5 ms·

How you figure immigration is the cause of all that? You might as well add hemorrhoids and back pains to your list.

astrange 2y ago
Immigration opponents just make up things so they can claim immigration caused it. The biggest tell is that they mention wage suppression, because they think it'll make them sound sympathetic - but there is absolutely zero evidence that immigration lowers any native wages, and theoretically you should expect it to increase them because of increased demand. (Conversely, when people move away this reduces demand and lowers your wages.) That and employment for prime aged (i.e. not retirement age) Americans is as high as it's ever been.
- vundercind 2y ago
  Immigration does have a net benefit to the economy, generally, but of course it tends to depress wages for anyone in sectors the immigrants are landing jobs in. Even NPR admits this, when they cover the topic. If this weren’t the case, there wouldn’t be a bunch of us wanting to loosen rules about foreign-trained doctors practicing in the US. Whether those sectors include most of the people worried that their wages will be suppressed, when who we’re talking about are illegal immigrants who mostly do stuff like chicken processing and house framing/roofing, is another matter. It’s weird that “we had a bipartisan bill to address specifically this thing you’re worried about, likely to pass and be signed into law, and Trump scuttled it so he could keep complaining about it” didn’t resonate. Frankly, if that’s too “technical” a message to be received, we really are fucked.
  - amarcheschi 2y ago
    A guy answered me in another comment where I was saying similar things about wages, and apparently it's not true, it's an interesting read (which I can't criticize or comment since I'm not knowledgeable in economics) https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/repost-why-immigration-doesnt-reduce https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/repost-why-immigration-doesnt-...
    - vundercind 2y ago
      It can be the case that immigration tends to buoy wages over all, while there do exist some for whom immigration will depress wages. Again, we’re definitely trying to do this when we craft targeted policies aimed at bringing in or discouraging immigrants for specific professions, and it does have the effect one would expect. We have a history of doing the Neoliberal “well this will make line go up and we can just help the few whom it harms” and then not helping those few, so I get why people worried their wages might be some of the ones affected aren’t thrilled. Whether most of the folks so-concerned would actually see such a thing, is another matter (I’m guessing not, in at least 95% of cases of people with those concerns).
      - amarcheschi 2y ago
        Yeah, it makes sense what you're saying
  - astrange 2y ago
    > but of course it tends to depress wages for anyone in sectors the immigrants are landing jobs in. Even NPR admits this, when they cover the topic. In practice this is not an issue, to the point it's hard to find cases where it ever happened. Collection of studies: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/repost-why-immigration-doesnt-reduce https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/repost-why-immigration-doesnt-... One reason for this is that immigrants have differing and complementary skills from natives - eg just speaking a different native language is a skill - and so they're not likely to land in the same sectors. They're more similar to other immigrants from the same place, and so it's more likely they'd lower each other's wages. I think this is totally believable, but the demand factor is still very important here - one immigrant could start a business and employ others etc. > If this weren’t the case, there wouldn’t be a bunch of us wanting to loosen rules about foreign-trained doctors practicing in the US. Doctors in the US are a special case because their number is so limited by the AMA and by (US government funded) residency slots. So yes, this could lower their wages if foreign doctors have similar enough skills to compete with them vs complement them. But it's more important for us to just stop limiting how many new doctors we train. This wouldn't necessarily hurt them though; I mean it probably would, but if it made healthcare more affordable resulting in more people going to see doctors, then they'd all get paid more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
    - vundercind 2y ago
      Yeah the full answer is “it’s complicated and yes maybe some people see wages depressed or increases that would have happened, slowed, by immigration”. It can, for a given individual or even sector, do the thing people are worried about, even if most benefit—mean or even median wages tending to go up isn’t the same as your wages will go up. Simplified “it doesn’t lower wages” messaging has a smell to people burned by other neoliberal policies, and they’re not wrong to detect a hint of the ol’ BS, even if their concern is overblown or misplaced.
- no_wizard 2y ago
  Someone pointed out online, I forgot who, that the problem with job reports is two fold It reports only those actively looking for a job or employed, so it leaves out people who simply aren’t participating in the labor market anymore because they can’t find one. It also reports all jobs, not the quality of the jobs. Average Americans feel the job market today is terrible and largely does not look at part time and near minimum wage work roles growing as a positive. The jobs report doesn’t disaggregate higher paying jobs from lower ones
  - bryanlarsen 2y ago
    > The jobs report doesn’t disaggregate higher paying jobs from lower ones Yes it does, and it shows that the fastest growing wages are in the bottom 10%.
    - no_wizard 2y ago
      It breaks by sector and averages wave growth but doesn’t disaggregate actual by the numbers for each sector and their loss / gross as far I can tell. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm We can make assumptions though and yes I agree it shows that trend. Even if I’m misinterpreting this my general assertion about people’s feeling about the job reports that I’m telegraphing I think still remains valid
      - mrguyorama 2y ago
        "I've been demonstrably wrong in every single point but I'm still right because I feel like it" is such a good demonstration of what happened this election. Some people are hurting because there's always some people hurting, and for some reason that means we get the party that wants to reduce social safety nets?!
  - astrange 2y ago
    That may be true of the monthly jobs report numbers (don't remember how they work), but if you need to know then it's not an issue because there's alternatives. Here's reports for all these that don't have those issues, as they just come from surveys. > It reports only those actively looking for a job or employed, so it leaves out people who simply aren’t participating in the labor market anymore because they can’t find one. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060 This simply asks "do you have a job", and it's up to the people responding to decide if being an Uber driver is a job. > Average Americans feel the job market today is terrible and largely does not look at part time and near minimum wage work roles growing as a positive. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12032196 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12032196 - % of workers part time because they couldn't find anything better https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LEU0203127200A https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LEU0203127200A - % of workers at federal minimum wage https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12026620 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12026620 - % people with multiple jobs All look healthy right now. (Obviously there's a lot more people at the state minimum wage.) > The jobs report doesn’t disaggregate higher paying jobs from lower ones That's in FRED somewhere, but https://realtimeinequality.org https://realtimeinequality.org is an easier way to view it. Btw, I think focusing on "jobs" isn't the best thing to look at - the poorest people in a country will always be children and the elderly, and hopefully we don't want them to get jobs.
- tekknik 2y ago
  > but there is absolutely zero evidence and here we have another reason for yesterdays results.
- tomp 2y ago
  Fortunately, we don't need to listen to any "academic economists" (who need to toe the party line) or even internet "experts", we can simply observe reality. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-52109351 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-5210935... During COVID lockdowns, UK farmers complained that they can't get cheap foreigners to pick their strawberries. Obviously "lack of workforce" is just a propaganda expression for "we don't pay enough". Open borders directly reduces wages.
  - astrange 2y ago
    A single article with no counterfactual isn't as good as the existing literature, which has plenty of empirical studies (https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/repost-why-immigration-doesnt-reduce https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/repost-why-immigration-doesnt-...). Academics love disagreeing with each other and economists are pretty bipartisan relative to other fields. > Obviously "lack of workforce" is just a propaganda expression for "we don't pay enough" Looks to me like this needs a specialized skilled workforce, otherwise they won't be able to pick the fruit in time for it to stay ripe. Paying a smaller population of workers more will not necessarily encourage them to develop enough skills to do this job. It might just be left undone and then no fruit. If you have a larger population of potential workers, then there's more room for people to specialize in this because you have a larger economy. > James Porter said 200 workers normally travelled to his farm in Scryne, Angus, from eastern Europe. I'd like to know which part of Eastern Europe that means. If it was Ukraine they were bad then and worse now, but if it's Poland they have incredible economic growth right now and are on track to pass the UK before too long.
    - A4ET8a8uTh0 2y ago
      << I'd like to know which part of Eastern Europe that means. Not OP, but I can absolutely vouch for local negative sentiment in Eastern Europe. Granted, some of it is a direct result of war in Ukraine ( and a lot of those refugees getting benefits and priority for government services in host countries ). It is hard for the population in general to get that they are getting a deal, when they don't. Maybe some individual billionaire does, but if anything, it only exacerbates the issue further by focusing anger on that one person.
- solumunus 2y ago
  > but there is absolutely zero evidence that immigration lowers any native wages What? You’re really claiming that increasing the supply side of a market has no effect on prices? That’s absurd. You shouldn’t need evidence for common sense. If labour supply is essentially unlimited then there is never pressure to increase wages. A literal child can understand this…
  - astrange 2y ago
    Using a pure supply argument for the labor market is the worst possible one to do it on. It's usually okay, but labor is people, and people are the source of all demand, so you really have to consider both of them. Also, I'm going by empirical studies here. Those are better than beliefs, because truth is stranger than fiction.
    - solumunus 2y ago
      All I know is in the UK it's not uncommon for jobs to get thousands of applications. I'm pretty confident the immigration is hitting the supply side more than demand. Most of this immigration is from low skilled workers on poverty wages, I'm struggling to see how this would massively increase demand elsewhere in the labour market. Since immigration started increasing in the late 90's wages have been stagnant. Correlation doesn't equal causation, but hmm.
      - astrange 2y ago
        The UK outside London is IIRC poorer than all but one US state, and your housing policy makes it even harder to build new housing than California. So you have much bigger problems. For there to be jobs there has to be industry first. That'd provide the demand.
        solumunus 2y ago
        That in no way changes the fact that migration is having a negative effect on average workers in our country.
- belorn 2y ago
  It seems fairly evident that human trafficking has had an economical positive effect on countries who practiced it. It is an common observed fact that the current construction sector is dependent on human trafficking and most current construction projects would fail to meet their goals without a steady stream of cheap, untaxed illegal labor that do not need to follow safety regulations. However for people who work in those sectors the picture tend to look differently with wages and good safety practices being suppressed. Construction companies that follow regulations and pay taxes for all their employees will loose in the competitive market. The effect on the economy may be a net-positive, and it may also be true that most countries could not contain growth if construction actually cost as much as it had to without the illegal practices, but that is all multiple aspects of the same issue.
arandomusername 2y ago
Do you refute that importing mass amount of people into a city, without substantially increasing supply of housing, increases the price of housing?
- no_wizard 2y ago
  Depends on a host of factors. Housing is also one of the few issues that is so local and immigration is such a tiny story around it to begin with. Prices are high in plenty of areas seeing little immigration activity
  - titannet 2y ago
    If the immigration is double the normal expected growth (~tripling the growth) it is not really tiny. It may very well be solvable, maybe even easily. But the problem in many European countries is that "the left" does not even acknowledge that this may be a problem and should be solved leading to many people voting for "the far right" that does acknowledge that this is a problem. In the US housing may not be the biggest issue, but the result is the same: the average voter can choose between "there is no problem, we can take in as many immigrant as we want forever" and "we don't want immigration".
- Forgeties79 2y ago
  Many of the most expensive cities in the US have relatively low immigration compared to other areas with much more reasonable real estate, and it behooves you to link it where housing is expensive and immigration is very high. You have to actually provide some sources before you throw out blanket comments blaming immigrants for our problems
  - arandomusername 2y ago
    NYC, one of the most expensive cities, has 37% foreign born population.
    - Forgeties79 2y ago

Immigration opponents just make up things so they can claim immigration caused it. The biggest tell is that they mention wage suppression, because they think it'll make them sound sympathetic - but there is absolutely zero evidence that immigration lowers any native wages, and theoretically you should expect it to increase them because of increased demand. (Conversely, when people move away this reduces demand and lowers your wages.) That and employment for prime aged (i.e. not retirement age) Americans is as high as it's ever been.

vundercind 2y ago
Immigration does have a net benefit to the economy, generally, but of course it tends to depress wages for anyone in sectors the immigrants are landing jobs in. Even NPR admits this, when they cover the topic. If this weren’t the case, there wouldn’t be a bunch of us wanting to loosen rules about foreign-trained doctors practicing in the US. Whether those sectors include most of the people worried that their wages will be suppressed, when who we’re talking about are illegal immigrants who mostly do stuff like chicken processing and house framing/roofing, is another matter. It’s weird that “we had a bipartisan bill to address specifically this thing you’re worried about, likely to pass and be signed into law, and Trump scuttled it so he could keep complaining about it” didn’t resonate. Frankly, if that’s too “technical” a message to be received, we really are fucked.
- amarcheschi 2y ago
  A guy answered me in another comment where I was saying similar things about wages, and apparently it's not true, it's an interesting read (which I can't criticize or comment since I'm not knowledgeable in economics) https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/repost-why-immigration-doesnt-reduce https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/repost-why-immigration-doesnt-...
  - vundercind 2y ago
    It can be the case that immigration tends to buoy wages over all, while there do exist some for whom immigration will depress wages. Again, we’re definitely trying to do this when we craft targeted policies aimed at bringing in or discouraging immigrants for specific professions, and it does have the effect one would expect. We have a history of doing the Neoliberal “well this will make line go up and we can just help the few whom it harms” and then not helping those few, so I get why people worried their wages might be some of the ones affected aren’t thrilled. Whether most of the folks so-concerned would actually see such a thing, is another matter (I’m guessing not, in at least 95% of cases of people with those concerns).
    - amarcheschi 2y ago
      Yeah, it makes sense what you're saying
- astrange 2y ago
  > but of course it tends to depress wages for anyone in sectors the immigrants are landing jobs in. Even NPR admits this, when they cover the topic. In practice this is not an issue, to the point it's hard to find cases where it ever happened. Collection of studies: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/repost-why-immigration-doesnt-reduce https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/repost-why-immigration-doesnt-... One reason for this is that immigrants have differing and complementary skills from natives - eg just speaking a different native language is a skill - and so they're not likely to land in the same sectors. They're more similar to other immigrants from the same place, and so it's more likely they'd lower each other's wages. I think this is totally believable, but the demand factor is still very important here - one immigrant could start a business and employ others etc. > If this weren’t the case, there wouldn’t be a bunch of us wanting to loosen rules about foreign-trained doctors practicing in the US. Doctors in the US are a special case because their number is so limited by the AMA and by (US government funded) residency slots. So yes, this could lower their wages if foreign doctors have similar enough skills to compete with them vs complement them. But it's more important for us to just stop limiting how many new doctors we train. This wouldn't necessarily hurt them though; I mean it probably would, but if it made healthcare more affordable resulting in more people going to see doctors, then they'd all get paid more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
  - vundercind 2y ago
    Yeah the full answer is “it’s complicated and yes maybe some people see wages depressed or increases that would have happened, slowed, by immigration”. It can, for a given individual or even sector, do the thing people are worried about, even if most benefit—mean or even median wages tending to go up isn’t the same as your wages will go up. Simplified “it doesn’t lower wages” messaging has a smell to people burned by other neoliberal policies, and they’re not wrong to detect a hint of the ol’ BS, even if their concern is overblown or misplaced.
no_wizard 2y ago
Someone pointed out online, I forgot who, that the problem with job reports is two fold It reports only those actively looking for a job or employed, so it leaves out people who simply aren’t participating in the labor market anymore because they can’t find one. It also reports all jobs, not the quality of the jobs. Average Americans feel the job market today is terrible and largely does not look at part time and near minimum wage work roles growing as a positive. The jobs report doesn’t disaggregate higher paying jobs from lower ones
- bryanlarsen 2y ago
  > The jobs report doesn’t disaggregate higher paying jobs from lower ones Yes it does, and it shows that the fastest growing wages are in the bottom 10%.
  - no_wizard 2y ago
    It breaks by sector and averages wave growth but doesn’t disaggregate actual by the numbers for each sector and their loss / gross as far I can tell. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm We can make assumptions though and yes I agree it shows that trend. Even if I’m misinterpreting this my general assertion about people’s feeling about the job reports that I’m telegraphing I think still remains valid
    - mrguyorama 2y ago
      "I've been demonstrably wrong in every single point but I'm still right because I feel like it" is such a good demonstration of what happened this election. Some people are hurting because there's always some people hurting, and for some reason that means we get the party that wants to reduce social safety nets?!
- astrange 2y ago
  That may be true of the monthly jobs report numbers (don't remember how they work), but if you need to know then it's not an issue because there's alternatives. Here's reports for all these that don't have those issues, as they just come from surveys. > It reports only those actively looking for a job or employed, so it leaves out people who simply aren’t participating in the labor market anymore because they can’t find one. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060 This simply asks "do you have a job", and it's up to the people responding to decide if being an Uber driver is a job. > Average Americans feel the job market today is terrible and largely does not look at part time and near minimum wage work roles growing as a positive. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12032196 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12032196 - % of workers part time because they couldn't find anything better https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LEU0203127200A https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LEU0203127200A - % of workers at federal minimum wage https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12026620 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12026620 - % people with multiple jobs All look healthy right now. (Obviously there's a lot more people at the state minimum wage.) > The jobs report doesn’t disaggregate higher paying jobs from lower ones That's in FRED somewhere, but https://realtimeinequality.org https://realtimeinequality.org is an easier way to view it. Btw, I think focusing on "jobs" isn't the best thing to look at - the poorest people in a country will always be children and the elderly, and hopefully we don't want them to get jobs.
tekknik 2y ago
> but there is absolutely zero evidence and here we have another reason for yesterdays results.
tomp 2y ago
Fortunately, we don't need to listen to any "academic economists" (who need to toe the party line) or even internet "experts", we can simply observe reality. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-52109351 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-5210935... During COVID lockdowns, UK farmers complained that they can't get cheap foreigners to pick their strawberries. Obviously "lack of workforce" is just a propaganda expression for "we don't pay enough". Open borders directly reduces wages.
- astrange 2y ago
  A single article with no counterfactual isn't as good as the existing literature, which has plenty of empirical studies (https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/repost-why-immigration-doesnt-reduce https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/repost-why-immigration-doesnt-...). Academics love disagreeing with each other and economists are pretty bipartisan relative to other fields. > Obviously "lack of workforce" is just a propaganda expression for "we don't pay enough" Looks to me like this needs a specialized skilled workforce, otherwise they won't be able to pick the fruit in time for it to stay ripe. Paying a smaller population of workers more will not necessarily encourage them to develop enough skills to do this job. It might just be left undone and then no fruit. If you have a larger population of potential workers, then there's more room for people to specialize in this because you have a larger economy. > James Porter said 200 workers normally travelled to his farm in Scryne, Angus, from eastern Europe. I'd like to know which part of Eastern Europe that means. If it was Ukraine they were bad then and worse now, but if it's Poland they have incredible economic growth right now and are on track to pass the UK before too long.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 2y ago
    << I'd like to know which part of Eastern Europe that means. Not OP, but I can absolutely vouch for local negative sentiment in Eastern Europe. Granted, some of it is a direct result of war in Ukraine ( and a lot of those refugees getting benefits and priority for government services in host countries ). It is hard for the population in general to get that they are getting a deal, when they don't. Maybe some individual billionaire does, but if anything, it only exacerbates the issue further by focusing anger on that one person.
solumunus 2y ago
> but there is absolutely zero evidence that immigration lowers any native wages What? You’re really claiming that increasing the supply side of a market has no effect on prices? That’s absurd. You shouldn’t need evidence for common sense. If labour supply is essentially unlimited then there is never pressure to increase wages. A literal child can understand this…
- astrange 2y ago
  Using a pure supply argument for the labor market is the worst possible one to do it on. It's usually okay, but labor is people, and people are the source of all demand, so you really have to consider both of them. Also, I'm going by empirical studies here. Those are better than beliefs, because truth is stranger than fiction.
  - solumunus 2y ago
    All I know is in the UK it's not uncommon for jobs to get thousands of applications. I'm pretty confident the immigration is hitting the supply side more than demand. Most of this immigration is from low skilled workers on poverty wages, I'm struggling to see how this would massively increase demand elsewhere in the labour market. Since immigration started increasing in the late 90's wages have been stagnant. Correlation doesn't equal causation, but hmm.
    - astrange 2y ago
      The UK outside London is IIRC poorer than all but one US state, and your housing policy makes it even harder to build new housing than California. So you have much bigger problems. For there to be jobs there has to be industry first. That'd provide the demand.
      - solumunus 2y ago
        That in no way changes the fact that migration is having a negative effect on average workers in our country.
belorn 2y ago
It seems fairly evident that human trafficking has had an economical positive effect on countries who practiced it. It is an common observed fact that the current construction sector is dependent on human trafficking and most current construction projects would fail to meet their goals without a steady stream of cheap, untaxed illegal labor that do not need to follow safety regulations. However for people who work in those sectors the picture tend to look differently with wages and good safety practices being suppressed. Construction companies that follow regulations and pay taxes for all their employees will loose in the competitive market. The effect on the economy may be a net-positive, and it may also be true that most countries could not contain growth if construction actually cost as much as it had to without the illegal practices, but that is all multiple aspects of the same issue.

arandomusername 2y ago

Do you refute that importing mass amount of people into a city, without substantially increasing supply of housing, increases the price of housing?

no_wizard 2y ago
Depends on a host of factors. Housing is also one of the few issues that is so local and immigration is such a tiny story around it to begin with. Prices are high in plenty of areas seeing little immigration activity
- titannet 2y ago
  If the immigration is double the normal expected growth (~tripling the growth) it is not really tiny. It may very well be solvable, maybe even easily. But the problem in many European countries is that "the left" does not even acknowledge that this may be a problem and should be solved leading to many people voting for "the far right" that does acknowledge that this is a problem. In the US housing may not be the biggest issue, but the result is the same: the average voter can choose between "there is no problem, we can take in as many immigrant as we want forever" and "we don't want immigration".
Forgeties79 2y ago
Many of the most expensive cities in the US have relatively low immigration compared to other areas with much more reasonable real estate, and it behooves you to link it where housing is expensive and immigration is very high. You have to actually provide some sources before you throw out blanket comments blaming immigrants for our problems
- arandomusername 2y ago
  NYC, one of the most expensive cities, has 37% foreign born population.
  - Forgeties79 2y ago