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Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

nytimes.com

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Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

#61

Post by badminton1 »

Walmart is a profitable corporation. According to trickle-down economics, Walmart employees should be doing very well, but no: many of them get paid minimum wage and are on welfare.

Walmart sells products manufactured in places with weak labor laws, including prison and child labor and no American manufacturer can compete with that. On top of that, they evade taxes using tax havens.

All remittances sent to Mexico by legals + illegals are lower than the amount of money Walmart saves through tax evasion tricks.

By doing all these things, they maximize their profits and tribute fewer taxes. Once in a while, they lobby for a tax holiday so they can bring back that money to the US. They are also not alone, most large corporations are doing exactly the same.

On top of that, while the US is #1 in healthcare spending, most of that money does not result in people receiving healthcare. Most of that money stays in endless loops of self-reinforcing bureaucracy and the highly profitable pharmaceutical industry that sells 1 liter bags of "sodium chloride solutions" (saltwater) for as low as $500.

The US is also #1 in defense spending. But what does that defense spending gets you? development hells like the F-35 JSF, and million dollar rockets shot at random empty tents in the middle east. That's what is in the best interest of the military industrial complex.

I would say that corporations are the ones to blame rather than random guys picking fruit for nothing.

Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

#62

Post by burfog »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #34
sdinsn wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that legal immigration has the greatest impact on higher sectors of society- such as salaries in software / IT. This can be fixed by raising the minimum pay for H1Bs. I'd believe that illegal immigration has a incredibly small effect overall.

The illegals are all picking strawberries for below minimum wage so we don't have the bear the true costs of our food. Remove them and there would be serious repercussions for those at the lower strata of society.

Let's substitute some words here:

The slaves are all picking cotton for below minimum wage so we don't have the bear the true costs of our clothing. Remove them and there would be serious repercussions for those at the lower strata of society.

This is not looking very nice, to put it mildly.

Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

#63

Post by skookumchuck »

brickcitymang wrote: post #2

Poverty in America is a result of American capitalism, at a very high level. At a very very high level, it is caused by human greed, and a lack of love for our neighbors. We can talk about wages and employment rates, and race all day long, but those are just details. It's human greed in the end, and our inability to love others like we love ourselves.

The US went from subsistence farming in 1800 to superpower a hundred years later. Nearly the entire population that made up the US arrived penniless, and moved up into the middle class and higher.

To say that American capitalism somehow "caused" poverty is contrary to about every statistic.

Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

#64

Post by TangoTrotFox »

These articles are quite disingenuous as they constantly focus on hourly pay without giving a any context whatsoever to compensation : bonuses, matched retirement/investment plans, insurance, profit-sharing/equity plans, paid time off, paid sick leave days, etc. This really seems just disingenuous to me since this is a major part of compensation as the figures show.

And the worst part is that this measurement of compensation is actively measured and quantified. Here [1] it is. I'll take their word that productivity since 1973 has increased 77%. In that time real hourly compensation has increased 50% and growing.

[1] - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/COMPRNFB

Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

#65

Post by dnomad »

jjoonathan wrote: post #41
bb88 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't complain about being downvoted. This isn't slashdot.

The suppression of dialogue surrounding immigration far exceeds downvotes in scope and severity. In fact, the suggestion that tosser00001's main point had anything to do with silly internet points is a minimization/redirection tactic that is itself a more important instance of the very thing being complained about.

> The suppression of dialogue surrounding immigration far exceeds downvotes in scope and severity.

The problem with the anti-immigrant zealots is they never provide any evidence for their paranoid fantasies about immigrants increasing unemployment or supressing wages. People who actually study the economic impact of immigration in the West have generally concluded it has insignificant impact or improves the economy.

What do you do with people who, with absolutely zero evidence, continue to blame immigrants/Jews/aliens? You downvote and move on.

Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

#66

Post by some_account »

tosser00001 wrote: post #24
tosser00001 wrote: post #14

Wage growth would help, but for some reason, these articles never even mention immigration. The scale of immigration both legal and illegal I believe has the greatest impact on the lowest sectors of society. The lack of discussion on the impact so many potential new workers is having on wage growth leads one to think they believe labor cost is the one thing immune to the law of supply and demand.

It’s interesting the immigration cannot even be mentioned without getting down voted. It seems obvious to me that fewer low skill workers would result in higher wages for those who could most benefit from it.

I'm Sweden we are labeled as racists if we talk about it, so downvoting seems minor :)

Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

#67

Post by viraptor »

whatever1 wrote: post #49
acchow wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook is banned behind the Great Firewall. Regardless, what does this have to do with the discussion?

The People do not have stake at company A. Company A does not share the true values of the People. Company A is now banned. Repeat until all companies comply.

True. But what does this have to do with poverty levels discussed here?

Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

#68

Post by apatters »

brickcitymang wrote: post #58
brickcitymang wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human greed lol or they're poor and nobody wants to help them because they're too busy covering their own asses. Basically there's enough resources in the world for nobody to live in poverty. It doesn't work because nobody's willing to make it work, which is just human nature of selfishness.

And I don't deny this nature in myself

It seems like you're lamenting what is basically an immutable biological trait without proposing any solutions. I don't think this adds much to the discussion.

Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

#69

Post by Joeri »

dgut wrote: post #47
acchow wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're ignoring the demand side. Immigrants also increase demand. For everything.

Do they? By how much? Immigrants have usually low wages. Anyways, in Western Europe, the increased demand (which is probably smaller than in the US), those things are easily canceled by the added costs to public healthcare + social benefits.

In belgium the rising healthcare cost is almost entirely due to an aging population. To take care of those elderly you need nurses and care workers, 46000 extra per year for the coming decade. Meanwhile the schools only graduate 5000 per year, due to lack of interest by the native population because of the odd hours in nursing. The only way they’ve found to bridge the gap and take care of the elderly is bringing over people from the phillipines, because it turns out this problem exists across europe (aging population = care gap). Those immigrants are not taking anyone’s job away, they earn a decent wage and they’re doing a net positive contribution through work, taxes and commerce.

That’s an anecdote but there are plenty more like that. All of which is to say that the story the right pushes about immigrants being bad for the economy is just a story and doesn’t necessarily fit the facts.

Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

#70

Post by lalos »

tosser00001 wrote: post #14

Wage growth would help, but for some reason, these articles never even mention immigration. The scale of immigration both legal and illegal I believe has the greatest impact on the lowest sectors of society. The lack of discussion on the impact so many potential new workers is having on wage growth leads one to think they believe labor cost is the one thing immune to the law of supply and demand.

Have you checked minimum wage vs inflation chart? Seems that not having a minimum wage that goes up yearly to catch up to inflation has the biggest impact in wage growth. There are bigger fish to fry rather than speculate on the impact of immigration (but not as easy to sell to angry constituents), the current population is at ~320 million and you receive ~1 million immigrants a year, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and let's more than double it and say 5 million. That represents 1.5% unwanted growth via immigration, I have my doubts that a change so small can have an impact so big on an economic system.
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