5 ms·

Wouldn’t that cause a large displacement of the existing labor force and significantly drive down wages?

kbenson 6y ago
It depends. Short term and long term there's a lot of shuffling that would happen until it settled into an equilibrium (Maybe. On the other hand maybe it would be extremely sensitive to global issues). Those people all need food and housing and need to buy goods and services, so it's not like you're obsoleting an existing person's job, you're adding demand as you add supply. Whether one eventually outweighs the other is dependent on many factors. That said, I would assume that short term increased supply would lead to a tighter job market.
- Retric 6y ago
  The problem beyond simple policy choices is infrastructure takes time to build. If hypothetically 100,000 people show up in NYC tomorrow there is some slack that might accommodate them. But, how do you scale the transportation network to handle even just 1 million extra people in NYC? Now extend that to every other part of the country. Sure that seems unlikely, but when millions of people are willing to become undocumented immigrants, it’s likely a more open policy would see dramatically larger influxes. Especially in response to local events like civil wars. Really, just raising the caps by say 10% every year gets the same result without the chaos.
  - kbenson 6y ago
    > Really, just raising the caps by say 10% every year gets the same result without the chaos. Yeah, I was thinking the same thing when I was writing the above, but didn't want to get too into the weeds on what I wanted to be a short answer to the original question (I have a habit of going on...). Like many things, an immediate large change has repercussions that are detrimental and can possibly be alleviated with a measured change over time. That's how you acclimate fish to the temperature in a new aquarium. That said, it's also how they tell you to boil a frog...
    - Retric 6y ago
      Just as an aside, the original boil the frog experiment first gave them a lobotomy. Without that they just out of the pot even with very slow temperature increases. On the other hand dump a frog in boiling water and they just die.
      - kbenson 6y ago
        Ha, nice to know, thanks. All the best idioms seem to be completely broken when you look into basis for them, so I'm not surprised. Not that it matters too much (although it would be better if they were more accurate), they do still let us express somewhat complex ideas concisely. :)
  - omegaworks 6y ago
    Manhattan's peak density was in the early 1900s. There are cities on the planet denser then NYC. The transportation networks in Asia blow the MTA out of the water. We can do it here. All we need is the political will.
6338363363 6y ago
The only real change you would need is to eliminate birthright citizenship to avoid birth tourism. The rest is a CoL problem which is mostly a blue state problem because they like pretty policies over effective policies. Housing's cheap to build, oil is cheap, and farming is easy if you don't hate industry. The only thing that would need help to prevent scarcity initially is probably internet availability. After that just use some of the increased tax revenue to provide support for struggling citizens.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
Maybe, but I find it hard to square the idea that someone capable of and willing to do my job for less money shouldn't have the opportunity to better their prospects at the expense of mine.
- briefcomment 6y ago
  At the same time, the people in a given geography should have a say about what the companies in the area are doing. If a company decides to be anti-social with the people already in the community, I see no reason why the people in the area shouldn't object to it. It's clearly a balance, and both sides should be willing to play ball.
mrkurt 6y ago
This is the intuitive belief, but the research doesn't really prove that: https://www.cato.org/cato-journal/fall-2017/does-immigration-reduce-wages https://www.cato.org/cato-journal/fall-2017/does-immigration... There are studies showing a slight decrease in wages, studies showing a slight increase in wages, and studies showing nothing conclusive. There's basically not enough scientific consensus to use for decision making, which means it's more a moral choice than an economic one.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- tomp 6y ago
  Maybe academic research doesn't substantiate that, but reality definitely does. This is from May 2020: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/may/19/quarantine-shortage-fruit-pickers-immigration-bill-coronavirus-britain https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/may/19/quarantine-... Basically, the UK fruit industry was worried that it might not get "enough workers" because of COVID restrictions. Which of course is brazen corporate double-speak. There are workers in the UK, like tens of millions of them. It's just that they're not willing to work for miserly wages. So there's only two options: (1) increase local wages, or (2) import cheap foreigners. Business obviously prefer the latter. ("But but but strawberry prices would increase" isn't a good argument - agriculture is heavily subsidized anyways.)
  - _jal 6y ago
    That language gets used in the US too. Somehow businesses forget how supply and demand works when it comes to labor, and "journalists" aren't, so much as they just transcribe whatever falls out of rich peoples' mouths and call it 'balance'. We'll be back to feudalism in a couple generations.
  - mrkurt 6y ago
    Are you really dismissing research on the basis of anecdotal news articles? It makes total sense to question the value of the types of studies I linked to, but "the real world disagrees with research" is kind of a bonkers take.
madeofpalk 6y ago
What has happened in other countries that has similar systems, like the UK and Australia (to name two I have experience with)? I don’t think that happened there.
bnralt 6y ago
Our current system is kind of strange when you stop and think about it. We're OK with foreigners doing much of the labor for lower wages - as long as they do it overseas, and then ship the products here. However, if you think about it, there would be benefits to having the work be done domestically rather than requiring it be done in other countries. We could lower transportation costs of goods (and the environmental impact on transportation), we could have more flexibility in production, we could keep higher wage jobs associated with the work (management, machinists, R&D), etc. We could also have a more equitable balance of globalization - for instance, right now it's easy for a U.S. doctor to benefit from overseas manufacturing workers, but it's hard for a U.S. factory worker to benefit from overseas doctors.
- jmpman 6y ago
  But then we are paying for US doctors for those US citizens. Healthcare alone in the US is more than those workers are making in their home countries.

It depends. Short term and long term there's a lot of shuffling that would happen until it settled into an equilibrium (Maybe. On the other hand maybe it would be extremely sensitive to global issues). Those people all need food and housing and need to buy goods and services, so it's not like you're obsoleting an existing person's job, you're adding demand as you add supply. Whether one eventually outweighs the other is dependent on many factors. That said, I would assume that short term increased supply would lead to a tighter job market.

Retric 6y ago
The problem beyond simple policy choices is infrastructure takes time to build. If hypothetically 100,000 people show up in NYC tomorrow there is some slack that might accommodate them. But, how do you scale the transportation network to handle even just 1 million extra people in NYC? Now extend that to every other part of the country. Sure that seems unlikely, but when millions of people are willing to become undocumented immigrants, it’s likely a more open policy would see dramatically larger influxes. Especially in response to local events like civil wars. Really, just raising the caps by say 10% every year gets the same result without the chaos.
- kbenson 6y ago
  > Really, just raising the caps by say 10% every year gets the same result without the chaos. Yeah, I was thinking the same thing when I was writing the above, but didn't want to get too into the weeds on what I wanted to be a short answer to the original question (I have a habit of going on...). Like many things, an immediate large change has repercussions that are detrimental and can possibly be alleviated with a measured change over time. That's how you acclimate fish to the temperature in a new aquarium. That said, it's also how they tell you to boil a frog...
  - Retric 6y ago
    Just as an aside, the original boil the frog experiment first gave them a lobotomy. Without that they just out of the pot even with very slow temperature increases. On the other hand dump a frog in boiling water and they just die.
    - kbenson 6y ago
      Ha, nice to know, thanks. All the best idioms seem to be completely broken when you look into basis for them, so I'm not surprised. Not that it matters too much (although it would be better if they were more accurate), they do still let us express somewhat complex ideas concisely. :)
- omegaworks 6y ago
  Manhattan's peak density was in the early 1900s. There are cities on the planet denser then NYC. The transportation networks in Asia blow the MTA out of the water. We can do it here. All we need is the political will.

6338363363 6y ago

The only real change you would need is to eliminate birthright citizenship to avoid birth tourism. The rest is a CoL problem which is mostly a blue state problem because they like pretty policies over effective policies. Housing's cheap to build, oil is cheap, and farming is easy if you don't hate industry. The only thing that would need help to prevent scarcity initially is probably internet availability. After that just use some of the increased tax revenue to provide support for struggling citizens.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago

Maybe, but I find it hard to square the idea that someone capable of and willing to do my job for less money shouldn't have the opportunity to better their prospects at the expense of mine.

briefcomment 6y ago
At the same time, the people in a given geography should have a say about what the companies in the area are doing. If a company decides to be anti-social with the people already in the community, I see no reason why the people in the area shouldn't object to it. It's clearly a balance, and both sides should be willing to play ball.

mrkurt 6y ago

This is the intuitive belief, but the research doesn't really prove that: https://www.cato.org/cato-journal/fall-2017/does-immigration-reduce-wages https://www.cato.org/cato-journal/fall-2017/does-immigration... There are studies showing a slight decrease in wages, studies showing a slight increase in wages, and studies showing nothing conclusive. There's basically not enough scientific consensus to use for decision making, which means it's more a moral choice than an economic one.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
tomp 6y ago
Maybe academic research doesn't substantiate that, but reality definitely does. This is from May 2020: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/may/19/quarantine-shortage-fruit-pickers-immigration-bill-coronavirus-britain https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/may/19/quarantine-... Basically, the UK fruit industry was worried that it might not get "enough workers" because of COVID restrictions. Which of course is brazen corporate double-speak. There are workers in the UK, like tens of millions of them. It's just that they're not willing to work for miserly wages. So there's only two options: (1) increase local wages, or (2) import cheap foreigners. Business obviously prefer the latter. ("But but but strawberry prices would increase" isn't a good argument - agriculture is heavily subsidized anyways.)
- _jal 6y ago
  That language gets used in the US too. Somehow businesses forget how supply and demand works when it comes to labor, and "journalists" aren't, so much as they just transcribe whatever falls out of rich peoples' mouths and call it 'balance'. We'll be back to feudalism in a couple generations.
- mrkurt 6y ago
  Are you really dismissing research on the basis of anecdotal news articles? It makes total sense to question the value of the types of studies I linked to, but "the real world disagrees with research" is kind of a bonkers take.

madeofpalk 6y ago

What has happened in other countries that has similar systems, like the UK and Australia (to name two I have experience with)? I don’t think that happened there.

bnralt 6y ago

Our current system is kind of strange when you stop and think about it. We're OK with foreigners doing much of the labor for lower wages - as long as they do it overseas, and then ship the products here. However, if you think about it, there would be benefits to having the work be done domestically rather than requiring it be done in other countries. We could lower transportation costs of goods (and the environmental impact on transportation), we could have more flexibility in production, we could keep higher wage jobs associated with the work (management, machinists, R&D), etc. We could also have a more equitable balance of globalization - for instance, right now it's easy for a U.S. doctor to benefit from overseas manufacturing workers, but it's hard for a U.S. factory worker to benefit from overseas doctors.

jmpman 6y ago
But then we are paying for US doctors for those US citizens. Healthcare alone in the US is more than those workers are making in their home countries.