers who are paid less than the average and can't shop their services around. Free immigration can bring growth as those people can act in the market. H1bs are effectively indentured servitude, which are better for the company, probably better for the person taking the H1b over staying in their home country, but certainly will put a downward force on wages
    - digitaltrees 8y ago
      Where is your evidence that H1B candidates are paid less? That is false based on my experience hiring. Further, H1B sponsorship costs money and commitment to the applicant and government, so hiring an H1B is actually more expensive than domestic candidates. Not only that, but in the H1B process you have to show that there isn’t an equivalent domestic candidate and you, as a company, made an effort to find such a candidate. You are also ignoring the contributions such immigrants make to the broader economy by inventing, building, and hell, just using their salaries to buy things. We are stronger when we take the labor of or competition and put it to efficient use. If you’re really concerned about wage increases for employees you need to focus on the imbalance of power we have as employers. I make hiring decisions every month, and I can tell you, as much as this is the best job market in a generation, and employees have the best bargaining position they’ve had in a long time, our company has way more power than any one employee.
      - lovich 8y ago
        >Not only that, but in the H1B process you have to show that there isn’t an equivalent domestic candidate and you, as a company, made an effort to find such a candidate. And that is trivially easy to game atm as the government isn't enforcing it. We've all seen the job postings where companies are asking for X number of years of experience in a technology that has only existed for X-n years, or a combination of skills that would command high salary but they are only offering market rate or below. >Further, H1B sponsorship costs money and commitment to the applicant and government, so hiring an H1B is actually more expensive than domestic candidates. More expensive to the employer != increased wages. Why didn't the company just add that cost to the salary instead and hire locally? Because having captive workers is worth something to them. The problem with H1bs isn't that they are immigrants, the problem is that they are not free to easily move around employers due to the terms of the visa, and the path to the green card that would give them freedom is also constrained. Personally I think that if a company has successfully argued that the American population can't supply someone to do the job and we need to import someone. That immigrant should be free to work at any company in the US since apparently the whole country could use them, and adding people to the country affects us all. Tieing them to one company is just indentured servitude with extra steps and let's a single company capture the value while putting a ton of the costs on to the nation Anyway my main point was that you can be talking in a thread about supply and demand and say that increasing supply doesn't put a downward pressure on price, in this case salary. It may not be enough to move the needle if there's enough unmet demand and a price ceiling for whatever reason, but it is a downward pressure
  - TomMckenny 8y ago
    Increased supply reduces prices doesn't it? If I notice BurgerKing and McDonald's are about the same price, I don't conclude that BurgerKing's prices have no impact on McDonald's.
    - digitaltrees 8y ago
      You’re assuming demand is tied to supply. That’s a logical error. If demand is increasing faster than supply there is still scarcity and prices will increase. Is the ratio of supply and demand and the change over time that determines price. Further there is a lot of evidence that wages are unique and resist going down and are slow to rise (because employers are aware of the stickiness of wage levels) In the case of H1B, we are talking about Highly Skilled individuals that are scarce by global standards. Basically the supply of highly skilled employees is less than the demand, even with current levels of immigration. A similar thought experiment: if you build more apartments in NYC, the price won’t necessarily go down because the demand is massive and increasing; it would take a lot of apartments to lower prices in NYC.

TomMckenny 8y ago

Progressive citizens might favor accepting refugees etc. But they certainly did no call for abusively expanding H1B to suppress wages.

digitaltrees 8y ago
H1B doesn't suppress wages. There is no evidence of that. In fact, the global brain drain to the US has given us a clear competitive advantage and allowed us to create new industries and massive companies. Immigration is a good thing economically and technologically. Refugees will contribute to the long term growth of the economy by being consumers and producers over their life and allow for economic growth. Look at countries that don't allow immigration, and have shrinking populations, how are their economies doing.
- lovich 8y ago
  You bring in workers who are paid less than the average and can't shop their services around. Free immigration can bring growth as those people can act in the market. H1bs are effectively indentured servitude, which are better for the company, probably better for the person taking the H1b over staying in their home country, but certainly will put a downward force on wages
  - digitaltrees 8y ago
    Where is your evidence that H1B candidates are paid less? That is false based on my experience hiring. Further, H1B sponsorship costs money and commitment to the applicant and government, so hiring an H1B is actually more expensive than domestic candidates. Not only that, but in the H1B process you have to show that there isn’t an equivalent domestic candidate and you, as a company, made an effort to find such a candidate. You are also ignoring the contributions such immigrants make to the broader economy by inventing, building, and hell, just using their salaries to buy things. We are stronger when we take the labor of or competition and put it to efficient use. If you’re really concerned about wage increases for employees you need to focus on the imbalance of power we have as employers. I make hiring decisions every month, and I can tell you, as much as this is the best job market in a generation, and employees have the best bargaining position they’ve had in a long time, our company has way more power than any one employee.
    - lovich 8y ago
      >Not only that, but in the H1B process you have to show that there isn’t an equivalent domestic candidate and you, as a company, made an effort to find such a candidate. And that is trivially easy to game atm as the government isn't enforcing it. We've all seen the job postings where companies are asking for X number of years of experience in a technology that has only existed for X-n years, or a combination of skills that would command high salary but they are only offering market rate or below. >Further, H1B sponsorship costs money and commitment to the applicant and government, so hiring an H1B is actually more expensive than domestic candidates. More expensive to the employer != increased wages. Why didn't the company just add that cost to the salary instead and hire locally? Because having captive workers is worth something to them. The problem with H1bs isn't that they are immigrants, the problem is that they are not free to easily move around employers due to the terms of the visa, and the path to the green card that would give them freedom is also constrained. Personally I think that if a company has successfully argued that the American population can't supply someone to do the job and we need to import someone. That immigrant should be free to work at any company in the US since apparently the whole country could use them, and adding people to the country affects us all. Tieing them to one company is just indentured servitude with extra steps and let's a single company capture the value while putting a ton of the costs on to the nation Anyway my main point was that you can be talking in a thread about supply and demand and say that increasing supply doesn't put a downward pressure on price, in this case salary. It may not be enough to move the needle if there's enough unmet demand and a price ceiling for whatever reason, but it is a downward pressure
- TomMckenny 8y ago
  Increased supply reduces prices doesn't it? If I notice BurgerKing and McDonald's are about the same price, I don't conclude that BurgerKing's prices have no impact on McDonald's.
  - digitaltrees 8y ago
    You’re assuming demand is tied to supply. That’s a logical error. If demand is increasing faster than supply there is still scarcity and prices will increase. Is the ratio of supply and demand and the change over time that determines price. Further there is a lot of evidence that wages are unique and resist going down and are slow to rise (because employers are aware of the stickiness of wage levels) In the case of H1B, we are talking about Highly Skilled individuals that are scarce by global standards. Basically the supply of highly skilled employees is less than the demand, even with current levels of immigration. A similar thought experiment: if you build more apartments in NYC, the price won’t necessarily go down because the demand is massive and increasing; it would take a lot of apartments to lower prices in NYC.