4 ms·

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

by nend 5y ago

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.
  - mbesto 5y ago
    *Businesses are always paying the actual market rate for the work within the context of their sovereign operating model. There, I fixed it for you. In a purely globally democratized and free market, wages would be perfectly aligned to market rates, but this isn't reality. In other words, your labor supply is artificially fixed to birth rates in that sovereignty. The overall point is anyway moot because you could also make an argument that says "because we're not having enough babies and therefore labor is relatively short from previous decades, wages are artificially high...maybe we should create policies to increase birth rates?". Point is - trying to correlate wages and immigration dynamics is a fool's errand. IMHO, immigration policies need to be considered from an overall market perspective and not an individual wage one. i.e. does immigration provide a net benefit to the economy and that sovereign society? Given how much illegal immigration is used in our food system in the US to keep consumer prices low, I think Americans equivocally believe some level of immigration is necessary to generate wealth for the middle class.
- 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.

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

by 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.
- mbesto 5y ago
  *Businesses are always paying the actual market rate for the work within the context of their sovereign operating model. There, I fixed it for you. In a purely globally democratized and free market, wages would be perfectly aligned to market rates, but this isn't reality. In other words, your labor supply is artificially fixed to birth rates in that sovereignty. The overall point is anyway moot because you could also make an argument that says "because we're not having enough babies and therefore labor is relatively short from previous decades, wages are artificially high...maybe we should create policies to increase birth rates?". Point is - trying to correlate wages and immigration dynamics is a fool's errand. IMHO, immigration policies need to be considered from an overall market perspective and not an individual wage one. i.e. does immigration provide a net benefit to the economy and that sovereign society? Given how much illegal immigration is used in our food system in the US to keep consumer prices low, I think Americans equivocally believe some level of immigration is necessary to generate wealth for the middle class.
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.