5 ms·

I don’t see this as a problem at all. If anything it show how immigration is exploited to keep salaries artificially low and hurt the worker and lower middle cl

I don’t see this as a problem at all. If anything it show how immigration is exploited to keep salaries artificially low and hurt the worker and lower middle class.

nend 5y ago
Can you expand on that? Who is doing the exploiting and how are they doing it?
- twofornone 5y ago
  The managerial/investor/owner class that ultimately profits from low wages?
  - anonuser123456 5y ago
    I'm fairly certain the migrants profit considerably from the bargain.
    - LongTimeAnon 5y ago
      $2 an hour must be like winning the lottery every 15 minutes. Go away, Brookings Institute shill.
- christkv 5y ago
  If a job is worth 10 eur a hour but there is a lack of workers they have to offer more to attract workers. If I bring in immigrants who are willing or forced by circumstances to accept 10 eur an hour I keep the hourly rate down. Once you remove this factor the businesses have to pay the actual market rate for the work.
  - Swizec 5y ago
    Businesses are always paying the actual market rate for the work. It’s just that immigration changes the supply side of that market.
    - mistrial9 5y ago
      this is a naive statement
    - christkv 5y ago
      I mean that the market is distorted by legal and illegal immigration. Since this mostly affects blue collar workers it helps drive wage disparities ensuring the unskilled labor losses economical power. This group is now starting to wake up to its plight and voting anti immigrant and against traditional labour parties which have been co opted by the progressive university elite.
      - Tanjreeve 5y ago
        Legal and illegal immigration are two wildly different beasts. The problems of illegal immigration aka undercutting of wages is a solvable one of enforcing the law (this is usually blocked by the same interests pushing the anti immigrant line). Legal immigration would be low supply high skilled workers who don't really affect much or at worst are paid minimum wage still. >This group is now starting to wake up to its plight and voting anti immigrant and against traditional labour parties which have been co opted by the progressive university elite. That's a bit of a stretch to think universities are progressive or that they're the ones calling the shots politically. The multi millionaire oligarchs pushing this and funding anti immigrant AstroTurf groups and running the usual PR firehose of BS are of course somehow "not elite" as ever.
        pessimizer 5y ago
        > Legal immigration would be low supply high skilled workers This isn't a requirement, this is a bad choice that one can make. There's no benefit in favoring highly-skilled workers other than that these are the workers that middle-class professionals associate with. The only reason IMO to favor highly-skilled workers in specific fields is to break professional cartels; you don't even have to favor them, just remove the artificial barriers to their employment that have been institutionalized. > That's a bit of a stretch to think universities are progressive or that they're the ones calling the shots politically. It's just sucker right-wing pseudo-populism financed by the same people who employ 99.9% of illegal immigrants. ----- edit: those people would love to make the process of legal immigration so onerous that only they themselves could navigate it easily, to make laws against illegal immigration so draconian that every undocumented worker was living in constant fear, and to route all enforcement of those laws through an regulatory agency that they have completely captured.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    Or the work simply doesn't get done because there isn't a significant demand for the service/product at the market rate. There are a ton of things that people would like to have done for/provided to them but even upper middle class people may not be willing to pay what they would cost.
    - pessimizer 5y ago
      Which is a good thing. A business model that requires paying net wages too low to compete is just laundering slavery. People working those jobs are losing money.
      - ghaff 5y ago
        "Slavery" gets thrown around way too loosely. But, yes, pricing is a useful discovery and market making mechanism. If I want a personal chef but I'm only willing to pay $2/hour in the US for such a service, I should and will have to deal with cooking my own meals or otherwise find some way to obtain food that doesn't have as large a labor component as personal service does.
Jeff_Brown 5y ago
If the labor shortage generates inflation that outpaces wage growth it's a problem.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  It seems to me like long-run inflation is substantially tied to wage growth (or at least to income growth). Inflation can’t outpace income forever, or who will buy the goods?
  - snovv_crash 5y ago
    Who will produce them if employee costs go up though? Both sides of the supply/demand curve are affected.
    - sokoloff 5y ago
      Exactly. I think of forces of this type as analogous to negative feedback in amplifiers. When a system gets out of whack, a system with negative feedback tends to stabilize. Too much inflation? People buy less. Too little inflation? People buy more. Labor too expensive? Less labor is used (perhaps via automation). Labor too cheap? More labor is soaked up on projects that would have been marginal or automated otherwise.
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  There's no "if" about it. Latest median earnings are negative for the last month as well as year over year: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/realer.nr0.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/realer.nr0.htm Real average hourly earnings decreased 1.2 percent, seasonally adjusted, from October 2020 to October 2021. The change in real average hourly earnings combined with a decrease of 0.3 percent in the average workweek resulted in a 1.6-percent decrease in real average weekly earnings over this period. Look at this graph: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
  - Jeff_Brown 5y ago
Aunche 5y ago
The irony of this statement is that from the immigrant's perspective, they are the ones whose salaries are being kept artificially low by restricting immigration.
- cnqit 5y ago
  Why would they want to immigrate to countries with oppressive white male patriarchies instead of building better societies at home?
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    Why should I care to get involved or second-guess their thought process and decide if their self-determined preference is “sound”?
echelon 5y ago
There are two stories here. H1B immigration and illegal immigration. Aren't illegal immigrants doing jobs that natural born citizens don't want to do? Farming, low pay contract work, etc.? Businesses can't hire illegal immigrants on the books. They can't be waiters, retail workers, or other types of labor that the lower class depends on. So how does this impact America's poor and middle class? Absence of these workers should push prices higher. H1B immigration is capped, and it has never led to a decrease in the salaries of skilled workers. Software engineers have never made so much. More people working and living in the US will create more productivity and consumer demand, increasing the strength of our economy. Why all of the vilification?
- pessimizer 5y ago
  > Aren't illegal immigrants doing jobs that natural born citizens don't want to do? Farming, low pay contract work, etc.? No, illegal immigrants are doing jobs that residents don't want to do (or can't do) at that price. They can afford to work for less because they're often working in order to send remittances, not to live a fulfilling, sustainable life, which is what they're hoping to do after they get back home. > Businesses can't hire illegal immigrants on the books. They can't be waiters, retail workers, or other types of labor that the lower class depends on. So how does this impact America's poor and middle class? Absence of these workers should push prices higher. Absence of those workers should push prices higher because it pushes labor costs higher - meaning that the effect you're noting here is evidence of the opposite of the claim you made immediately before. Absence of those workers should raise costs (which may or may not be reflected in prices), and also raise the salaries of people who work. Inflation is rising prices, rising wages, and falling debts. Legalizing those workers and encouraging them to migrate their families here too would have the same effect, giving them the means to negotiate. > H1B immigration [...] has never led to a decrease in the salaries of skilled workers. Software engineers have never made so much. You're just making up the first part, and the second part is irrelevant to whether H1Bs lower salaries. > More people working and living in the US will create more productivity and consumer demand, increasing the strength of our economy. Lower wages = higher productivity. Lower wages != an increase in demand. > Why all of the vilification? Immigrants aren't the villains, the villains are these rationalizations for exploiting the precarious and brown for the sake of stockholders and owners. A quick an easy path to citizenship is just as objectionable to these people, because citizens have rights and can organize.

I don’t see this as a problem at all. If anything it show how immigration is exploited to keep salaries artificially low and hurt the worker and lower middle class.

nend 5y ago

Can you expand on that? Who is doing the exploiting and how are they doing it?

twofornone 5y ago
The managerial/investor/owner class that ultimately profits from low wages?
- anonuser123456 5y ago
  I'm fairly certain the migrants profit considerably from the bargain.
  - LongTimeAnon 5y ago
    $2 an hour must be like winning the lottery every 15 minutes. Go away, Brookings Institute shill.
christkv 5y ago
If a job is worth 10 eur a hour but there is a lack of workers they have to offer more to attract workers. If I bring in immigrants who are willing or forced by circumstances to accept 10 eur an hour I keep the hourly rate down. Once you remove this factor the businesses have to pay the actual market rate for the work.
- Swizec 5y ago
  Businesses are always paying the actual market rate for the work. It’s just that immigration changes the supply side of that market.
  - mistrial9 5y ago
    this is a naive statement
  - christkv 5y ago
    I mean that the market is distorted by legal and illegal immigration. Since this mostly affects blue collar workers it helps drive wage disparities ensuring the unskilled labor losses economical power. This group is now starting to wake up to its plight and voting anti immigrant and against traditional labour parties which have been co opted by the progressive university elite.
    - Tanjreeve 5y ago
      Legal and illegal immigration are two wildly different beasts. The problems of illegal immigration aka undercutting of wages is a solvable one of enforcing the law (this is usually blocked by the same interests pushing the anti immigrant line). Legal immigration would be low supply high skilled workers who don't really affect much or at worst are paid minimum wage still. >This group is now starting to wake up to its plight and voting anti immigrant and against traditional labour parties which have been co opted by the progressive university elite. That's a bit of a stretch to think universities are progressive or that they're the ones calling the shots politically. The multi millionaire oligarchs pushing this and funding anti immigrant AstroTurf groups and running the usual PR firehose of BS are of course somehow "not elite" as ever.
      - pessimizer 5y ago
        > Legal immigration would be low supply high skilled workers This isn't a requirement, this is a bad choice that one can make. There's no benefit in favoring highly-skilled workers other than that these are the workers that middle-class professionals associate with. The only reason IMO to favor highly-skilled workers in specific fields is to break professional cartels; you don't even have to favor them, just remove the artificial barriers to their employment that have been institutionalized. > That's a bit of a stretch to think universities are progressive or that they're the ones calling the shots politically. It's just sucker right-wing pseudo-populism financed by the same people who employ 99.9% of illegal immigrants. ----- edit: those people would love to make the process of legal immigration so onerous that only they themselves could navigate it easily, to make laws against illegal immigration so draconian that every undocumented worker was living in constant fear, and to route all enforcement of those laws through an regulatory agency that they have completely captured.
- ghaff 5y ago
  Or the work simply doesn't get done because there isn't a significant demand for the service/product at the market rate. There are a ton of things that people would like to have done for/provided to them but even upper middle class people may not be willing to pay what they would cost.
  - pessimizer 5y ago
    Which is a good thing. A business model that requires paying net wages too low to compete is just laundering slavery. People working those jobs are losing money.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      "Slavery" gets thrown around way too loosely. But, yes, pricing is a useful discovery and market making mechanism. If I want a personal chef but I'm only willing to pay $2/hour in the US for such a service, I should and will have to deal with cooking my own meals or otherwise find some way to obtain food that doesn't have as large a labor component as personal service does.

Jeff_Brown 5y ago

If the labor shortage generates inflation that outpaces wage growth it's a problem.

sokoloff 5y ago
It seems to me like long-run inflation is substantially tied to wage growth (or at least to income growth). Inflation can’t outpace income forever, or who will buy the goods?
- snovv_crash 5y ago
  Who will produce them if employee costs go up though? Both sides of the supply/demand curve are affected.
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    Exactly. I think of forces of this type as analogous to negative feedback in amplifiers. When a system gets out of whack, a system with negative feedback tends to stabilize. Too much inflation? People buy less. Too little inflation? People buy more. Labor too expensive? Less labor is used (perhaps via automation). Labor too cheap? More labor is soaked up on projects that would have been marginal or automated otherwise.
rsj_hn 5y ago
There's no "if" about it. Latest median earnings are negative for the last month as well as year over year: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/realer.nr0.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/realer.nr0.htm Real average hourly earnings decreased 1.2 percent, seasonally adjusted, from October 2020 to October 2021. The change in real average hourly earnings combined with a decrease of 0.3 percent in the average workweek resulted in a 1.6-percent decrease in real average weekly earnings over this period. Look at this graph: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
- Jeff_Brown 5y ago

Aunche 5y ago

The irony of this statement is that from the immigrant's perspective, they are the ones whose salaries are being kept artificially low by restricting immigration.

cnqit 5y ago
Why would they want to immigrate to countries with oppressive white male patriarchies instead of building better societies at home?
- sokoloff 5y ago
  Why should I care to get involved or second-guess their thought process and decide if their self-determined preference is “sound”?

echelon 5y ago

There are two stories here. H1B immigration and illegal immigration. Aren't illegal immigrants doing jobs that natural born citizens don't want to do? Farming, low pay contract work, etc.? Businesses can't hire illegal immigrants on the books. They can't be waiters, retail workers, or other types of labor that the lower class depends on. So how does this impact America's poor and middle class? Absence of these workers should push prices higher. H1B immigration is capped, and it has never led to a decrease in the salaries of skilled workers. Software engineers have never made so much. More people working and living in the US will create more productivity and consumer demand, increasing the strength of our economy. Why all of the vilification?

pessimizer 5y ago
> Aren't illegal immigrants doing jobs that natural born citizens don't want to do? Farming, low pay contract work, etc.? No, illegal immigrants are doing jobs that residents don't want to do (or can't do) at that price. They can afford to work for less because they're often working in order to send remittances, not to live a fulfilling, sustainable life, which is what they're hoping to do after they get back home. > Businesses can't hire illegal immigrants on the books. They can't be waiters, retail workers, or other types of labor that the lower class depends on. So how does this impact America's poor and middle class? Absence of these workers should push prices higher. Absence of those workers should push prices higher because it pushes labor costs higher - meaning that the effect you're noting here is evidence of the opposite of the claim you made immediately before. Absence of those workers should raise costs (which may or may not be reflected in prices), and also raise the salaries of people who work. Inflation is rising prices, rising wages, and falling debts. Legalizing those workers and encouraging them to migrate their families here too would have the same effect, giving them the means to negotiate. > H1B immigration [...] has never led to a decrease in the salaries of skilled workers. Software engineers have never made so much. You're just making up the first part, and the second part is irrelevant to whether H1Bs lower salaries. > More people working and living in the US will create more productivity and consumer demand, increasing the strength of our economy. Lower wages = higher productivity. Lower wages != an increase in demand. > Why all of the vilification? Immigrants aren't the villains, the villains are these rationalizations for exploiting the precarious and brown for the sake of stockholders and owners. A quick an easy path to citizenship is just as objectionable to these people, because citizens have rights and can organize.