4 ms·

I'm guessing there's other factors. For example, Australian prices are high because of labour (it's very hard to illegally immigrate to an island surrounded by

by crdb 11y ago

I'm guessing there's other factors. For example, Australian prices are high because of labour (it's very hard to illegally immigrate to an island surrounded by oceans) but also because everything has to be transported over vast distances and many products have to be imported. I'd guess the much smaller market (35m inhabitants vs 320m - Australia has 22m), the weather, the distance from production centres and major ports, and so on would impact prices as well. As for beer it might be taxes, which Wikipedia says are amongst the highest in the world.

Mikeb85 11y ago
Everything you said is true (especially the taxes on beer). It was a little tongue-in-cheek, however I still am surprised that there are so many illegal immigrants in the US...
- greedo 11y ago
  Seriously? If you were a Mexican national, why wouldn't you come to the US? Better jobs, more safety, more hope for your kids. Mexico has so many problems that a trip across the border solves. I have no ill will towards anyone traveling north. It's a rational response to conditions in Mexico that seem intractable.
  - Mikeb85 11y ago
    > Seriously? If you were a Mexican national, why wouldn't you come to the US? No, I'm more surprised that the US is so bad at dealing with illegal immigration. Do they tacitly accept it?
    - greedo 11y ago
      Half the voting public supports it, half opposes it. So there's no real movement on the issue.
      - Mikeb85 11y ago
        Strange. Even though Canada strongly supports multi-culturalism, our public is equally opposed to letting illegal immigrants stay (and we certainly make it more difficult for illegal immigrants to stay).
      - greedo 11y ago
        I love when downvotes get politically motivated. No one wants to deny or refute that immigration has been in a gridlock for at least 29 years.
        crdb 11y ago
        I am genuinely curious about why several people downvoted my original post as well.
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      > No, I'm more surprised that the US is so bad at dealing with illegal immigration. Do they tacitly accept it? Some industry players benefit from having low-skilled workers that are demotivated to complain to government of labor violations, etc., so there is some of that. OTOH, a bigger issue is that, while most people would agree that illegal immigration, per se, is bad, there is no census on how to deal with the issue. There are groups that oppose not only illegal immigration, but are strongly concerned with controlling the level of immigration (and often with managing its origin), so that they see the solution in enforcement measures (though even groups in this category often don't agree on which enforcement measures.) Then there are groups that are less concerned with the level of immigration than with illegality itself, and so would favor new avenues of legal immigration, or increased quotas within existing avenues, etc. And there are additional disagreements over approaches to dealing with the existing population that is present without proper immigration status beyond the different views on "going forward" policy.
    - crdb 11y ago
      Yes, because there is no choice in the matter. The only durable way to stop mass illegal immigration would be to relieve the enormous incentives for both illegals to come in, and businesses to hire them, which means making it legal for a restaurant to hire anybody - including foreigners - to work 16 hour days for $3/hour vs 10 hour days for $9/hour. This will never happen, not even under the most hardcore Tea Party government, not even if Goldwater rose from the ashes and brought with his election victory a House and Senate majority somehow with the same spine he had. I thought the (excellent) movie "Act of Valor" pointed out the other way this issue could be resolved. In the movie, terrorists use the people smuggling networks to allow suicide bombers into the US, targeting a few stadiums in Southern cities. This is not the first time enemies of the US try to smuggle people in illegally - the Soviets and the Cubans especially sent many agents that way, as well as infiltrating US criminal organisations (see for example Oleg Kalugin's biography [1] which explores the links between the Soviets and the Italian mafia). In the real world, no criminal organisation would be mad enough to let that happen (much as gangs in Mexico try to avoid killing gringos) because it would mean a promotion from "criminal organisation" to "effective terrorist organisation" and we saw after 9/11 how the American public reacts to that. So long as you're "just" smuggling drugs and people, it's "just" the DEA and ATF and the odd border agent. If they did facilitate terrorist attacks, you can bet there'd be an enormous appropriation and militarization of the border, coupled with a systematic destruction of virtually all smuggling networks on Mexican soil and maybe temporary occupation of the territory south of the border. Panama was invaded for less. But this is not going to happen just because a few people go on strike, especially when the majority of manual labour (11m vs 3m) appears to be illegal already without much outcry from the public which tacitly understands that this is key to cheap food and service. [1] http://www.amazon.com/First-Directorate-Intelligence-Espionage-Against/dp/0312114265/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8 http://www.amazon.com/First-Directorate-Intelligence-Espiona...

by crdb 11y ago

Mikeb85 11y ago

Everything you said is true (especially the taxes on beer). It was a little tongue-in-cheek, however I still am surprised that there are so many illegal immigrants in the US...

greedo 11y ago
Seriously? If you were a Mexican national, why wouldn't you come to the US? Better jobs, more safety, more hope for your kids. Mexico has so many problems that a trip across the border solves. I have no ill will towards anyone traveling north. It's a rational response to conditions in Mexico that seem intractable.
- Mikeb85 11y ago
  > Seriously? If you were a Mexican national, why wouldn't you come to the US? No, I'm more surprised that the US is so bad at dealing with illegal immigration. Do they tacitly accept it?
  - greedo 11y ago
    Half the voting public supports it, half opposes it. So there's no real movement on the issue.
    - Mikeb85 11y ago
      Strange. Even though Canada strongly supports multi-culturalism, our public is equally opposed to letting illegal immigrants stay (and we certainly make it more difficult for illegal immigrants to stay).
    - greedo 11y ago
      I love when downvotes get politically motivated. No one wants to deny or refute that immigration has been in a gridlock for at least 29 years.
      - crdb 11y ago
        I am genuinely curious about why several people downvoted my original post as well.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > No, I'm more surprised that the US is so bad at dealing with illegal immigration. Do they tacitly accept it? Some industry players benefit from having low-skilled workers that are demotivated to complain to government of labor violations, etc., so there is some of that. OTOH, a bigger issue is that, while most people would agree that illegal immigration, per se, is bad, there is no census on how to deal with the issue. There are groups that oppose not only illegal immigration, but are strongly concerned with controlling the level of immigration (and often with managing its origin), so that they see the solution in enforcement measures (though even groups in this category often don't agree on which enforcement measures.) Then there are groups that are less concerned with the level of immigration than with illegality itself, and so would favor new avenues of legal immigration, or increased quotas within existing avenues, etc. And there are additional disagreements over approaches to dealing with the existing population that is present without proper immigration status beyond the different views on "going forward" policy.
  - crdb 11y ago
    Yes, because there is no choice in the matter. The only durable way to stop mass illegal immigration would be to relieve the enormous incentives for both illegals to come in, and businesses to hire them, which means making it legal for a restaurant to hire anybody - including foreigners - to work 16 hour days for $3/hour vs 10 hour days for $9/hour. This will never happen, not even under the most hardcore Tea Party government, not even if Goldwater rose from the ashes and brought with his election victory a House and Senate majority somehow with the same spine he had. I thought the (excellent) movie "Act of Valor" pointed out the other way this issue could be resolved. In the movie, terrorists use the people smuggling networks to allow suicide bombers into the US, targeting a few stadiums in Southern cities. This is not the first time enemies of the US try to smuggle people in illegally - the Soviets and the Cubans especially sent many agents that way, as well as infiltrating US criminal organisations (see for example Oleg Kalugin's biography [1] which explores the links between the Soviets and the Italian mafia). In the real world, no criminal organisation would be mad enough to let that happen (much as gangs in Mexico try to avoid killing gringos) because it would mean a promotion from "criminal organisation" to "effective terrorist organisation" and we saw after 9/11 how the American public reacts to that. So long as you're "just" smuggling drugs and people, it's "just" the DEA and ATF and the odd border agent. If they did facilitate terrorist attacks, you can bet there'd be an enormous appropriation and militarization of the border, coupled with a systematic destruction of virtually all smuggling networks on Mexican soil and maybe temporary occupation of the territory south of the border. Panama was invaded for less. But this is not going to happen just because a few people go on strike, especially when the majority of manual labour (11m vs 3m) appears to be illegal already without much outcry from the public which tacitly understands that this is key to cheap food and service. [1] http://www.amazon.com/First-Directorate-Intelligence-Espionage-Against/dp/0312114265/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8 http://www.amazon.com/First-Directorate-Intelligence-Espiona...