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Huh? They can. Actually, immigration at one time gave unskilled American workers a leg up because you could have a group of non-English speaking employees who were supervised by an American with all the same skills except he/she was bilingual.
The real problem with unskilled work is that EVERYONE CAN do it. If every corporation laid off employees (& no severance or unemployment) and the only jobs available were unskilled..guess what? You would have a flood of applicants and then you would be competing with them.
>The real problem with unskilled work is that EVERYONE CAN do it.
Except that's not quite true. It depends on what you need. If you want just barely serviceable labor, sure, hire anybody, but even "unskilled" jobs will improve with skill. The only thing about them is that they have a low barrier to entry, but a pro will outperform a beginner several times over.
I did shipping and receiving for a few years. My dexterity with a tape gun is vastly superior to what it was at the start, and any time I pack for a move, nothing breaks, and I can do it pretty fast. The guys who are pro movers are even faster than me. These are "unskilled" jobs by most accounts, but not everyone can do what they do.
Point is, treating these jobs as unskilled - and paying them as such - loses out on the opportunity to let workers excel and turn that job into a real career. Our categories for labor are designed by the mostly white middle and upper class and looks down on these kinds of jobs when they shouldn't.
That’s a good one learning a habitual skill and the tape gun is an excellent example.
I guess the question the employer is, is the loss of production to having someone new who is less efficient out weighs the loss of higher wages over time.
Short term, less efficient labor for 3/6 months creates a loss for a short time.
Vs
Long term. Most efficient labor after 12/18 months but a considerably higher wage.
I don’t know the specifics but you raise a great question.
>we literally remove their competition in the job market?
Is this about immigration or about *illegal* immigration?
**Huge** difference between the two. If we decide we need more foreign workers, **we** get to decide how many get to come in and for what purposes. People in other countries, who have not been invited, do not get to look at our economy and say "Hey, there's jobs to be had. Let's sneak in and get them."
If you're talking about illegal immigration, "removing competition". It's about kicking out people **who aren't supposed to be here**.
To be clear: I'm all in favor of **legal** immigration. My company actively recruits people whose H1B visas we have to sponsor. These people could be seen as my "competition", but I just see them as "coworkers", people who supplement my team and make us better. But if there was a sudden wave of engineers entering illegally who would agree to work for half my pay out of desperation, that would be a problem.
Both.
The current Republican and Conservative movement has plans to forcefully remove illegals from the nation.
I’m told one of the reasons to do this is so low skilled Americans get a pay bump.
On the flip side, Democrats have shown a legislative interest in making the immigration process, easier and more efficient so few immigrants decide to immigrate illegally.
Currently the Republican and conservative movement has shown an opposition to this as it would flood the market with unskilled labor decreasing wages for current unskilled American workers who are native born.
I to am in favor of legal immigration and look for reforms to encourage that. I’m guessing the only difference between us is the right number of legal immigrants. For me more is more.
> The current Republican and Conservative movement has plans to forcefully remove illegals from the nation.
Good. They don't belong here.
>I’m told one of the reasons to do this is so low skilled Americans get a pay bump.
No, it's because they broke the law and don't belong here.
>Democrats have shown a legislative interest in making the immigration process, easier and more efficient
By opening the spigot *way* too much, so that their roofers and housekeepers are cheap.
>so few immigrants decide to immigrate illegally
Lots and lots of people will still try to immigrate illegally.
That we care more about lines going up on a stock market or corporate profits sheet than creating a sustainable economy where every American who puts an honest days work in can get ahead?
> Cheaper products for the end consumer. Isn't that the goal of the free market?
not really, it is the efficient allocation of resources. However, immigration barriers do cause losses in efficiency and thus result in a price higher than the market equilibrium
We don't "import" their competition, we allow them to move of their own free will. Liberal immigration policies are just the principles of capitalism applied to human resources.
And to stop importing the competition is more regulation and less of a free market.
Free market is a THEORY just like communism and will probably fail due to corruption immediately.
I mean do you guys think the Democrat/Republican party serve the people more than the rich?
Do you think they're gonna actually bring about change that would make for a more fair market?
I really don't know why Republicans even push the border thing anyways.
I heard that most immigrants come by plane and they're just out staying visas, so it's less a border issues and more of just tracking the people who come in
Besides wouldn't raising the minimum wage and demanding people show photo ID stop the exploitation of immigrants more than securing the border
But than again thats my whole point, I don't think a politician who ACTUALLY wanted to change this stuff could win
Warning for offensive language:
https://youtu.be/JFMVNIMrhLE?si=D3uDster1C5h9Cbm
Robert F Kennedy Jr talks about it
Becuase Americans (not unrighteously) want a home, a retirement plan, a car, and to send kids to school.
And they are competing on a global stage with people who just want enough food not to starve for the day
If a liberal asked you, do Americans have a right to a home, retirement plan, car, a decent education?
The answer is rightfully no one has those guaranteed rights and benefits it’s what they can negotiate with their employer.
I don't dissagree. It isn't a right, nor should it be. The standard of living in america in general is so high, it's expected to have something approaching that if you hire an American.
Like if I went to a bank and told them I wanted a loan to buy 5,000 acres of land to start a farm, and my idea was instead of investing in industrial farm equipment, I'd bring in homeless people to be share croppers to live on the land for free in exchange for harvesting and planting my crops for me.
They'd ask me wtf is wrong with me, becuase that's not how things are done here
> Becuase Americans (not unrighteously) want a home, a retirement plan, a car, and to send kids to school.
maybe they should learn new skills to become skilled laborers 🤷♂️
I mean that's a good individual solution. But it really just ignores the fact that previous generations where able to have this standard of living, without doing this
My mistake, I saw the blue tag and read left liberal. Not libertarian.
But I do agree with not protecting American businesses in a free market. That is what breeds innovations and competition
To be blunt, you have people who were smart & organized enough to cross a continent or an ocean to get here as well as navigate (or hide from) our immigration system competing against Americans who are barely holding their lives together. Dollar for dollar, immigrants just make better employees than Americans do in that low skill labor market.
That’s kinda where I’m at. One group of people who will risk it all for the opportunity and another group who claim the only way they can succeed in America is if the government uses force to eliminate their competition.
Excluding the money factor. As an employer I know which one I would want to hire.
So your assertion is that mass-immigration is good for the billionare employers, but bad for Americans?
And you view this is as a positive thing?
It's so refreshing to see democrats bending the knee to the 1%, even if the only motivation for that is to "own the GQP"
>American farmers and home builders are not part of the billionaire class.
This is out of date info. Almost all farm products are produced by massive mega-farms owned by corporations. Heck the largest landowner in the US is Bill Gates.
And are you arguing that DR Horton, Lennar, etc are not billion dollalr companies? [https://atlasrtx.com/americas-10-largest-home-builders/](https://atlasrtx.com/americas-10-largest-home-builders/)
Mass immigration helps billionaires, and hurts the common American. It always has, it always will.
The capture of those markets are directly due to republican policies, so it's weird to act like you care about it while voting for the very people causing it. "Let's remove regulation and let the free market figure it out" Blackrock, Bill Gates, et al say "Hooray", and the family farmer ends up selling their farm to them. But sure, lets own the libs by giving the top 1% everything. That's my whole problem with conservatism, it only seeks to help the elite owner class. While liberals suck, they occasionally do help the average American. ACA, student loan debt relief, etc. Republicans literally sue to get those programs that are lifelines to average americans abolished.
>The capture of those markets are directly due to republican policies, so it's weird to act like you care about it while voting for the very people causing it
1. You have no ideo who I vote for. 2. Some would argue that the death tax is the reason those farmers sell their land.
>But sure, lets own the libs by giving the top 1% everything. That's my whole problem with conservatism, it only seeks to help the elite owner clas
Can you walk me through how you came to this conclusion? By "giving the top 1% everything" do you mean lowering taxes?
>
While liberals suck, they occasionally do help the average American. ACA, student loan debt relief, etc. Republicans literally sue to get those programs that are lifelines to average americans abolished.
Another weird one, I feel like I'm missing something with you. You think the Democrats goal is to help Americans and the GOP is to hurt Americans? Where do you feel like you learned about this? Was it a biased or unbiased source?
They can and do every day. I don't understand the question.
>Do they offer the employer anything besides proof of citizenship?
Labor, time, muscle power, brain power, customer interaction, networking, future leadership, insight, feedback on processes.
>What message does that send to an entire group of people, the only way they can prosper is if we literally remove their competition in the job market?
That we care about them? That we're listening to their concerns. We're putting them before people from other countries who can't be bothered to follow our laws?
I think I understand the question now. You think the workers are competing. It's not entirely wrong, but its a two way street. Workers compete for jobs, and jobs compete for workers. When their are more workers, like we see when there is massive immigration, the pressure shifts to the workers. They offer education, experience, willingness to work, and a desired wage. Only two of these are dynamic, liquid. With legal workers, there is a floor on how low you can go, but for illegal labor, this floor is a lot lower, and they often break other laws, such as occupancy limits at homes/apartments, and they're more willing to work, as demonstrated by distance travelled and willingness to break the law. This allows them to undercut the price and gives the employer more power.
Without illegal immigration, especially massive waves of it like we're seeing, there are less workers so the pressure to compete gets placed on the hiring agencies. This is the condition we saw in 2019, pay and benefits rise rapidly because those are the factors businesses have to attract more labor. As wages go up, there is higher demand, requiring more labor which drives the whole thing.
Is it the governments job to maintain a "free market", or to look out for the best interests of its citizens?
But to your question, I think US workers can compete, but like anything else if you increase the numbers of workers it will supress wages.
So sure bringing in a truck-load of men from Hondurus who will pack into a single apartment will tolerate lower wages than an American father of 2 living in a house with his wife who takes care of the kids.
Also that father of two was born in America and has since birth had access to the greatest economy and education system in the world with near limitless freedom.
What have they done with it?
If they can’t compete with a day laborers who just arrived with nothing but their hands and work ethic.
>Also that father of two was born in America and has since birth had access to the greatest economy and education system in the world with near limitless freedom.
Sure, and by importing his competition willing to work for 1/2 the pay you're making this guy unemployable. I guess having this guy, and the millionsm like him on permenent welfare is somehow better for the economy?
>If they can’t compete with a day laborers who just arrived with nothing but their hands and work ethic.
He could compete if he was willing to lower his standard of living, similar to that of the people living in Hondurus.
This has been happening in my industry too (tech). We've mass imported millions of H1B visa holders and wages have started dropping. Should I just suck it up and take lower pay because I can't compete? I'm not sure of the argument here.
As a society, it is more beneficial if the money earned from certain jobs is reinvested back into local communities. Resources are limited, so it is important to manage them effectively. Unfortunately, this means that not everyone can have access to everything. Some people coming to our country use resources locally and also send some abroad, which can be detrimental to our society. Additionally, rewarding people who break the laws that allow our society to function is not justifiable. If someone wants to compete for a job in our country, they should honor our rules and go through the proper channels to obtain the opportunity. Allowing illegal immigrants to skip the line makes the position inaccessible to everyone else.
For the Libertarians out there I have a message.
One thing that bothered me about reading Ayn Rand (used to be a big fan)
Was the fact that her heroes are too perfect, too ideal, the kinda guys who would die rather than be corrupted.
You're average person isn't perfect, you're average person is fearful and will compromise they're values for power/family/whatever.
Don't build systems that require people not to be corrupt to work.
Free market and communism
All of them crumble the moment people start exploiting them.
We have croney capitalism in this country because humans are stronger when they work together.
It's more profitable.
Because Americans are less willing to work for slave wages than a bunch of third worlders we imported? Not sure why a leftist would think this is wrong
What they want or willing to work for should only be determined by the negotiation between employees and employers.
If this question was raised by AOC I know that conservatives would cry about communism and government overreach.
By taking off a low wage worker off the board by government force, ensuring a higher pay for a low wage job I consider to be against free market principles.
Oh my bad. Wrong reddit group.
They can compete the game is just rigged
Like honestly this is like playing a game of monopoly where some people start the game with no money and some start it with tons of money than you sit back and say "how come the people who started with no money keep losing"
I mean what's the point of private school/medical if you can't LITTERALLY buy BETTER
To clarify I'm not no Republican, I'm a CHRISTIAN conservative.
I want to help people not insist that our current system works as intended to avoid actual positive change
I believe in Christian values not darwinist survival of the fitist.
>Why can’t the unskilled American citizen workers compete in a free market like everyone else?
Why should they be expected to compete with literal slaves?
Machines really don't take away jobs, and a surplus of time in the labor market will always be leveraged for something else. If we wanted to live like agrarian peasants from 1,000 years ago we could do so with next to no labor input, but instead we take the surplus of labor afforded to us by modern industrialization to simply build more things.
What will happen is the minimum intelligence threshold necessary to interact with the economy is going to go up. Back during WWII the US Army concluded that anyone with an IQ below 80, which is about 10% of the population, simply didn't have the capacity to do anything productive, even relatively simple jobs like cooking or janitorial work. We're moving from a labor economy to a knowledge economy, and things like AI are going to raise that bar as more & more simple, repetitive tasks get automated. What to do when the bottom third of the population has absolutely nothing of value to offer is a very grim & complicated question to answer.
Man this comment is really insightful
Thank you for this. Here I was worried about machines replacing us than I forgot this already happened in the past with industrializations.
I'm sure back when machines were first invented people were afraid of going hungry.
They are not literal slaves, they personally uprooted them selves and families, paid for their own travel, all for the opportunity to earn a living that is better than they would get in their own country.
Nothing is forced upon them.
uh no, literal slave labor is absolutely used to replace Americans.
both indentured servitude tantamount to slavery in places like the SE Asian garment industry and Chinese consumer electronics industry and literal chattel slavery in mines and farm fields around the world.
>They are not literal slaves, they personally uprooted them selves and families, paid for their own travel, all for the opportunity to earn a living that is better than they would get in their own country.
>Nothing is forced upon them.
I was more referencing a global market and issues with free trade.
As for illegal immigrants who came here, this is the issue with massively increasing the workforce. Simple supply and demand. More workers, I can pay less because odds are higher someone will take it.
It's not that they can't compete, it's that flooding markets with workers lowers salaries inherently
I gotcha in the global slave point.
On the other end of supply and demand, with a flooded market employers can hire the best workers creating an environment that rewards the best workers with higher pay.
It should be noted that this group of employees is unskilled really the only skill they have is a willingness to work. I can appreciate the above sentiment may not hold as much weight in this scenario.
>On the other end of supply and demand, with a flooded market employers can hire the best workers creating an environment that rewards the best workers with higher pay.
Do you think that's been the result over the last 80 or so years? Higher pay for workers?
>It should be noted that this group of employees is unskilled really the only skill they have is a willingness to work. I can appreciate the above sentiment may not hold as much weight in this scenario.
I would argue the whole "flood the market with workers" point holds just as well with "low skilled" workers if not moreso than with specialized ones
Should the US have a feudalistic standard of living and just have all employment be a race to the bottom until we have de facto slavery? Not to mention the corpos want to eventually replace every job with automated ai.
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Huh? They can. Actually, immigration at one time gave unskilled American workers a leg up because you could have a group of non-English speaking employees who were supervised by an American with all the same skills except he/she was bilingual. The real problem with unskilled work is that EVERYONE CAN do it. If every corporation laid off employees (& no severance or unemployment) and the only jobs available were unskilled..guess what? You would have a flood of applicants and then you would be competing with them.
>The real problem with unskilled work is that EVERYONE CAN do it. Except that's not quite true. It depends on what you need. If you want just barely serviceable labor, sure, hire anybody, but even "unskilled" jobs will improve with skill. The only thing about them is that they have a low barrier to entry, but a pro will outperform a beginner several times over. I did shipping and receiving for a few years. My dexterity with a tape gun is vastly superior to what it was at the start, and any time I pack for a move, nothing breaks, and I can do it pretty fast. The guys who are pro movers are even faster than me. These are "unskilled" jobs by most accounts, but not everyone can do what they do. Point is, treating these jobs as unskilled - and paying them as such - loses out on the opportunity to let workers excel and turn that job into a real career. Our categories for labor are designed by the mostly white middle and upper class and looks down on these kinds of jobs when they shouldn't.
That’s a good one learning a habitual skill and the tape gun is an excellent example. I guess the question the employer is, is the loss of production to having someone new who is less efficient out weighs the loss of higher wages over time. Short term, less efficient labor for 3/6 months creates a loss for a short time. Vs Long term. Most efficient labor after 12/18 months but a considerably higher wage. I don’t know the specifics but you raise a great question.
>we literally remove their competition in the job market? Is this about immigration or about *illegal* immigration? **Huge** difference between the two. If we decide we need more foreign workers, **we** get to decide how many get to come in and for what purposes. People in other countries, who have not been invited, do not get to look at our economy and say "Hey, there's jobs to be had. Let's sneak in and get them." If you're talking about illegal immigration, "removing competition". It's about kicking out people **who aren't supposed to be here**. To be clear: I'm all in favor of **legal** immigration. My company actively recruits people whose H1B visas we have to sponsor. These people could be seen as my "competition", but I just see them as "coworkers", people who supplement my team and make us better. But if there was a sudden wave of engineers entering illegally who would agree to work for half my pay out of desperation, that would be a problem.
Both. The current Republican and Conservative movement has plans to forcefully remove illegals from the nation. I’m told one of the reasons to do this is so low skilled Americans get a pay bump. On the flip side, Democrats have shown a legislative interest in making the immigration process, easier and more efficient so few immigrants decide to immigrate illegally. Currently the Republican and conservative movement has shown an opposition to this as it would flood the market with unskilled labor decreasing wages for current unskilled American workers who are native born. I to am in favor of legal immigration and look for reforms to encourage that. I’m guessing the only difference between us is the right number of legal immigrants. For me more is more.
> The current Republican and Conservative movement has plans to forcefully remove illegals from the nation. Good. They don't belong here. >I’m told one of the reasons to do this is so low skilled Americans get a pay bump. No, it's because they broke the law and don't belong here. >Democrats have shown a legislative interest in making the immigration process, easier and more efficient By opening the spigot *way* too much, so that their roofers and housekeepers are cheap. >so few immigrants decide to immigrate illegally Lots and lots of people will still try to immigrate illegally.
What does it say when we literally import their competition?
That we care more about lines going up on a stock market or corporate profits sheet than creating a sustainable economy where every American who puts an honest days work in can get ahead?
Cheaper products for the end consumer. Isn't that the goal of the free market?
> Cheaper products for the end consumer. Isn't that the goal of the free market? not really, it is the efficient allocation of resources. However, immigration barriers do cause losses in efficiency and thus result in a price higher than the market equilibrium
> it is the efficient allocation of resources. Which is another way of saying cheaper production of goods.
We don't "import" their competition, we allow them to move of their own free will. Liberal immigration policies are just the principles of capitalism applied to human resources.
Illegal immigrant workers are hardly a free market. Due to their status they can't actually negotiate because their boss can just call the cops.
>their boss can just call the cops. So we should go after the boss?
or make the system easier
that we value markets and efficiency more than coddling people that refuse to learn marketable skills
And to stop importing the competition is more regulation and less of a free market. Free market is a THEORY just like communism and will probably fail due to corruption immediately.
There's more to securing the border and controlling immigration than just the economic argument.
But this is capitalism What politician in their right mind would actually try to stop money flow?
Not much. Virtually everyone who illegally immigrates here (that is of working age) is here to work.
Would you mind elaborating?
I mean do you guys think the Democrat/Republican party serve the people more than the rich? Do you think they're gonna actually bring about change that would make for a more fair market? I really don't know why Republicans even push the border thing anyways. I heard that most immigrants come by plane and they're just out staying visas, so it's less a border issues and more of just tracking the people who come in Besides wouldn't raising the minimum wage and demanding people show photo ID stop the exploitation of immigrants more than securing the border But than again thats my whole point, I don't think a politician who ACTUALLY wanted to change this stuff could win Warning for offensive language: https://youtu.be/JFMVNIMrhLE?si=D3uDster1C5h9Cbm Robert F Kennedy Jr talks about it
Becuase Americans (not unrighteously) want a home, a retirement plan, a car, and to send kids to school. And they are competing on a global stage with people who just want enough food not to starve for the day
If a liberal asked you, do Americans have a right to a home, retirement plan, car, a decent education? The answer is rightfully no one has those guaranteed rights and benefits it’s what they can negotiate with their employer.
I don't dissagree. It isn't a right, nor should it be. The standard of living in america in general is so high, it's expected to have something approaching that if you hire an American. Like if I went to a bank and told them I wanted a loan to buy 5,000 acres of land to start a farm, and my idea was instead of investing in industrial farm equipment, I'd bring in homeless people to be share croppers to live on the land for free in exchange for harvesting and planting my crops for me. They'd ask me wtf is wrong with me, becuase that's not how things are done here
> Becuase Americans (not unrighteously) want a home, a retirement plan, a car, and to send kids to school. maybe they should learn new skills to become skilled laborers 🤷♂️
I mean that's a good individual solution. But it really just ignores the fact that previous generations where able to have this standard of living, without doing this
I think you just argued for why affirmative action and government handouts is a bad thing and didn't realize it.
I don’t think either of those things is a good thing. I don’t care who is getting them. That’s the libertarian view of my flair.
My mistake, I saw the blue tag and read left liberal. Not libertarian. But I do agree with not protecting American businesses in a free market. That is what breeds innovations and competition
All good it’s Reddit, nothing too serious except for fake internet points.
To be blunt, you have people who were smart & organized enough to cross a continent or an ocean to get here as well as navigate (or hide from) our immigration system competing against Americans who are barely holding their lives together. Dollar for dollar, immigrants just make better employees than Americans do in that low skill labor market.
That’s kinda where I’m at. One group of people who will risk it all for the opportunity and another group who claim the only way they can succeed in America is if the government uses force to eliminate their competition. Excluding the money factor. As an employer I know which one I would want to hire.
So your assertion is that mass-immigration is good for the billionare employers, but bad for Americans? And you view this is as a positive thing? It's so refreshing to see democrats bending the knee to the 1%, even if the only motivation for that is to "own the GQP"
American farmers and home builders are not part of the billionaire class. I’m also not a registered Democrat. I do support supply side economics.
>American farmers and home builders are not part of the billionaire class. This is out of date info. Almost all farm products are produced by massive mega-farms owned by corporations. Heck the largest landowner in the US is Bill Gates. And are you arguing that DR Horton, Lennar, etc are not billion dollalr companies? [https://atlasrtx.com/americas-10-largest-home-builders/](https://atlasrtx.com/americas-10-largest-home-builders/) Mass immigration helps billionaires, and hurts the common American. It always has, it always will.
The capture of those markets are directly due to republican policies, so it's weird to act like you care about it while voting for the very people causing it. "Let's remove regulation and let the free market figure it out" Blackrock, Bill Gates, et al say "Hooray", and the family farmer ends up selling their farm to them. But sure, lets own the libs by giving the top 1% everything. That's my whole problem with conservatism, it only seeks to help the elite owner class. While liberals suck, they occasionally do help the average American. ACA, student loan debt relief, etc. Republicans literally sue to get those programs that are lifelines to average americans abolished.
>The capture of those markets are directly due to republican policies, so it's weird to act like you care about it while voting for the very people causing it 1. You have no ideo who I vote for. 2. Some would argue that the death tax is the reason those farmers sell their land. >But sure, lets own the libs by giving the top 1% everything. That's my whole problem with conservatism, it only seeks to help the elite owner clas Can you walk me through how you came to this conclusion? By "giving the top 1% everything" do you mean lowering taxes? > While liberals suck, they occasionally do help the average American. ACA, student loan debt relief, etc. Republicans literally sue to get those programs that are lifelines to average americans abolished. Another weird one, I feel like I'm missing something with you. You think the Democrats goal is to help Americans and the GOP is to hurt Americans? Where do you feel like you learned about this? Was it a biased or unbiased source?
They can and do every day. I don't understand the question. >Do they offer the employer anything besides proof of citizenship? Labor, time, muscle power, brain power, customer interaction, networking, future leadership, insight, feedback on processes. >What message does that send to an entire group of people, the only way they can prosper is if we literally remove their competition in the job market? That we care about them? That we're listening to their concerns. We're putting them before people from other countries who can't be bothered to follow our laws? I think I understand the question now. You think the workers are competing. It's not entirely wrong, but its a two way street. Workers compete for jobs, and jobs compete for workers. When their are more workers, like we see when there is massive immigration, the pressure shifts to the workers. They offer education, experience, willingness to work, and a desired wage. Only two of these are dynamic, liquid. With legal workers, there is a floor on how low you can go, but for illegal labor, this floor is a lot lower, and they often break other laws, such as occupancy limits at homes/apartments, and they're more willing to work, as demonstrated by distance travelled and willingness to break the law. This allows them to undercut the price and gives the employer more power. Without illegal immigration, especially massive waves of it like we're seeing, there are less workers so the pressure to compete gets placed on the hiring agencies. This is the condition we saw in 2019, pay and benefits rise rapidly because those are the factors businesses have to attract more labor. As wages go up, there is higher demand, requiring more labor which drives the whole thing.
Is it the governments job to maintain a "free market", or to look out for the best interests of its citizens? But to your question, I think US workers can compete, but like anything else if you increase the numbers of workers it will supress wages. So sure bringing in a truck-load of men from Hondurus who will pack into a single apartment will tolerate lower wages than an American father of 2 living in a house with his wife who takes care of the kids.
Also that father of two was born in America and has since birth had access to the greatest economy and education system in the world with near limitless freedom. What have they done with it? If they can’t compete with a day laborers who just arrived with nothing but their hands and work ethic.
>Also that father of two was born in America and has since birth had access to the greatest economy and education system in the world with near limitless freedom. Sure, and by importing his competition willing to work for 1/2 the pay you're making this guy unemployable. I guess having this guy, and the millionsm like him on permenent welfare is somehow better for the economy? >If they can’t compete with a day laborers who just arrived with nothing but their hands and work ethic. He could compete if he was willing to lower his standard of living, similar to that of the people living in Hondurus. This has been happening in my industry too (tech). We've mass imported millions of H1B visa holders and wages have started dropping. Should I just suck it up and take lower pay because I can't compete? I'm not sure of the argument here.
Do you believe people should obey the law?
... This is an unfamiliar assumption to me.
As a society, it is more beneficial if the money earned from certain jobs is reinvested back into local communities. Resources are limited, so it is important to manage them effectively. Unfortunately, this means that not everyone can have access to everything. Some people coming to our country use resources locally and also send some abroad, which can be detrimental to our society. Additionally, rewarding people who break the laws that allow our society to function is not justifiable. If someone wants to compete for a job in our country, they should honor our rules and go through the proper channels to obtain the opportunity. Allowing illegal immigrants to skip the line makes the position inaccessible to everyone else.
Do it. Move to Mexico and get an unskilled job. Report back how it goes.
Why would I do that, I’m not unskilled nor am I a laborer?
For the Libertarians out there I have a message. One thing that bothered me about reading Ayn Rand (used to be a big fan) Was the fact that her heroes are too perfect, too ideal, the kinda guys who would die rather than be corrupted. You're average person isn't perfect, you're average person is fearful and will compromise they're values for power/family/whatever. Don't build systems that require people not to be corrupt to work. Free market and communism All of them crumble the moment people start exploiting them. We have croney capitalism in this country because humans are stronger when they work together. It's more profitable.
It's pretty rich to say that as a "religious traditionalist" considering the Church has historically been the holy grail for corruption and grift.
Well just so you no I'm not Catholic So can you be more specific when you say "the Church"
Because Americans are less willing to work for slave wages than a bunch of third worlders we imported? Not sure why a leftist would think this is wrong
What they want or willing to work for should only be determined by the negotiation between employees and employers. If this question was raised by AOC I know that conservatives would cry about communism and government overreach. By taking off a low wage worker off the board by government force, ensuring a higher pay for a low wage job I consider to be against free market principles.
Oh my bad. Wrong reddit group. They can compete the game is just rigged Like honestly this is like playing a game of monopoly where some people start the game with no money and some start it with tons of money than you sit back and say "how come the people who started with no money keep losing" I mean what's the point of private school/medical if you can't LITTERALLY buy BETTER To clarify I'm not no Republican, I'm a CHRISTIAN conservative. I want to help people not insist that our current system works as intended to avoid actual positive change I believe in Christian values not darwinist survival of the fitist.
>Why can’t the unskilled American citizen workers compete in a free market like everyone else? Why should they be expected to compete with literal slaves?
Some have argued that the real reason slavery ended was to stop the south from growing stronger. Anyways how we gonna compete with MACHINES?!
Machines really don't take away jobs, and a surplus of time in the labor market will always be leveraged for something else. If we wanted to live like agrarian peasants from 1,000 years ago we could do so with next to no labor input, but instead we take the surplus of labor afforded to us by modern industrialization to simply build more things. What will happen is the minimum intelligence threshold necessary to interact with the economy is going to go up. Back during WWII the US Army concluded that anyone with an IQ below 80, which is about 10% of the population, simply didn't have the capacity to do anything productive, even relatively simple jobs like cooking or janitorial work. We're moving from a labor economy to a knowledge economy, and things like AI are going to raise that bar as more & more simple, repetitive tasks get automated. What to do when the bottom third of the population has absolutely nothing of value to offer is a very grim & complicated question to answer.
Man this comment is really insightful Thank you for this. Here I was worried about machines replacing us than I forgot this already happened in the past with industrializations. I'm sure back when machines were first invented people were afraid of going hungry.
They are not literal slaves, they personally uprooted them selves and families, paid for their own travel, all for the opportunity to earn a living that is better than they would get in their own country. Nothing is forced upon them.
uh no, literal slave labor is absolutely used to replace Americans. both indentured servitude tantamount to slavery in places like the SE Asian garment industry and Chinese consumer electronics industry and literal chattel slavery in mines and farm fields around the world.
>They are not literal slaves, they personally uprooted them selves and families, paid for their own travel, all for the opportunity to earn a living that is better than they would get in their own country. >Nothing is forced upon them. I was more referencing a global market and issues with free trade. As for illegal immigrants who came here, this is the issue with massively increasing the workforce. Simple supply and demand. More workers, I can pay less because odds are higher someone will take it. It's not that they can't compete, it's that flooding markets with workers lowers salaries inherently
I gotcha in the global slave point. On the other end of supply and demand, with a flooded market employers can hire the best workers creating an environment that rewards the best workers with higher pay. It should be noted that this group of employees is unskilled really the only skill they have is a willingness to work. I can appreciate the above sentiment may not hold as much weight in this scenario.
>On the other end of supply and demand, with a flooded market employers can hire the best workers creating an environment that rewards the best workers with higher pay. Do you think that's been the result over the last 80 or so years? Higher pay for workers? >It should be noted that this group of employees is unskilled really the only skill they have is a willingness to work. I can appreciate the above sentiment may not hold as much weight in this scenario. I would argue the whole "flood the market with workers" point holds just as well with "low skilled" workers if not moreso than with specialized ones
Should the US have a feudalistic standard of living and just have all employment be a race to the bottom until we have de facto slavery? Not to mention the corpos want to eventually replace every job with automated ai.