5 ms·

This is my thought as well. Take away the supply of cheap labor coming from around the world, and from Central and South America, and you're left with lazy Amer

This is my thought as well. Take away the supply of cheap labor coming from around the world, and from Central and South America, and you're left with lazy Americans. I don't mean that all Americans are lazy, but I mean most of us have led relatively toil free lives, and the idea of picking crops, cleaning, washing dishes, landscaping, or other hard physical jobs: Americans aren't that interested. Combine that with a movement of anti-work where menial jobs are heavily disfavored, add in a dozen other factors, and here we are.

didon15 5y ago
Nailed it. Couldn’t take the article seriously in its omission of these facts. I believe I read that immigration policies are having a negative effect of removing around 1.5m workers from the force. Not just in low income jobs, either. I’ve been unable to hire quite a few folks in high tech because of our VISA process issues. Such a fucking mess. This labor shortage feels like it could have been easily avoided with some common sense govt regulation, but America has gone totally off the deep end there.
- ModernMech 5y ago
  I used to do credential evaluation for foreign tech workers looking to work here. I mean, I still do but the applications have dried up, and it actually started before the pandemic due to the previous administration. Before I would do maybe a dozen a month. Now I’m lucky to get 1 a quarter. Some of my family are very anti immigrant and glad to hear this. But I’m not sure they realize how much work is getting done in the US due to foreign labor. Combine declining immigration, declining birth rates, and a system predicated on uninterrupted, unending growth and this is setting up a big issue.
  - aylmao 5y ago
    As an immigrant myself it seemed wild that I could work in the USA, and send money back to my country. It felt like a capital drain problem the USA blindsided on. Then I realized the economic gain from labour made the whole deal very worth it for the USA. The whole idea of a workforce is that it produces more value than it costs. Although I could take the money, that generated value was staying in the USA [1]. Especially for high-skilled industries where the bottleneck to growth might be hiring, this was very much worth it for them. [1]: This plus, of course, the chunk of capital the USA keeps as taxes.
pydry 5y ago
You mean American employers are too cheap to pay for anything other than immigrants?
- User23 5y ago
  It's not just the cost. It's the greater subservience too. The threat of being sent home gives the employer considerably more leverage than they have over a citizen.
  - DarylZero 5y ago
    Right, and the presence of H1Bs in a company serves as a threat to the regular workers, so it pays off even in secondary subservience.
throwaway75787 5y ago
Many Americans are hard-working janitors, garbage men and hospital orderlies. They are absolutely crucial jobs. I would gladly take a part-time job mopping floors if I could pay the rent, save a little, and then do my own thing. I'm not going to say Communism failed because they didn't have machine learning, but I have a feeling that a more equitable and humane economy is possible if all the variables in the equation are tuned right.
- vgel 5y ago
  > I'm not going to say Communism failed because they didn't have machine learning, but I have a feeling that a more equitable and humane economy is possible if all the variables in the equation are tuned right. You might enjoy the book Red Plenty, which talks about a group of mathematicians who wanted to optimize the soviet economy with linear optimization, but were ultimately stymied by internal corruption and Brezhnevism.
bserge 5y ago

didon15 5y ago

Nailed it. Couldn’t take the article seriously in its omission of these facts. I believe I read that immigration policies are having a negative effect of removing around 1.5m workers from the force. Not just in low income jobs, either. I’ve been unable to hire quite a few folks in high tech because of our VISA process issues. Such a fucking mess. This labor shortage feels like it could have been easily avoided with some common sense govt regulation, but America has gone totally off the deep end there.

ModernMech 5y ago
I used to do credential evaluation for foreign tech workers looking to work here. I mean, I still do but the applications have dried up, and it actually started before the pandemic due to the previous administration. Before I would do maybe a dozen a month. Now I’m lucky to get 1 a quarter. Some of my family are very anti immigrant and glad to hear this. But I’m not sure they realize how much work is getting done in the US due to foreign labor. Combine declining immigration, declining birth rates, and a system predicated on uninterrupted, unending growth and this is setting up a big issue.
- aylmao 5y ago
  As an immigrant myself it seemed wild that I could work in the USA, and send money back to my country. It felt like a capital drain problem the USA blindsided on. Then I realized the economic gain from labour made the whole deal very worth it for the USA. The whole idea of a workforce is that it produces more value than it costs. Although I could take the money, that generated value was staying in the USA [1]. Especially for high-skilled industries where the bottleneck to growth might be hiring, this was very much worth it for them. [1]: This plus, of course, the chunk of capital the USA keeps as taxes.

pydry 5y ago

You mean American employers are too cheap to pay for anything other than immigrants?

User23 5y ago
It's not just the cost. It's the greater subservience too. The threat of being sent home gives the employer considerably more leverage than they have over a citizen.
- DarylZero 5y ago
  Right, and the presence of H1Bs in a company serves as a threat to the regular workers, so it pays off even in secondary subservience.

throwaway75787 5y ago

Many Americans are hard-working janitors, garbage men and hospital orderlies. They are absolutely crucial jobs. I would gladly take a part-time job mopping floors if I could pay the rent, save a little, and then do my own thing. I'm not going to say Communism failed because they didn't have machine learning, but I have a feeling that a more equitable and humane economy is possible if all the variables in the equation are tuned right.

vgel 5y ago
> I'm not going to say Communism failed because they didn't have machine learning, but I have a feeling that a more equitable and humane economy is possible if all the variables in the equation are tuned right. You might enjoy the book Red Plenty, which talks about a group of mathematicians who wanted to optimize the soviet economy with linear optimization, but were ultimately stymied by internal corruption and Brezhnevism.

bserge 5y ago