Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

Heaven forbid I live on 1/4 of the land that my parents had even though I have a far greater income. I guess I shouldn't have bought the place? Or I should somehow subdivide the lot even though it's quite narrow and hilly/forested? Fuck nature, I guess.

> Given, unlike you, they need to be considered productive by the government to move to Canada, why would they not be allowed to be here?

That was literally the point of my post, but because you didn't seem to get it: because that amount might be so high as to drive housing costs further up when people are already struggling to rent/buy a home. A government should serve its own people, first and foremost. If that means immigration helps them (as it absolutely can) - great! If it means that too much immigration instead hurts their citizens, it should be dialed back.

Regardless about how much we export, prices are tightly coupled to supply and demand. If your theory holds, we should see a commensurate increase in cost. It doesn't matter if net exports go down unless there are effects from steep tariffs.

I agree that a large part of that many Americans are unwilling to do that work for that pay. And yet they are beneficiaries of that low-pay work in the form of low food costs. I find it particularly unsettling when those who directly benefit simultaneously demonize the immigrants who they derive some of that benefit. However, there have been studies showing that Americans underproduce migrant labor in industries like agriculture. So it's not just the pay, it the ability to produce. Similar work quotes farmers as saying they literally can't hire Americans to do the work. Unless I suppose you want to pay them salaries that risk farms being unsustainable financially. The extension of these points is if you were to hire Americans at an American wage, you get both less production and a higher cost while simultaneously risking the solvency of the farms.

I also agree that the use of an immigrant underclass is dystopian. Especially when you factor in the abuse that occurs in workplaces where employees are fearful of recourse due to their immigration status. And yet it happens and one of the often used excuses is that it's necessary to essentially subsidize a certain quality of life for Americans.

FWIW, it's usually termed "general" labor rather than "dumb" labor. You're point here seems to contradict your previous point that immigration also brings down the wages of skilled jobs. They way they do both is if they are represented in both skilled and unskilled employees.

As far as construction, this is largely region-dependent. (That's why I put the south in the original response. It's especially reliant on immigrant labor.) A rough rule of thumb is that labor is 20-40% of construction cost. Regardless, in my region, immigrants are the bulk of skilled labor as well. Again, anecdotal, but once you peel back the thin veneer, you can see how much of the American lifestyle relies on immigrant labor. And simply banning them in the hope that it increases housing availability will have many second order effects.

Then you can start with pasta which takes slightly longer to boil and you can get a pre-made jar of pasta sauce to put on it. You can even put cold pasta sauce on a hot pasta and it will warm up.

Neither of these dishes will harm you if you mess up cooking them, and both take less than 30 minutes. Practice makes perfect, so you can iterate and try new things.

I've had pretty intense past problems in the past, I found the best ways to address them are keeping all food and sealed containers, preferably glass jars with a ceiling lid. Doing dishes and avoiding standing water also helps. The idea is the star of the bugs. If there is no food they won't come looking.

As a side note not intended to be aggressive or attacking, if the idea of boiling pasta or Ramen induces fear or anxiety, you should seek medical help. Not everyone is typical, but everyone has the opportunity to learn and grow.

I was about to mention Fannie and Freddie as a footnote about how the government might be involved in all this, but didn't think it was a big deal. Yet Google tells me they end up buying 70% of mortgages. So there's some flow here that I'd do well to understand.