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Ignoring the effect on prisoners, this drives down wages for low skill people on the outside. No labor should be able to be sold below minimum wage, otherwise i
by willcipriano 4y ago
Ignoring the effect on prisoners, this drives down wages for low skill people on the outside. No labor should be able to be sold below minimum wage, otherwise it really isn't one.
- bruceb 4y ago
- sumy23 4y agoThe minimum wage applies to immigrants.
- HideousKojima 4y agoOnly if they're working on the books
- bergenty 4y agoThis applies to everyone, even citizens and residents.
- kube-system 4y agoWith the significant difference that they have the ability to report their employers crimes without being blackmailed for their immigration status.
- bergenty 4y agoWhy would this be any different for a legal immigrant?
- kube-system 4y agoBecause they have no reason to be afraid of deportation for being undocumented. Employers of undocumented immigrants frequently break labor laws because they can get away with it because their employees are too afraid to do anything about it.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bergenty 4y agoThis whole thread has been about legal immigrants. You’re referring to undocumented immigrants.
- kube-system 4y agoIt wasn't, though. You replied to this comment which was referring to undocumented immigrants: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31784073 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31784073
- bergenty 4y agoNope. That was my very first point. Not being on the “books” can apply to anyone.
- kube-system 4y agoLegal workers who choose jobs off the books do so because they get a better deal out of the situation. They’re not being forced to work for under minimum wage, like many undocumented workers are. Legal immigrants are not picking lettuce for $4/hr off the books. They’re working at their cousins store making legal wages off the books.
- giantg2 4y agoMany work farm labor, tip work, or gig work. Edit: why disagree?
- itake 4y agoIf we reduced immigration, businesses would have to compete for the smaller low-skill work force. One of the "levers" in this article [0] is that Amazon could increase the wages to capture more of the labor market. [0] - https://www.vox.com/recode/23170900/leaked-amazon-memo-warehouses-hiring-shortage https://www.vox.com/recode/23170900/leaked-amazon-memo-wareh...
- karaterobot 4y agoNot sure I follow. The person you're responding to is saying there should not be a situation in which anybody is working for less than minimum wage. If that premise were granted, low skilled immigrant workers would be making the same minimum wage as everyone else, wouldn't they? So while there may be a larger pool everyone would be competing for jobs in, the wages would still be the same.
- itake 4y agoAccording to this[0] article, Amazon is considering raising wages for min wage employees to increase the size of their labor pool. If there was an abundance of min wage workers, then Amazon would not need to raise wages. https://www.vox.com/recode/23170900/leaked-amazon-memo-warehouses-hiring-shortage https://www.vox.com/recode/23170900/leaked-amazon-memo-wareh...
- bergenty 4y agoWhy do you think legal immigrants are being paid less than minimum wage?
- _-david-_ 4y agoI don't think he was saying legal immigrants get paid less than minimum wage, but less than a citizen. Immigrants are in a more precarious situation depending on which visa they have (assuming they don't have a green card) which can make it more of a challenge to switch jobs which drives down their wages.
- mhb 4y agoOn its own, this is not a good argument since there is a benefit to having cheap goods produced by low wage producers.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- toss1 4y agoAnd that, right there, is the argument of the standard sociopathic capitalist. Just because there is a benefit, does not mean that there is not also a greater harm that more than offsets the benefit on a societal scale. Privatizing the profits from the benefits while socializing the harms, and justifying any harm based on a profitable benefit, is far too often the business model - take the money while poisoning the well. This is neither sustainable, nor a good argument for something to exist. EDIT: insert missing "not also"
- mhb 4y agoIf license plates were harvested for free, there would be fewer jobs making license plates. Ceteris paribus, the reasoning that we shouldn't use the free license plates because they're reducing the number of jobs making them doesn't make sense. This is independent of your separate objections that prisoners should not be taken advantage of.
- toss1 4y ago>> the reasoning that we shouldn't use the free license plates because they're reducing the number of jobs making them doesn't make sense. Yes, once the things are made, simply wasting the things on principle is, well, simply wasteful. That said, if that step of wasting them is required in order to stop the practice of (near-)slavery, then the waste could be worthwhile. Either way, slavery is bad both in it's own right and to the extent that it harms wider society by degrading the value of others' labor. This could also be solved by requiring all jobs to pay a bona-fide living wage, as in, you cannot hire anyone unless you are paying them for 40 hours of work an amount that is sufficient to support them and dependents for all basic needs, i.e., food, housing, health, transport, etc. Perhaps an exception for dependents who are entering the workforce, who could be paid lower rates for a certain time. With this, then slavery wouldn't have so much outside harm in addition to its intrinsic harm.
- giantg2 4y agoUsing this same logic would support things like import duties to offset the lower labor costs that we can't domesticallycompete with, right?
- sudosysgen 4y agoNo, because of comparative advantage. How does that work in the context of prisoners doing the same work anyways, though?
- kelseyfrog 4y agoUsing the same logic, we could just as easily imprison the global south. While logical consistency is satisfying in theory, in practice it's a poor optimization strategy.
- xmprt 4y ago> just as easily imprison the global south What do you mean by this? How does the US have the jurisdiction to imprison anyone outside of the US?
- kelseyfrog 4y agoI'm going to say it is a metaphor for US international policy[1] and if you say, "that's just how international politics works" or "but that's not imprisonment" I'm going to make a face. 1. IMF policy, and the sheer number of US-backed coups in the global south.
- pessimizer 4y agoYes, and the only reason we should have import duties is because of labor conditions and pay for foreign workers. If we don't we're not competing on PPP or efficiency, we're competing based on the willingness to abuse.
- micromacrofoot 4y agoyes
- 4y ago