pmward wrote: ↑Mon Jun 03, 2019 4:22 pm
Admittedly, I was exaggerating and being a bit facetious there. But the Trumpies I personally know really do have a passionate dislike of Mexico, and really any other country that could provide labor cheaper than they are willing to supply it. They feel threatened and fearful, and that does cause an irrational hatred.
So since it applies to labor we need to think this all the way through because trying to manipulate supply and demand is a double-edged sword. Every effect has innumerable side and counter effects. You have to be careful what you wish for. It is good for the economy, individuals, and business to purchase labor and supplies as cheap as possible. It leaves people more money to spend on other things.
Hah, ok. You can't be sure nowadays. So, the people you know personally passionately dislike Mexico because it facilitates people illegally coming into America and depressing their wages/tekken thur jurb. When you say it like that it is not irrational, but you still think it's irrational. I can tell that you mean it on a macro level, because of what you wrote below it; but on a micro, personal level of the people you know, you should be able to tell that it isn't irrational, because those actual people would have less/no money to purchase labor and supplies, and therefore wouldn't have more money to spend on other stuff.
pmward wrote: ↑Mon Jun 03, 2019 5:05 pm It leaves businesses and investors more money to invest in other places. All of these things create more economic activity, which in turn creates jobs.
It is not an acceptable situation for illegal immigration to be the catalyst for job creation.
Now, I think I know what you're going to say after you read that, "Exactly, we need more workers."
(I guess that's pretty much what you said already, maybe you'd add "and we need the illegal immigration because our immigration limits are too low." ?)
I say we don't actually know what's going on, because we do not have secured borders and we don't know how many illegal immigrants are here. If we were reasonably sure how many people were even living here, we could probably figure out if we needed to let more people in and what kinds were needed. If we determine we need more people, and there are qualified people that want to become Americans (or maybe just get a work visa?), then that's how we should fill jobs, the answer isn't just letting anyone sneak across the border or overstaying a visa or whatever.
That's more of a "we need a logical process" angle, though. In a more practical sense, businesses don't need to save money on wages in order to create more jobs. Banks are desperate to lend money, at low interest rates, for good ideas that create jobs.
But, to go along with your statement, if Americans are already competing with illegal immigrants for jobs at a given skill level (and being undercut, presumably, so that wages are lowered), and business owners need the lower wages so that they can invest in other areas, what are they investing in? If they're creating jobs at a higher skill/wage level, the low skilled Americans competing with the illegal immigrants won't get those jobs anyways, and we'd need to import more immigrants at that skill level (assuming full employment among Americans) to fill them. If those same Americans were capable of performing higher level work, said business people could create those jobs right now for them, and they wouldn't be competing for low skill work. Again, in this instance, our supply of low-skill workers would be insufficient and we should legally bring in people interested in doing them.
SO, even if you want more people here, could we could agree our current illegal immigration situation isn't part of the solution?
There are plenty of things the U.S. can supply cheaper and more efficiently than foreign counties, and it benefits all involved if we are focusing on these things we are efficient at, instead of trying to block competition so we can produce goods that we are not super efficient at.
You're referring to Ricardo's law of comparative advantage. What if the other countries are only comparatively advantaged producing them because of state subsidies and import restrictions? That's what I was referencing when I brought up Japan's former MITI, and it's Trump's view, AFAIK. When he talks about China getting one over on us, it's because
they haven't abided by the trade agreement they were supposed to abide by when they joined the WTO. In fairness, I guess other countries could say we've done the same thing.
This goes back to what I was saying earlier about each country looking out for its own interests, instead of aspiring to a theoretical free trade world. It makes me think of the Cartel Problem in economics, where a group agrees to fix prices, but one member lowers their to sell more so they gain an advantage. I'm sure there's a nice economics term for countries agreeing to trade freely, but then one of them doesn't to gain an advantage, but I don't know it.
The economic tides are always changing, it makes no sense to cling to the past, we should be focused instead on moving forward. We should be focusing on what we do well, not on what we don't.
I wonder if we really know what we do well? For instance, we pretty much import all of our TVs, despite an American inventing them. Is that because Korea, China, and Japan have a natural comparative advantage, or because they utilized state subsidies and trade-deal-facilitated industrial espionage, and import restrictions to gain one? I'm not sure anymore. Maybe we do more things well than we know, and we could be creating more goods/services here, but other countries
have gotten one over on us like Trump says.
In general, I agree with you though. Always be improving.
In capitalism people need to learn to adapt. Its a constant wave of adaptation. Farmers were pissed back in the early 1900s, just like industrial workers are pissed now, just like people in the software industry like me will be pissed at some point in the future. The economy doesn't thrive when we focus on preventing change, it thrives when we move forward and innovate. The unfortunate cost is that those that refuse to adapt get left behind.
You tweeted "learn to code" at reporters, didn't you
Macro- agree, though. It's good to be a winner. For instance, I don't really think about how pissed the shit tons of Europeans and various tribes were that died of contagious disease, but because my line was resistant I'm still here.
Since we are no longer organically growing our population, we need immigration, or else we will turn into Japan.
You say "we will turn into Japan" like you think it's a bad thing? I think they're doing alright. Minimal crime, high social cohesiveness and trust, high technology, high culture, good food, low obesity, almost free housing, etc.
Also, it's common knowledge that the biggest predictor of economic growth is a growing population.
It's a big one, sure. But growth can't go on forever, of course. It also makes sense that we don't
need to have a growing economy for a good quality of life if our population isn't growing/is declining,
per capitally (if that's a phrase, which I don't think it is). Evolving to a more steady-state economy at our current standard of living doesn't sound awful to me. Personally, I think it would be beneficial if the world population went down. But at the same time, I don't think it would be a good thing if the advanced countries curtailed their fertility, while ALSO importing tons of immigrants to bolster their population. The same
per capitalness (shit, again) applies to them too; their quality of life would increase if they had fewer kids too.
Anyways, come at me bros.
You there, Ephialtes. May you live forever.