71–80 of 632 posts
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.
What is poverty in noncapitalist countries a result of?
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.
No it doesn't. This narrative is nonsense. There's a lot of research on the impact of immigration on, for example, Germany. None have concluded that such immigrants are doing anything but supplying desperately needed labor to Germany's economy and have had significant positive benefits [1].
The fact that it is so easy to learn about this (there's plenty of data, much of it free and easily available) and yet people continue to spout this narrative speaks volumes.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Has anyone ever calculated the maximum possible wage for a job? Take strawberry picking for an example. If run by a non-profit, what is the highest possible wage? Would be interesting to see this relative to the actual wage.
It's not like meritocracy is completely unrelated to real life, it matters in a certain regime. However, if like Vanessa, you're born to lesser circumstances, you just cannot escape poverty by just working harder. Similarly, if you are born to very well off standards, even if you're a dope and spend money from Dad's inheritance on cocaine, sure, you won't be successful but you'll still have a net of some kind. You ca…
> the meritocratic myth I've been around to see people over decades, and how their decisions affect their lives. Meritocracy is not a myth. Where people wind up is very much a consequence of their choices. This isn't the Soviet Union where one is assigned a career, a job and an apartment. I've seen immigrants arrive here with nothing and become millionaires. That's why everyone wants to come to America. The opportuni…
True.
But we also have lots of studies showing that the best of the lowest socioeconomic class almost never do better than the laziest of the uppermost socioeconomic class.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.…
Just because it improves the economy doesn't mean it's improved the lives of all people in it. With the detachment of wage growth from economic growth in recent decades you can probably expect people to stop caring about what's good for the economy altogether pretty soon, economic growth is just an abstract number disassociated from the reality of most.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.…
> concluded it has insignificant impact or improves the economy Just because it improves the economy doesn't mean it's improved the lives of all people in it. With the detachment of wage growth from economic growth in recent decades you can probably expect people to stop caring about what's good for the economy altogether pretty soon, economic growth is just an abstract number disassociated from the reality of most.
And you think immigrants are responsible for this?
Or are they simply being used as a sacrificial scapegoat because nobody wants to address the raging inequality in the West?
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 don't know. No one else does either.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
This does not seem obvious to me. For example, imagine if you overnight doubled the US population. Would wages go down? Well, overnight you would also double the economy and double demand for just about every kind of work, from hairdressers to security guards. What's the overall effect? (And you are talking about just 3.5%, not 100%.) Here's one classic study on the effect: David Card, "The Impact of the Mariel Boatl…
You would think that two income earners in a household would increase the economy enough that wages would need to rise due to a subsequent shortage of labor... but it did not.
Wages, in real terms, have largely lost purchasing power to the point where it takes two incomes to have the same (or less) purchasing power than one income did prior to WWII.
Part of it is the productivity gains made post WWII (i.e. we can do more with less labor) but a lot of it is the supply side of labor and competitive pressures pushing the price equilibrium (wages) down.
I'm not making an argument against the entry of women into the workforce. I'm an advocate for 'freedom' so I'm all for women doing what they want as long as they are following the law. My point here is the supply side of labor does not have a large enough increase to the demand side of labor to make up for the decrease in the price of wages.
You see, my parents were both fishermen. It's a grueling, painful job that can destroy your body as you age leaving you with back problems and forcing you to retire early. It also paid poorly and had a lot of risks. Which unfortunately for us, resulted in the loss of his life. His boat had capsized after a routine trip. Turns out there were some issues with the way the boat was built, stuff that should've been caught by the owner. My father and three others died that day.
It was because of his death that my mother filed a wrongful death suit with a lawyer that was luckily working pro-bono, winning a small sum of money that she put in an account to be released on my 18th birthday, money that ended up being the only reason why I was able to go to college and become a software engineer.
So why do I bring this up? It's not for sympathy, but rather to illustrate that my parents were some of the hardest workers I've ever known. They were rewarded for their efforts with little savings, broken bodies and a life of poverty. For a lot of people it doesn't mean a single goddamn thing how hard you work or how hard you try. I bring up personal stories like this because I've talked with coworkers and friends who think that grit and hard work is all you need to make it. That jobs will elevate people out of poverty by virtue of existing.
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…
Immigration applies downward pressure on lower/middle-lower labor classes and harms the power of unions.
I don't blame the immigrants who want to go where the jobs pay more - it's the smart thing for them to do - the blame here lies 100% on the corporations who exploit this (Tyson foods, etc.) and the politicians they ~~bribe~~contribute funds to.