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Illegal immigration is a side effect of minimum wage. And minimum wage puts unskilled Americans (or Americans whose skills aren't valuable because of a changing

Illegal immigration is a side effect of minimum wage. And minimum wage puts unskilled Americans (or Americans whose skills aren't valuable because of a changing market) at an unfair disadvantage in their attempts to obtain employment and acquire new skills. Sorry if that wasn't clear in my post.

jandrese 6y ago
So why not provide a legal path to immigration instead of abolishing the minimum wage then?
- trentnix 6y ago
  Illegal immigration and immigration in general is its own rabbit hole. You shouldn't assume from my post whether I'm for or against illegal immigration (or any type of immigration) because it doesn't really matter one way or the other to the points I'm trying to make. Economically speaking, granting legal status to unskilled illegals results in a combination of undesirable side effects: - it increases the price of the goods they produced reducing the buying power of the minimum wage, - it prices many of those illegals out of the market because they are unable to produce value for the wage they are paid (but now they are eligible for government benefits), - and it encourages new types of "black market" employment. Try all you like, but you won't outsmart the market.
  - jandrese 6y ago
    This is where you lose me. The jobs still need to be done. Some companies might just fold up and die, but most would be just as happy passing on the higher costs to customers, and said good or service still needs to be produced so the companies that survive will take over for the ones that folded. Economists have this weird idea that all fast food would close because the people working there clearly aren't worth $15/hour because they're doing jobs that currently pay only $10/hour. The crazy part is that higher minimum wages tend to increase the market, not decrease it. Turns out that poor people are bottlenecked on money. If you reduce the bottleneck they can spend more, which increases demand for labor (to fill the supply) which increases the labor rate. You can see this effect all throughout history, the more wealth gap an economy has the slower its economic growth rate is. The super rich can't spend the money fast enough or broadly enough to increase the economic base, the economies grow stagnant.
    - imtringued 6y ago
      The customers of McDonalds are other poor people. The margins are already slim. If you raise prices to cover the minimum wage those poor customers won't eat at McDonalds.
      - jandrese 6y ago
        If you raise the minimum wage those poor people won't be as poor. And since the labor is only a fraction of the cost of the burger the poor people come out ahead. The danger is inflation, but honestly we're in bigger danger of deflation these days.
        trentnix 6y ago
        Labor is most of the cost of the burger, whether it’s the labor to sell it, the labor to cook it, the labor to transport it, the labor to butcher/harvest it, the labor to tend to it prior to butcher/harvest, etc. And the expense of ALL of that labor will inevitably increase causing the price of goods to increase causing the price of labor to increase and so on...
- imtringued 6y ago
  Someone immigrating to the US for a job paying $10 per hour cannot become a legal immigrant. The minimum wage creates an opportunity that only illegal immigrants can take advantage of.

jandrese 6y ago

So why not provide a legal path to immigration instead of abolishing the minimum wage then?

trentnix 6y ago
Illegal immigration and immigration in general is its own rabbit hole. You shouldn't assume from my post whether I'm for or against illegal immigration (or any type of immigration) because it doesn't really matter one way or the other to the points I'm trying to make. Economically speaking, granting legal status to unskilled illegals results in a combination of undesirable side effects: - it increases the price of the goods they produced reducing the buying power of the minimum wage, - it prices many of those illegals out of the market because they are unable to produce value for the wage they are paid (but now they are eligible for government benefits), - and it encourages new types of "black market" employment. Try all you like, but you won't outsmart the market.
- jandrese 6y ago
  This is where you lose me. The jobs still need to be done. Some companies might just fold up and die, but most would be just as happy passing on the higher costs to customers, and said good or service still needs to be produced so the companies that survive will take over for the ones that folded. Economists have this weird idea that all fast food would close because the people working there clearly aren't worth $15/hour because they're doing jobs that currently pay only $10/hour. The crazy part is that higher minimum wages tend to increase the market, not decrease it. Turns out that poor people are bottlenecked on money. If you reduce the bottleneck they can spend more, which increases demand for labor (to fill the supply) which increases the labor rate. You can see this effect all throughout history, the more wealth gap an economy has the slower its economic growth rate is. The super rich can't spend the money fast enough or broadly enough to increase the economic base, the economies grow stagnant.
  - imtringued 6y ago
    The customers of McDonalds are other poor people. The margins are already slim. If you raise prices to cover the minimum wage those poor customers won't eat at McDonalds.
    - jandrese 6y ago
      If you raise the minimum wage those poor people won't be as poor. And since the labor is only a fraction of the cost of the burger the poor people come out ahead. The danger is inflation, but honestly we're in bigger danger of deflation these days.
      - trentnix 6y ago
        Labor is most of the cost of the burger, whether it’s the labor to sell it, the labor to cook it, the labor to transport it, the labor to butcher/harvest it, the labor to tend to it prior to butcher/harvest, etc. And the expense of ALL of that labor will inevitably increase causing the price of goods to increase causing the price of labor to increase and so on...
imtringued 6y ago
Someone immigrating to the US for a job paying $10 per hour cannot become a legal immigrant. The minimum wage creates an opportunity that only illegal immigrants can take advantage of.