4 ms·

The issues is that their solution ios backwards. Immigrants don't take jobs for less, when no government is breathing down their necks. If you have a competiti

The issues is that their solution ios backwards. Immigrants don't take jobs for less, when no government is breathing down their necks. If you have a competitive market - there's no need for government to create artificial monopolies. It's complete bullshit that billions want to live in US. Billions want a safe and prosperous life... and would stay home, if that's possible to achieve. US isn't some land of honey rivers or gold mountains. If you want a case study on how unrestricted migration occurs - look at EU. On one side we have Ireland and on the other side we have Romania. There's complete freedom of migration for Romanians to Ireland. Just buy a one way ticket for 50Eur, basically. EU is proof that you don't need quotas or restrictions to control migration at all. And immigrants have only a small impact on incomes.

kamaal 6y ago
This is a nice use case to study how human behavior works when there's no quotas/limits. I often say that unlimited calls means people talk less, not more. On the similar lines offering unlimited learning and self improvement budgets to your employees means people will likely spend them less, but more relevant training and development would happen. A very similar argument can be made about unlimited sick leaves too. When something is free people don't feel the need to rush and fill the quotas/limits. They use/spend per relevant needs and scenarios now that they know they always have an option to use the thing when they need it.
- JAlexoid 6y ago
  Numbers control us better than any regulation. They say that you have unlimited - then you don't rush to use up. (But unlimited, needs to be actually unlimited) And for example of migration - if your cost of moving to a new place and working there is reasonable, you're less likely to stay there if it becomes a bad place. Many cases demonstrate this, last being, massive wave of repatriation of people from Eastern Europe during the financial crisis.(And numerous internal migration waves in large countries) - by reasonable cost I mean that you don't need to spend X thousands of dollars and wait 6-36 months for a permit
oblio 6y ago
I'm Romanian. There are 20 million Romanians and ~300 million people in the rich Western countries. And I don't know if you noticed, but the EU is very restrictive about adding new members. It took Romania 10 years to become a EU member. Plus Romania is average by world standards (GDP per capita per country), which means that half the world's countries (and probably 80% of the world's population) are poorer or much poorer.
- JAlexoid 6y ago
  So what's your point? That Romanians should be kicked out of EU because they are stealing "R jerbs"?
  - oblio 6y ago
    Well, if you ask many people in Western Europe, they shouldn't have even been accepted. The average salary, even in PPP terms, was about 30% of the Western European ones back in 2007. In absolute terms, salaries were even worse (probably 10% in 2007, something like 25% now), and absolute terms matter because many things are imported. After huge growth, the average salary in PPP terms is now about 50% of the Western ones. Romanian workers in the West have definitely depressed the average salaries in several fields. And that's with somewhat controlled migration. My point is: controlled migration is there for a reason. Building a working state is extremely difficult and takes a lot of time. It's a very fragile and delicate thing. Once you've managed to build it... you really don't want to upset the balance.
    - JAlexoid 6y ago
      "Should not have been accepted" - is typical xenophobia. It's not an argument at all. What sectors have seen a depression of salaries as a direct result of Romanians entering the market? And you have the huge hurdle of proving that those salaries are depressed specifically because of the Romanian labor, and not because Asian products or other global trends. Also - restricted migration fails to attract the right labor, driving up the cost of labor unnecessarily. Sometimes it gets ridiculously stupid... to the point that local consumers(also local labor) cannot afford to consume products, because local labor(also local consumers) refuses to work for less. It gets to a point where local businesses cannot pay their local labor and invest into productivity gains(required to keep the pay high enough). It's a complex clusterfuck... and blaming Romanians or Mexicans is just an easy "solution".

kamaal 6y ago

This is a nice use case to study how human behavior works when there's no quotas/limits. I often say that unlimited calls means people talk less, not more. On the similar lines offering unlimited learning and self improvement budgets to your employees means people will likely spend them less, but more relevant training and development would happen. A very similar argument can be made about unlimited sick leaves too. When something is free people don't feel the need to rush and fill the quotas/limits. They use/spend per relevant needs and scenarios now that they know they always have an option to use the thing when they need it.

JAlexoid 6y ago
Numbers control us better than any regulation. They say that you have unlimited - then you don't rush to use up. (But unlimited, needs to be actually unlimited) And for example of migration - if your cost of moving to a new place and working there is reasonable, you're less likely to stay there if it becomes a bad place. Many cases demonstrate this, last being, massive wave of repatriation of people from Eastern Europe during the financial crisis.(And numerous internal migration waves in large countries) - by reasonable cost I mean that you don't need to spend X thousands of dollars and wait 6-36 months for a permit

oblio 6y ago

I'm Romanian. There are 20 million Romanians and ~300 million people in the rich Western countries. And I don't know if you noticed, but the EU is very restrictive about adding new members. It took Romania 10 years to become a EU member. Plus Romania is average by world standards (GDP per capita per country), which means that half the world's countries (and probably 80% of the world's population) are poorer or much poorer.

JAlexoid 6y ago
So what's your point? That Romanians should be kicked out of EU because they are stealing "R jerbs"?
- oblio 6y ago
  Well, if you ask many people in Western Europe, they shouldn't have even been accepted. The average salary, even in PPP terms, was about 30% of the Western European ones back in 2007. In absolute terms, salaries were even worse (probably 10% in 2007, something like 25% now), and absolute terms matter because many things are imported. After huge growth, the average salary in PPP terms is now about 50% of the Western ones. Romanian workers in the West have definitely depressed the average salaries in several fields. And that's with somewhat controlled migration. My point is: controlled migration is there for a reason. Building a working state is extremely difficult and takes a lot of time. It's a very fragile and delicate thing. Once you've managed to build it... you really don't want to upset the balance.
  - JAlexoid 6y ago
    "Should not have been accepted" - is typical xenophobia. It's not an argument at all. What sectors have seen a depression of salaries as a direct result of Romanians entering the market? And you have the huge hurdle of proving that those salaries are depressed specifically because of the Romanian labor, and not because Asian products or other global trends. Also - restricted migration fails to attract the right labor, driving up the cost of labor unnecessarily. Sometimes it gets ridiculously stupid... to the point that local consumers(also local labor) cannot afford to consume products, because local labor(also local consumers) refuses to work for less. It gets to a point where local businesses cannot pay their local labor and invest into productivity gains(required to keep the pay high enough). It's a complex clusterfuck... and blaming Romanians or Mexicans is just an easy "solution".