this post was submitted on 14 May 2024
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The migrant isn’t the reason, no, but an oversupply of people and under supply of jobs will depress wages.
So intentionally immigrating more people than the economy can bear will drive down the cost of labor.
That’s the entire point of TFW and H1B
Undersupply of jobs? That's weird coming from all the "nobody wants to work" rhetoric.
If a company wants to pay a illegal/migrant worker over an red blooded American, that's capitalism baby! Solve that issue instead.
Hahahaha yeah “nobody wants to work (for the unliveable low wages I want to pay)” really is quite the statement, isn’t it?
They never seem to say the whole thing though.
If the position exists at that wage, then someone is willing to work at that wage. The wage will only increase if it is either government mandated to increase, or if no one is willing to work for it unless it is higher. Just because a wage seems unlivable, doesn't necessarily mean that someone isn't willing to work for that amount of pay.
So then why are some people complaining that “nobody is willing to work”?
Simply, it is an example of jumping to conclusions, or, perhaps more specifically, a faulty generalization.
Cool links and all, but you still didn’t answer the question…..
Let me be more specific while using your own terms….
“What conclusion are people jumping to, and based on what information are they using to jump to this conclusion?”
The conclusion that some are jumping to is the statement that "nobody is willing to work". If just a single person is currently willing to work, then that statement is false. I assure you that there is a non-zero amount of people who are currently willing to work.
By definition, there is an inadequate amount of information supporting an argument that is founded on the Jumping Conclusion Bias — when one jumps to conclusions, they are basically inferring a conclusion without any supportive premises:
So you believe that this statement is literal and they believe that “not a single person wants to work” rather than figurative?
And then you spend a paragraph explaining jumping to conclusions while avoiding the obvious question?
We both know that the statement is figurative and not literal, you’re arguing in bad faith.
Have a nice day.
It depends on the person. At face value, regardless of the person, the statement is false. Beyond that, it is sensationalist and disingenuous — essentially clickbait. It really only serves to detract from constructive conversation.
The question being "Why do some people not want to work?"?
I'm not arguing in bad faith. I'm arguing about the statement itself. In the original comment, however, I was arguing that the wages will only increase if the employer isn't able to find someone who meets their requirements at their currently offered salary. It's a market. If an employer wants to hire an employee, their wage must match what that employee is willing to work for. If they are able to fill the position, then there exists employees who are willing to work at that wage.
The statement itself is always used by businesses when they’re struggling to find workers willing to work for the pay offered.
It’s not overly complicated.
You finally acknowledge that the statement isn’t literal, but you’re still entirely ignoring context for when it’s said. I can’t tell if you’re being overly pedantic or still arguing in bad faith.
Either way, this is a waste of my time and I’m done.
Have a nice day
You sound like a company I interviewed with years ago, who, straight-faced advertised a position they were trying to fill for a skilled technical professional at the mid-to-low end of a competitive salary 6 or 7 years ago...but that was mid to low based on a 40 hour work week and they were asking for 45 minimum, with mandatory overtime bumping that number to 55-60 per week for about half the time. And oh by the way, to put in that OT, you were required to work it when other members of your team were on site as well, so most teams just always planned to put in at least a half day every Saturday if not a full day, if not some OT as well. Some teams also came in Sunday.
I explained to them that breaking it down by the hour, they were offering a pay cut to anyone with the skills they demanded, not to mention the obliteration of anything resembling work-life balance...and ended the interview prematurely.
Now I'm job hunting again since I want to relocate and going to switch to remote work full time, and I see they're still posting that same job to the various sites.
So I guess the fact that they're still looking, for most of a decade, means that someone out there is willing to work for that ridiculous wage and schedule?
I'm not certain that I understand the point that you are making, as you seem to be describing an example that backs up my argument. Perhaps you misunderstood me when I said "If the position exists at that wage, then someone is willing to work at that wage". It is a game of statistics: if the employer is willing to wait long enough, and given a large enough pool of applicants, it is statistically probable that they will eventually find an employee to fill that undesirable position. Keep in mind, though, that this is not without cost, for example, the employer sacrifices growth rate due to the time it takes to fill the vacancy, they also risk losing potential employees to competitors who offer more competitve salaries; it is simply an example of supply and demand.
I'd say that your argument describes the total opposite of the reality of the situation.
By your rationale, I suppose I could have a position as my personal assistant, where the assistant runs all of my errands and takes all my calls and drives me everywhere...all for $30 per month.
I'm willing to wait as long as it takes to find the right person for this exciting opportunity (in the meantime I'll handle my own mundane shit) but by your theory, because the position exists, then someone out there is willing to work for that wage!
The only thing that would potentially stop you from doing that is that it may end up being less than minimum wage, depending on the hours.
Sure, why not? If you are selling a product at a higher price than every other store around you, given enough time, you will eventually find a sucker oblivious enough or lazy enough or stupid enough to buy it despite its high price.
It's not really a "theory". I'm just saying that given a large enough sample size, it seems statistically probable that you will eventually find someone who will take the job, even if only for a short period. That isn't to say that it will necessarily be sustainable, or that the amount of time required to get an employee is within one's lifetime, but to say that it would never happen seems baseless — it's kind of like the Infinite Monkey Theorem.
They don’t have to pay them below minimum wage to suppress wages.
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w32389/w32389.pdf
Basically all published research on this subject indicates that migrant labour has very little effect on native wages.
This makes sense, because a migrant is a human being, not a machine. That is, they do not just produce, they also consume.
Incidentally, I'm very gratified by people here not tolerating this sort of fash adjacent rhetoric. Shit made reddit intolerable.
https://www.nber.org/digest/apr17/winners-and-losers-h-1b-visa-program
It’s really not that simple.
It’s not that immigrants are “taking yer jerbs “ but it’s really hard to deny that the economics of supply with cheap labor will suppress wages.
I’m not anti immigration, nor am I pro globalisation. But it certainly seems like many jobs that are being filled by immigrants, are being filled by that because the companies are exploiting the immigrants and not paying local wages.
I work in the tech industry and I see it.
Hell, here in Canada, the TFW’s were used to staff Tim hortons and McDonalds because the employer didn’t want to raise wages to match the value of the labor they wanted.
So what happened? They brought in temporary foreign workers, abused them, housed them 6 to a room and charged them exorbitant rates for rent. The foreign workers were used to depress wages and they were treated like shit .
in THEORY they didnt pay less than minumum wage, but in practice after forcing them to rent housing from the franchiser, it worked out to less than minumum wage.
these are REAL results, and they don't show up on your imigration study because they didnt immigrate, they were just used.
All right, has a small postive effect on native wages in aggregate, as the paper I sent takes pains to point out.
The point being, increased competition in a given sector will lower wages, obviously. But, all that's really doing for the tech sector is drawing forward the natural balancing of supply and demand that would've happened through education, anyway.
Also, the study does take into account illegal immigration to the US.
As for your example of Canada's highly unethical immigration policies. We agree! Importing workers and denying them mobility leads, basically, to a caste system where it's more profitable to hire the lower caste. The solution here is not reducing migration, it's to ensure that all migrants have full legal working rights. Either you're in, or you're not. In between statuses are bad both for the migrant, and for the native working class.
https://publications.iadb.org/publications/english/document/Illegal-Immigration-Border-Enforcement-and-Relative-Wages-Evidence-from-Apprehensions-at-the-US-Mexico-Border.pdf
I totally agree on your final point, you’re in or you’re not.
The halfway programs cause problems, and they’re the ones I’m against.
Number of people relative to resources does matter though because otherwise India should be the richest country on earth….. but it isn’t.
I don’t have any great answers to that, but I can see the problem.
500 years ago, everyone, the west included, was poor, and everyone had basically the same amount of resources.
Then the west became rich. For many reasons, but certainly not resources per capita.
It may well turn out that in a century from now India matches the west in per capita income. Too early to say.
Unclaimed, fertile and abundant land that was practically being given away to people is a meaningful difference in easily available resources that early settlers of North America had available to them.
It’s not the ONLY difference, but certainly a meaningful one.
This is true, but do note that if one starts paying illegal workers under minimum wage, then that should also has the effect of stealing jobs — the employer would choose whatever labour is cheapest that meets their requirements.