I actually caught on to the automation question from reading Andrew Yang's book, The War on Normal People. Thoughtfully written. Before that I didn't even consider the consequences of when, say, Uber drivers, or truckers, are automated out of existence. It won't happen overnight, of course, but it will happen. I saw the self driving cars being tested in my home city years back.
They shouldn't have to compete both against technology and the rest of the world. We need to invest in the people already here at this time, in my honest opinion, and make it so that people can live a decent life. When we accomplish that, we can tackle global poverty without impoverishing ourselves.
I mean, I guess we can't "ignore" it, but it doesn't make someone drawing a correlation between an African grocer opening up next to a local pawn shop (which is where they are usually located) and the fact that your employer treats you like shit any less ridiculous. I can't tell you how many times in my life I've been "thanked" by customers for speaking English, and I honestly have no idea how to respond to it other than to end the conversation as quickly as possible. #1 is because I didn't DO anything worthy of being thanked for. It's a ridiculous compliment. And #2 is because they aren't concerned that people they interact with don't speak English. They speak English fine. They are concerned about the accents. Now, if you want to talk about corporations offshoring their customer service to a call center in India, that's another matter entirely, but those people aren't even IN the United States, thought I'm quite sure the people calling in ASSUME that they are, thus they ASSUME they are here as a result of immigration. And Wal-Mart is treating the Muslim check-out clerk in a hijab just as badly as the 67 year old white woman who can't survive on her Social Security, and I'm QUITE sure they would treat the later just as poorly if the former wasn't working there at all.
Accents certainly are a problem - that's a sore spot with me at the moment . We're trying over time to teach my son to be as independent as possible and were working yesterday on his skills in phone conversations. He's hard to understand himself on the phone, but also has comprehension difficulties. Talking to an Indian call center about trying to change a train ticket ... did not produce a happy result.
Accents certainly are a problem - that's a sore spot with me at the moment . We're trying over time to teach my son to be as independent as possible and were working yesterday on his skills in phone conversations. He's hard to understand himself on the phone, but also has comprehension difficulties. Talking to an Indian call center about trying to change a train ticket ... did not produce a happy result.
Sure, it can be frustrating in the moment. A well-adjusted person moves on with their life 5 minutes later and doesn't allow it to warp their entire world-view about other cultures. English is actually FAR harder to master than other languages, and I'm guessing 99% of the people who complain about someone who has learned a SECOND language for a job haven't even mastered their first one. For instance, I have often found it VERY hard to listen to conversations in Vietnamese. You just sort of deal with it. The upside is now I know about a wonderful type of soup called pho. The trade-off is worthwhile.
It should therefore be no surprise at all that immigration makes receiving countries better off.
Wow, the U.S.A would have been a third world country by now if it weren't for all those immigrants then. We have taken in around a million legally every year for quite a while, and wages don't go up, education doesn't get better, inequality doesn't get better, health care prices don't go down, standards of living stagnate, the middle of the country suffers a death of despair crisis. Pray tell, where are all these so clearly demonstrable benefits, beyond the mere theoretical?
I do not mean to be rude, so forgive me if I come off that way. I just don't see how on Earth you can square that circle given the reality of mass migration into this country and the lack of economic gains for normal people in any real capacity.
It should therefore be no surprise at all that immigration makes receiving countries better off.
Wow, the U.S.A would have been a third world country by now if it weren't for all those immigrants then. We have taken in around a million legally every year for quite a while, and wages don't go up, education doesn't get better, inequality doesn't get better, health care prices don't go down, standards of living stagnate, the middle of the country suffers a death of despair crisis. Pray tell, where are all these so clearly demonstrable benefits, beyond the mere theoretical?
I mean, those towns in the middle of the country are dead because they were (in many cases) centered around a factory that no longer exists. When the factory is gone, all the other businesses that existed because of the factory have no customers. In the oil boom in Western ND, the amount of hotels, restaurants, stores and hospitals that popped up was straight-up insane. To the point where Wal-Mart and McDonald's were paying a starting wage of $17.00 an hour. The kicker?? A one bedroom rental in the area was going for a bare minimum of $2000 a month. A 3 or 4 bedroom was likely going for $5000. To say nothing of the fact that when Haliburton packs up and leaves, 80% of those businesses are going away as well. It's not a real economy.
If there is something that is being underestimated and not talked about, it may be the resentment parents and grandparents feel when their children move away and go to a place where there are actually people to meet and interact with that goes beyond a 10 mile radius. But why the hell would they stay?? And what kind of selfishness is at play to cause a parent to WANT them to if it's a complete dead-end??
@WarChiefZeke: Education also makes the world better off, but education doesn't solve all of the world's problems, either--you could replace "immigration" with "education" (or, honestly, just pick an abstract positive thing) and the argument would sound the same. The question is not "does immigration solve all of our problems?" but "what are the effects of immigration on our society?", and the benefits are not theoretical. When immigrants have lower crime rates, work longer hours, and have more education and skills than the base population, which is where we are right now,* it's difficult to imagine how any of those things couldn't be a boon for us. If it's not good for people in America to be hard-working, law-abiding, and highly skilled, I don't know what would be good for us. The downsides are a different part of the story.
*Is it even surprising that this is the case? It takes a certain amount of drive to leave one's country in search of a better opportunity far away. I fail to see any difference between a pilgrim in the 17th century and an immigrant in the 21st.
I mean, those towns in the middle of the country are dead because they were (in many cases) centered around a factory that no longer exists
The answer to a decaying factory town likely destroyed by the free trade global economy is not to compete with ever more people for what little remains in a global, race to the bottom marketplace. Surely we can agree on that. Neither is it more globalization impacting their lives generally, but I suppose that's a separate argument.
What would you folks propose as the primary solutions to income inequality?
I'd go with (1) campaign finance reform (that's a more basic structural issue I've been griping about for a while), (2) stronger labor unions, and (3) making the corporate tax rate scale negatively with a company's total employees and those employees' benefits (e.g., a rich company who hires a few workers and pays little will be taxed at a higher rate than a small company who hires many workers and pays them a lot). Unfortunately, few folks in the GOP are big on the first one, and the third one isn't something I've heard advocated by any politicians (or, well, anyone besides me!).
Of course I'm not saying don't embrace automation, I'm saying don't embrace mass migration. Both of them at the same time very clearly have the impact of hurting wages across a wide variety of sectors at a time when real wages have been stagnant for decades and the fundamentals of life, housing, health care, and education, are less affordable than ever before. Something has to change.
No.
Migration doesn't hurt wages. Not having proper regulations and punishments in place for companies that take advantage of illegal migration does.
Purchasing from companies that take advantage of wage imbalances (such as Walmart) does.
Having a person (or group of people) come here legally, to enhance the fabric of community with their own culture doesn't. A good example of enhancing a community through immigration is food. Ordered any Chinese take out lately? How about Sushi? or Pho? Mexican food? How about Tandoori, Samosas or Puri from India? Or how about some Somalian Xalwa? Shawarmas (similar to a Gyro) are very popular here. None of these would have been introduced into North America without migration, and I can usually tell how diverse a place is just by looking up their restaurants.
Of course I'm not saying don't embrace automation, I'm saying don't embrace mass migration. Both of them at the same time very clearly have the impact of hurting wages across a wide variety of sectors at a time when real wages have been stagnant for decades and the fundamentals of life, housing, health care, and education, are less affordable than ever before. Something has to change.
No.
Migration doesn't hurt wages. Not having proper regulations and punishments in place for companies that take advantage of illegal migration does.
Purchasing from companies that take advantage of wage imbalances (such as Walmart) does.
Having a person (or group of people) come here legally, to enhance the fabric of community with their own culture doesn't. A good example of enhancing a community through immigration is food. Ordered any Chinese take out lately? How about Sushi? or Pho? Mexican food? How about Tandoori, Samosas or Puri from India? Or how about some Somalian Xalwa? Shawarmas (similar to a Gyro) are very popular here. None of these would have been introduced into North America without migration, and I can usually tell how diverse a place is just by looking up their restaurants.
I feel like I would have half as much to look forward to from a culinary perspective where I live without about a half a dozen of these options. In my opinion, ethnic food is such a superior experience that I almost don't want to eat at any traditional "American" restaurants anymore.
The answer to a decaying factory town likely destroyed by the free trade global economy is not to compete with ever more people for what little remains in a global, race to the bottom marketplace. Surely we can agree on that. Neither is it more globalization impacting their lives generally, but I suppose that's a separate argument.
I hope you are seeing now, maybe a little bit, that immigrants are not causing all your problems as certain Politicians have been trying to sell.
The issue for our problems are more complex than that. Unfortunately, the fear of foreigners with different languages, customs, and appearance is an easy sell for opportunists selling snake oil.
These folks profit off of hate and dividing us while the elites (Billionaires) run off with the money and tax cuts for themselves.
It should therefore be no surprise at all that immigration makes receiving countries better off.
Wow, the U.S.A would have been a third world country by now if it weren't for all those immigrants then. We have taken in around a million legally every year for quite a while, and wages don't go up, education doesn't get better, inequality doesn't get better, health care prices don't go down, standards of living stagnate, the middle of the country suffers a death of despair crisis. Pray tell, where are all these so clearly demonstrable benefits, beyond the mere theoretical?
I do not mean to be rude, so forgive me if I come off that way. I just don't see how on Earth you can square that circle given the reality of mass migration into this country and the lack of economic gains for normal people in any real capacity.
I think I answered that in my original note. There's no reason at all that the benefits to the economy as a whole can't be far greater than the costs, but that the benefits be distributed so unequally that the costs outweigh the benefits for particular groups. That's not a necessary consequence of immigration though, but of policies that encourage such inequality. It's only in recent times that income growth in the US has been concentrated at the top end rather than being spread more evenly across society.
Decisions about health and education policy have virtually nothing to do with immigration, while loss of industry is the result of globalization rather than immigration. There is of course a similar issue with that - it is easy to point to problems caused by globalization and ignore the benefits (for instance pointing to specific jobs that have been lost as a result of industries moving abroad, but ignoring the impact of lower consumer prices that results). While the overall economic benefits of immigration are very clear though, there's less consensus about the economic benefits of globalization - partly I think because it's much more difficult to disentangle the effects of globalization than those of immigration. On this topic, there's a relatively brief discussion of the pros and cons associated with NAFTA here.
As for the impact on the country as a whole, the US is quite clearly not a poor country. As you say, it has had considerable immigration for most of its existence. If all the studies are wrong and immigration were in fact economically bad for a country, it would be some sort of a miracle for the US to have overcome that effect to such an extent.
What would you folks propose as the primary solutions to income inequality?
I'd go with (1) campaign finance reform (that's a more basic structural issue I've been griping about for a while), (2) stronger labor unions, and (3) making the corporate tax rate scale negatively with a company's total employees and those employees' benefits (e.g., a rich company who hires a few workers and pays little will be taxed at a higher rate than a small company who hires many workers and pays them a lot). Unfortunately, few folks in the GOP are big on the first one, and the third one isn't something I've heard advocated by any politicians (or, well, anyone besides me!).
I agree money should not be the primary driver in politics.
I'm not sure about your corporation tax argument. While I can see the attraction, I suspect it would be extremely difficult to implement in practice. It also ignores the wider benefits to society of innovation - in the long run, encouraging companies to continue employing workers rather than introduce more efficient techniques will make a country less competitive. That may not be a problem if there's no movement between countries (of people, trade or capital), but that would be a radical change from existing economies.
On unions, it's vastly out of date, but I did study that specifically as part of my economics degree. I think there is a need for balance there. Where unions are too weak I agree that can exacerbate inequality (though I think political decisions have far more impact). It's easy though for unions to be too strong as well. In that situation they can certainly keep higher pay for their existing members, but that comes at the expense of the industry as a whole - and hence can actually be counter-productive if your goal is to reduce income inequality. UK examples I can think of include the coal industry, where union resistance to modernization greatly accelerated the demise of the industry. I did my dissertation on the labor market in professional soccer, so that's an example dear to my heart. The PFA (Professional Footballers Association) did a great job in rebalancing things in the 1960s (ending the unfair maximum wage for instance), but it's much more arguable whether its influence in recent years has been positive.
Other ways to reduce income inequality could include:
- investing in education and training
- limiting pay to a multiple of the lowest paid person in an organisation
- providing a better balance between job security and corporate flexibility
- having a realistic minimum wage
Of course I'm not saying don't embrace automation, I'm saying don't embrace mass migration. Both of them at the same time very clearly have the impact of hurting wages across a wide variety of sectors at a time when real wages have been stagnant for decades and the fundamentals of life, housing, health care, and education, are less affordable than ever before. Something has to change.
No.
Migration doesn't hurt wages. Not having proper regulations and punishments in place for companies that take advantage of illegal migration does.
Purchasing from companies that take advantage of wage imbalances (such as Walmart) does.
Having a person (or group of people) come here legally, to enhance the fabric of community with their own culture doesn't. A good example of enhancing a community through immigration is food. Ordered any Chinese take out lately? How about Sushi? or Pho? Mexican food? How about Tandoori, Samosas or Puri from India? Or how about some Somalian Xalwa? Shawarmas (similar to a Gyro) are very popular here. None of these would have been introduced into North America without migration, and I can usually tell how diverse a place is just by looking up their restaurants.
The rate of people who are entrepreneurs in this country doesn't crack 7%. If you entire defense of immigrations impact on wages is a based on less than 10% of the population, you are missing a massive slice of the picture in favorable of a minority with more positive outcomes. And it is also arguable that businesses from people born there would be in that place.
It's simple supply and demand, the most basic of all economic principles. The labor market will be shrinking due to automation of specialized tasks, and so there is no need to the labor supply to grow. If it does, it lowers the bargaining power of the rest. This is incredibly basic, so if it the logic is wrong, how it is wrong should be simple. And, more importantly, there should be some real gains to show for many many years of more or less open migration policies. I care more about a decent standard of living than I do a large food variety myself.
There still has to be *workers*, what the majority of people, immigrant or not, will end up being. Focusing only on buisness and not the working people, it makes me feel like I've become the leftist or something.
It's 2 am, and I work tommorow, so expect me to go ghost for a day or two, but I want to come back to this, because I feel strongly about it and the think the answer is pretty clear.
Of course I'm not saying don't embrace automation, I'm saying don't embrace mass migration. Both of them at the same time very clearly have the impact of hurting wages across a wide variety of sectors at a time when real wages have been stagnant for decades and the fundamentals of life, housing, health care, and education, are less affordable than ever before. Something has to change.
No.
Migration doesn't hurt wages. Not having proper regulations and punishments in place for companies that take advantage of illegal migration does.
Purchasing from companies that take advantage of wage imbalances (such as Walmart) does.
Having a person (or group of people) come here legally, to enhance the fabric of community with their own culture doesn't. A good example of enhancing a community through immigration is food. Ordered any Chinese take out lately? How about Sushi? or Pho? Mexican food? How about Tandoori, Samosas or Puri from India? Or how about some Somalian Xalwa? Shawarmas (similar to a Gyro) are very popular here. None of these would have been introduced into North America without migration, and I can usually tell how diverse a place is just by looking up their restaurants.
The rate of people who are entrepreneurs in this country doesn't crack 7%. If you entire defense of immigrations impact on wages is a based on less than 10% of the population, you are missing a massive slice of the picture in favorable of a minority with more positive outcomes. And it is also arguable that businesses from people born there would be in that place.
It's simple supply and demand, the most basic of all economic principles. The labor market will be shrinking due to automation of specialized tasks, and so there is no need to the labor supply to grow. If it does, it lowers the bargaining power of the rest. This is incredibly basic, so if it the logic is wrong, how it is wrong should be simple. And, more importantly, there should be some real gains to show for many many years of more or less open migration policies. I care more about a decent standard of living than I do a large food variety myself.
There still has to be *workers*, what the majority of people, immigrant or not, will end up being. Focusing only on buisness and not the working people, it makes me feel like I've become the leftist or something.
One problem with this analysis is the assumption that jobs remain the same. Automation has been a factor throughout the existence of the US, but there are more jobs now than ever before - because most of those jobs are different to those in the past.
You can have a potential argument about whether the quality of life now is better than the US in the 1800s, but I don't think there's a credible argument against the fact that there have been massive economic improvements for most people. Even if you compare relative positions - such as the US against European countries - the US economy as a whole has clearly performed well (despite/because of the much higher degree of immigration).
The rate of unemployment in the US is currently low (see here for analysis over time). It's thus not the case that immigrants are taking all the available jobs and leaving others unemployed. There are specific geographical areas and industrial sectors where unemployment is a problem, but that's nothing to do with immigration - these are places where jobs have been lost, not where they've been taken by immigrants.
As referred to earlier there is a potential issue about the availability of immigrants depressing wage levels, but that's only in the context of policies that aid and abet income inequality rather than due to immigration per se.
What has changed over the years is the amount of and wages paid for 'unskilled' labor jobs. The days when you could drop out of school after 6th grade and get a job at Ford or GM that paid enough to support a work at home mom and 4 kids are long gone.
It boggles my mind that the auto industry did pay that much and it was not in the remote past, it was during my lifetime. There were line workers who not only supported a wife and kids, they also had enough money left over for a second vehicle (usually a truck with a trailer), snowmobiles, fishing boats, dirt bikes, and a cabin up north. I'm not kidding, I grew up in the suburbs of Flint! That's how far things have fallen...
The Congressional Budget Office actually released some numbers yesterday about the very thing we were talking about, immigration's impact on wages.
The conclusion isn't that immigrants are harmful in all cases, but it depends on their skills and the skills of the native workers. Bringing in skills we don't have or are complementary is generally benign, though I would still argue we should invest in producing those skills within our own population
In the vast majority of cases, however, it is harmful, because most of the migration we get is low skill, hurting our own poorest people the most.
Contrary to popular belief, most immigrants aren't small buisness owners or budding CEO's, most are pretty ordinary. And we have plenty of ordindary people that need help already.
Other ways to reduce income inequality could include:
- investing in education and training
- limiting pay to a multiple of the lowest paid person in an organisation
- providing a better balance between job security and corporate flexibility
- having a realistic minimum wage
I'm skeptical about how much the U.S. at least needs the first one. I have a biased sample due to being a Millennial, but my generation is famously underpaid and over-educated for the jobs we have. I suppose the younger generation may still benefit, but I feel skeptical that one of the causes of low wages in the United States is folks being too unskilled. We have a fabulously skilled and hardworking population, but that doesn't translate into higher wages unless those workers have a certain amount of bargaining power. In the EU and UK, unions are very strong, but in the U.S., unions do not have much power to negotiate for better wages and benefits. Overly strong labor unions are not a realistic danger for the U.S. We'd have to go very far in that direction before we ever started going too far.
The second idea is quite clever. It wouldn't just limit maximum pay; it would give the CEO of a company themself a powerful reason to increase the pay of the lowest-paid employees. It might also encourage automation even further, though--if your poorest workers can be replaced by robots, laying them off would still be a great way to increase CEO compensation. Bump off all of the $10/hour guys, and you can base your pay as a CEO on the $15/hour guys. Still, I doubt that would be worse than the current system.
What would the third option entail?
The minimum wage in the States hasn't been adjusted for many years now. It's hopelessly out of date. It really should be scaled for inflation at least, and I think adjusting it for purchasing power parity would make sure not to leave city workers underpaid or squeeze out low-wage jobs in rural areas where a high minimum wage--the kind that would be sufficient for the city's living standards--would be harder for smaller rural or suburban businesses to match.
Just so we're clear here, after "Saddam was behind 9/11" and "WMD", eventually the reasoning we landed on was "a free and democratic Iraq". Well, free and democratic Iraq just told us to get the fuck out of their house, and we told them to go pound sand. America is far and away the greatest destabilizing force in the world today. Unconscionable given what we were sold in the later stages of that war. We're a rogue state:
The Congressional Budget Office actually released some numbers yesterday about the very thing we were talking about, immigration's impact on wages.
The conclusion isn't that immigrants are harmful in all cases, but it depends on their skills and the skills of the native workers. Bringing in skills we don't have or are complementary is generally benign, though I would still argue we should invest in producing those skills within our own population
In the vast majority of cases, however, it is harmful, because most of the migration we get is low skill, hurting our own poorest people the most.
Contrary to popular belief, most immigrants aren't small buisness owners or budding CEO's, most are pretty ordinary. And we have plenty of ordindary people that need help already.
Thanks for those. In reference to some of the issues we've discussed:
- the report confirms that the immigrant population age profile is significantly skewed towards younger adults, so that a higher proportion of immigrants are economically active.
- immigrant workers are stated to be more productive, with higher than average rates of innovation and entrepreneurship.
- immigration does not exert any significant impact on unemployment rates.
- there are no specific figures or conclusions presented on the impact on the federal budget, though the information on both productivity and entitlement to benefits would strongly suggest that immigration has a positive impact on government finances.
In relation to wages, I generally agree with the text you quoted, but it's worth noting that it's based purely on changes to the supply side. Immigration also has an impact on the demand side, which is often forgotten about - if immigrants increase the demand for particular goods as much as they increase the availability of labor to make those goods, the net effect on wages should theoretically be neutral. For the work done by the lowest paid sector of people I accept though that demand changes are unlikely to entirely offset supply ones. However, a minimum wage could be used as a relatively easy and effective way to prevent this effect from distorting wages of these workers.
The graph you posted shows the % of people in the country in 2018 with various levels of education. The issue you were highlighting about potential downward pressure on unskilled wages is due to the disproportionately high number of foreign born people without even the equivalent of a high school diploma. However, for higher levels of education you see the opposite effect. 14% of the population in 2018 were foreign born, but 20% of the population with graduate degrees were foreign born, meaning the chance of a foreign born person having a graduate degree would be about 50% higher.
Edit: as the proportions of people with different levels of educational attainment looked slightly odd to me, I looked at the Census Bureau data on the number of people at various stages of educational attainment - see here - to do a cross-check. I suspect the reason the CBO figures looked odd to me is that I didn't understand what was meant by the categorization of "Graduate Degree". I was thinking that would refer to anything beyond a Batchelor's degree, in which case the proportions of native and foreign born are rather closer than suggested by the CBO figures. However, looking at the detailed Census Bureau figures, I think Graduate Degree is equivalent to the Doctoral Degree category in the census figures - which is a much smaller set than I was envisaging (about 2% for native born and 3% for foreign born).
Other ways to reduce income inequality could include:
- investing in education and training
- limiting pay to a multiple of the lowest paid person in an organisation
- providing a better balance between job security and corporate flexibility
- having a realistic minimum wage
What would the third option entail?
I particularly had in mind here workers who are technically employed, but in practice have no certainty of actually getting any work. There's been a big rise in these 'zero hour' contracts in the UK in recent years. While many people are happy with the flexibility and feel they are treated fairly, there's no doubt that some employers use them to exploit workers - making it difficult in practice for them to get work elsewhere (though the law requires in theory this should not happen). I don't know the position in the US and don't have time to research that just now, but my impression is that exploitation is probably a bigger problem than in the UK.
I think these contracts are an instance where employers have been given too much flexibility at the cost of uncertainty for workers. There are various options for adjusting the balance and I don't have strong feelings about what would be best - but I feel that for the health of even just the economy alone (let alone wider society) there should be some rebalancing between the rights of employers and workers.
The graph you posted shows the % of people in the country in 2018 with various levels of education. The issue you were highlighting about potential downward pressure on unskilled wages is due to the disproportionately high number of foreign born people without even the equivalent of a high school diploma. However, for higher levels of education you see the opposite effect. 14% of the population in 2018 were foreign born, but 20% of the population with graduate degrees were foreign born, meaning the chance of a foreign born person having a graduate degree would be about 50% higher.
Yes, that's pretty much what I said in summarizing it. The impact on wages depends on the skill set, and we get a disproportionately high number of unskilled workers.
I have no idea what your point is about them having a higher than average number of people with graduate degrees if we are still seeing a downward wage pressure on the lowest income earners in this country, you know, the people who need better wages the most. This, and most of your post to be honest, seem like irrelevant facts that have no bearing on this.
The people who are being hurt are the mass of the workforce, people who are in low skill jobs. I will remind you that the number 1 private employer in America is Wal-Mart, followed by Amazon, and then some fast food chains, to give a sense of the kind of economy we have. Why on earth should I care about their productivity for their employer? Greater profits for corporate America is not my concern here.
In what way is this harm offset or justified by the fact that more of them have graduate degrees, etc etc? It's not. This isn't important. If those people (high skilled individuals) aren't causing harm, there's no need to take issue with them coming in.
It actually bothers the hell out of me that this can be published in a real, respected academic journal. This is pure theory, that can not be measured by empirical means, constructed wholly in the mind. If some poor underemployed rural person dies of an overdose or liver disease from drinking too much or suicide, that can be measured. If those habits have underlying causes like depression, that can also be measured. But by what possible means can "structural investment in white supremacy" be measured?
This is not science, this is pure ideology and it gets a pass because of the times we live in. The way this person talks makes me not be able to take them seriously as an academic. I'm just absolutely stunned and have so little faith in the integrity of these institutions right now. How do you peer review this? I'm not paying the money but I really, really want to know more.
I guess I can't speak to the rest of the country, but where I live, McDonald's and Wal-Mart are hiring on a perpetual basis. To the point where I often will pass the closest McDonald's to where I live and see an advertisement for a sort of "open hiring" on a certain day where they are essentially handing out a job to any sentient human who walks through the door.
I can only surmise it's because these jobs are awful. People don't want to work there. When they do, they are clearly quiting or being fired at such a rate that the turnover necessitates them to accept walk-ins off the street. I fail to see how immigrants are causing McDonald's and Wal-Mart to be shitty jobs no one wants. Tons of immigrants work at the closest Wal-Mart to me, and they STILL can be barely keep 5 check-out lanes out of 20 open at peak hours. The work sucks, it doesn't pay anything, it has no benefits, and if it DOES have benefits, there is a high probability the company will keep you under 32 hours a week so you don't get them. And even with a massive influx of immigrants in this city, they can't keep themsleves staffed.
These are the jobs that have driven down the unemployment rate. They are technically "employment" but they are basically sustenance-level only, if that.
I mean, they "engineer scarcity and loss" to "use whiteness to manufacture access and privilege"?? This is supposed to be a study of why poor rural white people are lowering in life expectancy.
If you don't understand or won't accept that supply and demand applies to the value of labor, JJ, I just can't help ya. It's not a difficult concept by any means. If there was only 1 person on earth who was capable of fixing cars he could charge as much for his services as people were willing to spend to save their favorite car. If every person is capable of doing it easily than selling that skill isn't worth very much. Even if the only skill you are offering is "breath and a pulse", if there's only a handful of guys, you have to treat them better than if you have thousands to choose from.
It actually bothers the hell out of me that this can be published in a real, respected academic journal. This is pure theory, that can not be measured by empirical means, constructed wholly in the mind.
This problem isn't limited to academic discussions of racial issues. You see it in other areas as well, even political science, but it's especially true for literary criticism and postmodernist schools. I've noticed this for a long time. Academics love ideas, and some of them simply find abstract theory more interesting than concrete issues or events, and therefore discuss theory rather than study reality. The former requires essentially zero legwork or research. Any idiot can throw out an idea based on nothing, but proving the theory or grounding it in real research takes effort, and intelligence.
I essentially never take these fields seriously. At best, they're wasting their own time. At worst, they're encouraging lazy thinking and touting bogus concepts among the general public, just like Freud.
I used to think that journalists were the crazy ones, but now I realize they are just educated people who were taught crazy ideas from maddened professors. What a world we live in.
I did a couple years of computer science but never finished because I realized I hated code. All of the craziness of academia missed me while I was there, except for an apology to the students when Trump was elected lol.
/shrug - the tweets actually make sense to me. I wouldnt say they're exhaustive in explaining the topic they're on but then I dont see anywhere that they claim to be exhaustive.
The Right's anti-intellectualist crusade against higher education is probably one of the most absurd things in our society today.
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They shouldn't have to compete both against technology and the rest of the world. We need to invest in the people already here at this time, in my honest opinion, and make it so that people can live a decent life. When we accomplish that, we can tackle global poverty without impoverishing ourselves.
Sure, it can be frustrating in the moment. A well-adjusted person moves on with their life 5 minutes later and doesn't allow it to warp their entire world-view about other cultures. English is actually FAR harder to master than other languages, and I'm guessing 99% of the people who complain about someone who has learned a SECOND language for a job haven't even mastered their first one. For instance, I have often found it VERY hard to listen to conversations in Vietnamese. You just sort of deal with it. The upside is now I know about a wonderful type of soup called pho. The trade-off is worthwhile.
Wow, the U.S.A would have been a third world country by now if it weren't for all those immigrants then. We have taken in around a million legally every year for quite a while, and wages don't go up, education doesn't get better, inequality doesn't get better, health care prices don't go down, standards of living stagnate, the middle of the country suffers a death of despair crisis. Pray tell, where are all these so clearly demonstrable benefits, beyond the mere theoretical?
I do not mean to be rude, so forgive me if I come off that way. I just don't see how on Earth you can square that circle given the reality of mass migration into this country and the lack of economic gains for normal people in any real capacity.
I mean, those towns in the middle of the country are dead because they were (in many cases) centered around a factory that no longer exists. When the factory is gone, all the other businesses that existed because of the factory have no customers. In the oil boom in Western ND, the amount of hotels, restaurants, stores and hospitals that popped up was straight-up insane. To the point where Wal-Mart and McDonald's were paying a starting wage of $17.00 an hour. The kicker?? A one bedroom rental in the area was going for a bare minimum of $2000 a month. A 3 or 4 bedroom was likely going for $5000. To say nothing of the fact that when Haliburton packs up and leaves, 80% of those businesses are going away as well. It's not a real economy.
If there is something that is being underestimated and not talked about, it may be the resentment parents and grandparents feel when their children move away and go to a place where there are actually people to meet and interact with that goes beyond a 10 mile radius. But why the hell would they stay?? And what kind of selfishness is at play to cause a parent to WANT them to if it's a complete dead-end??
*Is it even surprising that this is the case? It takes a certain amount of drive to leave one's country in search of a better opportunity far away. I fail to see any difference between a pilgrim in the 17th century and an immigrant in the 21st.
The answer to a decaying factory town likely destroyed by the free trade global economy is not to compete with ever more people for what little remains in a global, race to the bottom marketplace. Surely we can agree on that. Neither is it more globalization impacting their lives generally, but I suppose that's a separate argument.
I'd go with (1) campaign finance reform (that's a more basic structural issue I've been griping about for a while), (2) stronger labor unions, and (3) making the corporate tax rate scale negatively with a company's total employees and those employees' benefits (e.g., a rich company who hires a few workers and pays little will be taxed at a higher rate than a small company who hires many workers and pays them a lot). Unfortunately, few folks in the GOP are big on the first one, and the third one isn't something I've heard advocated by any politicians (or, well, anyone besides me!).
No.
Migration doesn't hurt wages. Not having proper regulations and punishments in place for companies that take advantage of illegal migration does.
Purchasing from companies that take advantage of wage imbalances (such as Walmart) does.
Having a person (or group of people) come here legally, to enhance the fabric of community with their own culture doesn't. A good example of enhancing a community through immigration is food. Ordered any Chinese take out lately? How about Sushi? or Pho? Mexican food? How about Tandoori, Samosas or Puri from India? Or how about some Somalian Xalwa? Shawarmas (similar to a Gyro) are very popular here. None of these would have been introduced into North America without migration, and I can usually tell how diverse a place is just by looking up their restaurants.
I feel like I would have half as much to look forward to from a culinary perspective where I live without about a half a dozen of these options. In my opinion, ethnic food is such a superior experience that I almost don't want to eat at any traditional "American" restaurants anymore.
I hope you are seeing now, maybe a little bit, that immigrants are not causing all your problems as certain Politicians have been trying to sell.
The issue for our problems are more complex than that. Unfortunately, the fear of foreigners with different languages, customs, and appearance is an easy sell for opportunists selling snake oil.
These folks profit off of hate and dividing us while the elites (Billionaires) run off with the money and tax cuts for themselves.
I think I answered that in my original note. There's no reason at all that the benefits to the economy as a whole can't be far greater than the costs, but that the benefits be distributed so unequally that the costs outweigh the benefits for particular groups. That's not a necessary consequence of immigration though, but of policies that encourage such inequality. It's only in recent times that income growth in the US has been concentrated at the top end rather than being spread more evenly across society.
Decisions about health and education policy have virtually nothing to do with immigration, while loss of industry is the result of globalization rather than immigration. There is of course a similar issue with that - it is easy to point to problems caused by globalization and ignore the benefits (for instance pointing to specific jobs that have been lost as a result of industries moving abroad, but ignoring the impact of lower consumer prices that results). While the overall economic benefits of immigration are very clear though, there's less consensus about the economic benefits of globalization - partly I think because it's much more difficult to disentangle the effects of globalization than those of immigration. On this topic, there's a relatively brief discussion of the pros and cons associated with NAFTA here.
As for the impact on the country as a whole, the US is quite clearly not a poor country. As you say, it has had considerable immigration for most of its existence. If all the studies are wrong and immigration were in fact economically bad for a country, it would be some sort of a miracle for the US to have overcome that effect to such an extent.
I agree money should not be the primary driver in politics.
I'm not sure about your corporation tax argument. While I can see the attraction, I suspect it would be extremely difficult to implement in practice. It also ignores the wider benefits to society of innovation - in the long run, encouraging companies to continue employing workers rather than introduce more efficient techniques will make a country less competitive. That may not be a problem if there's no movement between countries (of people, trade or capital), but that would be a radical change from existing economies.
On unions, it's vastly out of date, but I did study that specifically as part of my economics degree. I think there is a need for balance there. Where unions are too weak I agree that can exacerbate inequality (though I think political decisions have far more impact). It's easy though for unions to be too strong as well. In that situation they can certainly keep higher pay for their existing members, but that comes at the expense of the industry as a whole - and hence can actually be counter-productive if your goal is to reduce income inequality. UK examples I can think of include the coal industry, where union resistance to modernization greatly accelerated the demise of the industry. I did my dissertation on the labor market in professional soccer, so that's an example dear to my heart. The PFA (Professional Footballers Association) did a great job in rebalancing things in the 1960s (ending the unfair maximum wage for instance), but it's much more arguable whether its influence in recent years has been positive.
Other ways to reduce income inequality could include:
- investing in education and training
- limiting pay to a multiple of the lowest paid person in an organisation
- providing a better balance between job security and corporate flexibility
- having a realistic minimum wage
The rate of people who are entrepreneurs in this country doesn't crack 7%. If you entire defense of immigrations impact on wages is a based on less than 10% of the population, you are missing a massive slice of the picture in favorable of a minority with more positive outcomes. And it is also arguable that businesses from people born there would be in that place.
It's simple supply and demand, the most basic of all economic principles. The labor market will be shrinking due to automation of specialized tasks, and so there is no need to the labor supply to grow. If it does, it lowers the bargaining power of the rest. This is incredibly basic, so if it the logic is wrong, how it is wrong should be simple. And, more importantly, there should be some real gains to show for many many years of more or less open migration policies. I care more about a decent standard of living than I do a large food variety myself.
There still has to be *workers*, what the majority of people, immigrant or not, will end up being. Focusing only on buisness and not the working people, it makes me feel like I've become the leftist or something.
It's 2 am, and I work tommorow, so expect me to go ghost for a day or two, but I want to come back to this, because I feel strongly about it and the think the answer is pretty clear.
One problem with this analysis is the assumption that jobs remain the same. Automation has been a factor throughout the existence of the US, but there are more jobs now than ever before - because most of those jobs are different to those in the past.
You can have a potential argument about whether the quality of life now is better than the US in the 1800s, but I don't think there's a credible argument against the fact that there have been massive economic improvements for most people. Even if you compare relative positions - such as the US against European countries - the US economy as a whole has clearly performed well (despite/because of the much higher degree of immigration).
The rate of unemployment in the US is currently low (see here for analysis over time). It's thus not the case that immigrants are taking all the available jobs and leaving others unemployed. There are specific geographical areas and industrial sectors where unemployment is a problem, but that's nothing to do with immigration - these are places where jobs have been lost, not where they've been taken by immigrants.
As referred to earlier there is a potential issue about the availability of immigrants depressing wage levels, but that's only in the context of policies that aid and abet income inequality rather than due to immigration per se.
It boggles my mind that the auto industry did pay that much and it was not in the remote past, it was during my lifetime. There were line workers who not only supported a wife and kids, they also had enough money left over for a second vehicle (usually a truck with a trailer), snowmobiles, fishing boats, dirt bikes, and a cabin up north. I'm not kidding, I grew up in the suburbs of Flint! That's how far things have fallen...
The conclusion isn't that immigrants are harmful in all cases, but it depends on their skills and the skills of the native workers. Bringing in skills we don't have or are complementary is generally benign, though I would still argue we should invest in producing those skills within our own population
In the vast majority of cases, however, it is harmful, because most of the migration we get is low skill, hurting our own poorest people the most.
Contrary to popular belief, most immigrants aren't small buisness owners or budding CEO's, most are pretty ordinary. And we have plenty of ordindary people that need help already.
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/55967
https://news.yahoo.com/us-rejects-iraq-request-discuss-troop-withdrawal-152035209.html
Thanks for those. In reference to some of the issues we've discussed:
- the report confirms that the immigrant population age profile is significantly skewed towards younger adults, so that a higher proportion of immigrants are economically active.
- immigrant workers are stated to be more productive, with higher than average rates of innovation and entrepreneurship.
- immigration does not exert any significant impact on unemployment rates.
- there are no specific figures or conclusions presented on the impact on the federal budget, though the information on both productivity and entitlement to benefits would strongly suggest that immigration has a positive impact on government finances.
In relation to wages, I generally agree with the text you quoted, but it's worth noting that it's based purely on changes to the supply side. Immigration also has an impact on the demand side, which is often forgotten about - if immigrants increase the demand for particular goods as much as they increase the availability of labor to make those goods, the net effect on wages should theoretically be neutral. For the work done by the lowest paid sector of people I accept though that demand changes are unlikely to entirely offset supply ones. However, a minimum wage could be used as a relatively easy and effective way to prevent this effect from distorting wages of these workers.
The graph you posted shows the % of people in the country in 2018 with various levels of education. The issue you were highlighting about potential downward pressure on unskilled wages is due to the disproportionately high number of foreign born people without even the equivalent of a high school diploma. However, for higher levels of education you see the opposite effect. 14% of the population in 2018 were foreign born, but 20% of the population with graduate degrees were foreign born, meaning the chance of a foreign born person having a graduate degree would be about 50% higher.
Edit: as the proportions of people with different levels of educational attainment looked slightly odd to me, I looked at the Census Bureau data on the number of people at various stages of educational attainment - see here - to do a cross-check. I suspect the reason the CBO figures looked odd to me is that I didn't understand what was meant by the categorization of "Graduate Degree". I was thinking that would refer to anything beyond a Batchelor's degree, in which case the proportions of native and foreign born are rather closer than suggested by the CBO figures. However, looking at the detailed Census Bureau figures, I think Graduate Degree is equivalent to the Doctoral Degree category in the census figures - which is a much smaller set than I was envisaging (about 2% for native born and 3% for foreign born).
I particularly had in mind here workers who are technically employed, but in practice have no certainty of actually getting any work. There's been a big rise in these 'zero hour' contracts in the UK in recent years. While many people are happy with the flexibility and feel they are treated fairly, there's no doubt that some employers use them to exploit workers - making it difficult in practice for them to get work elsewhere (though the law requires in theory this should not happen). I don't know the position in the US and don't have time to research that just now, but my impression is that exploitation is probably a bigger problem than in the UK.
I think these contracts are an instance where employers have been given too much flexibility at the cost of uncertainty for workers. There are various options for adjusting the balance and I don't have strong feelings about what would be best - but I feel that for the health of even just the economy alone (let alone wider society) there should be some rebalancing between the rights of employers and workers.
Yes, that's pretty much what I said in summarizing it. The impact on wages depends on the skill set, and we get a disproportionately high number of unskilled workers.
I have no idea what your point is about them having a higher than average number of people with graduate degrees if we are still seeing a downward wage pressure on the lowest income earners in this country, you know, the people who need better wages the most. This, and most of your post to be honest, seem like irrelevant facts that have no bearing on this.
The people who are being hurt are the mass of the workforce, people who are in low skill jobs. I will remind you that the number 1 private employer in America is Wal-Mart, followed by Amazon, and then some fast food chains, to give a sense of the kind of economy we have. Why on earth should I care about their productivity for their employer? Greater profits for corporate America is not my concern here.
In what way is this harm offset or justified by the fact that more of them have graduate degrees, etc etc? It's not. This isn't important. If those people (high skilled individuals) aren't causing harm, there's no need to take issue with them coming in.
This is not science, this is pure ideology and it gets a pass because of the times we live in. The way this person talks makes me not be able to take them seriously as an academic. I'm just absolutely stunned and have so little faith in the integrity of these institutions right now. How do you peer review this? I'm not paying the money but I really, really want to know more.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(19)33147-2/fulltext
I can only surmise it's because these jobs are awful. People don't want to work there. When they do, they are clearly quiting or being fired at such a rate that the turnover necessitates them to accept walk-ins off the street. I fail to see how immigrants are causing McDonald's and Wal-Mart to be shitty jobs no one wants. Tons of immigrants work at the closest Wal-Mart to me, and they STILL can be barely keep 5 check-out lanes out of 20 open at peak hours. The work sucks, it doesn't pay anything, it has no benefits, and if it DOES have benefits, there is a high probability the company will keep you under 32 hours a week so you don't get them. And even with a massive influx of immigrants in this city, they can't keep themsleves staffed.
These are the jobs that have driven down the unemployment rate. They are technically "employment" but they are basically sustenance-level only, if that.
If you don't understand or won't accept that supply and demand applies to the value of labor, JJ, I just can't help ya. It's not a difficult concept by any means. If there was only 1 person on earth who was capable of fixing cars he could charge as much for his services as people were willing to spend to save their favorite car. If every person is capable of doing it easily than selling that skill isn't worth very much. Even if the only skill you are offering is "breath and a pulse", if there's only a handful of guys, you have to treat them better than if you have thousands to choose from.
I essentially never take these fields seriously. At best, they're wasting their own time. At worst, they're encouraging lazy thinking and touting bogus concepts among the general public, just like Freud.
I did a couple years of computer science but never finished because I realized I hated code. All of the craziness of academia missed me while I was there, except for an apology to the students when Trump was elected lol.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/10/americas/mexico-coahuila-school-shooting/index.html
The Right's anti-intellectualist crusade against higher education is probably one of the most absurd things in our society today.