131–140 of 632 posts
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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.
So now your two SUVs and white McMansion with a picket fence are an "immutable biological trait"?
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> 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.
> With the detachment of wage growth from economic growth in recent decades 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?
Yeah, it was immigrants who engineered the massive Reagan-era tax burden shift off of elites and on to the working class (and subsequent downward tax burden shifts under Bush 43 and Trump which reinforced the effects of the Reagan shifts.)
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> With the detachment of wage growth from economic growth in recent decades 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?
> And you think immigrants are responsible for this? Entirely? No. Partially? Yes. Most notably immigration has a huge impact on housing and the ever increasing demand for it. This alone is responsible for much of the fall in living standards.
Do you have any evidence at all for this claim or is this just something you made up out of thin air?
I mean, no offense, but I remember when Brexiters were claiming the same [1] earlier this year and it was quickly proven to be nonsense.
Maybe you can do a better job?
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/apr/13/housing-mini...
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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.
As you've mentioned the real cost of food and farming in the US is effectively heavily subsidized by the fact that many of said farms employ illegal immigrants for labor, both because they refuse to pay minimum wage and because Americans as a whole seem to refuse to do said jobs. Legal immigration has a comparatively small effect due to the fact that they're part of the skilled labor force and generally fill gaps in…
”For a typical household, a 40 percent increase in farm labor costs translates into a four percent increase in retail prices (0.30 farm share of retail prices x 0.33 farm labor share of farm revenue = 10 percent, farm labor costs rise 40 percent, and 0.4 x 10 = 3.6 percent). If farm wages rose 40 percent, and the increase were passed on fully to consumers, average spending on fresh fruits and vegetables would rise by about $21 a year (4 percent x $530 = $21).
Giving seasonal farm workers a 40 percent wage increase, on the other hand, would raise their average earnings from $11,720 for 1,000 hours of work to $16,400, lifting the average worker above the federal poverty line of $11,770 for an individual in 2015.”
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My point was that none of it was simple. There are many other poor Americans that have had issues pop up like this but are unable to afford or find lawyers to represent them in court. You're absolutely correct that we're lucky that not only did we win the suit but that the lawyer took on the case. Other people aren't as lucky.
Is there a reason you couldn't simply have taken out a student loan?
If you consider my situation to be the norm for a lot of poorer students, then you also start to see where the student debt crisis comes from and how it ties into the economic well-being for many people my age. There's a lot of people where they would have no choice but to dive straight into a lot of these predatory loans without prior education or finance knowledge and graduate knee deep in debt.
In another way, I was lucky that I graduated college with only $0 to my name. I could've graduated with -$40,000-80,000.
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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.
It’s more complicated than that though. In Denmark where I live, we have trouble staffing certain industry jobs. Jobs like gutting, freezing and packing fish or general slaughter houses. It used to be that these were low paying jobs, packed with immigrants. Since you need a social security number to work, and we’re rather good at finding people who cheat the system, illegal immigration workers isn’t really a thing in…
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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.
It’s more complicated than that though. In Denmark where I live, we have trouble staffing certain industry jobs. Jobs like gutting, freezing and packing fish or general slaughter houses. It used to be that these were low paying jobs, packed with immigrants. Since you need a social security number to work, and we’re rather good at finding people who cheat the system, illegal immigration workers isn’t really a thing in…
I think this is an important point that many people seem to gloss over when discussing what humans _deserve_ to be paid.
Many believe the uniqueness of a skill set or how much physical stress is inherent to a position should be the only factors which increase a salary.
But the point you highlight here says that the amount of soul-crushing misery a position entails should also play a significant role when determining salaries.
It seems that in many countries, companies can get away with paying soul-crushing positions so terribly because so many people are coerced into these jobs--forced to choose between incredibly soul-crushing, low paying positions or watch their families starve, become homeless, not be able to afford medical care etc...
Which leads me to wonder if there are any societal changes we could make in order to nudge salaries to reflect when a job is mentally abusive. Similar to how pay typically reflects when a job is physically abusive.
I'm guessing Denmark has a decent safety net which forces companies to actually factor in mental abuse of a position when they're formulating salaries which ensures their citizens are compensated accordingly?
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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.
It’s more complicated than that though. In Denmark where I live, we have trouble staffing certain industry jobs. Jobs like gutting, freezing and packing fish or general slaughter houses. It used to be that these were low paying jobs, packed with immigrants. Since you need a social security number to work, and we’re rather good at finding people who cheat the system, illegal immigration workers isn’t really a thing in…
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.
It’s more complicated than that though. In Denmark where I live, we have trouble staffing certain industry jobs. Jobs like gutting, freezing and packing fish or general slaughter houses. It used to be that these were low paying jobs, packed with immigrants. Since you need a social security number to work, and we’re rather good at finding people who cheat the system, illegal immigration workers isn’t really a thing in…
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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…
We can actually hold for immigration to some degree. For example, while not exactly doubling, the entry of women into the workforce after WWII had a similar effect of massively increasing the the supply of labour. 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 lar…