All Hank, all the time.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Please think about the claims in these two paragraphs:

• In fact, the relationship between immigration and wages is not clear-cut, even in theory. That is because wages depend on the supply of capital as well as labour. Alone, an influx of immigrants raises the supply of workers and hence reduces wages. But cheaper labour increases the potential return to employers of building new factories or opening new valet-parking companies. In so doing, they create extra demand for workers. Once capital has fully adjusted, the final impact on overall wages should be a wash, as long as the immigrants have not changed the productivity of the workforce as a whole.

The argument is that wages go down, but the workforce goes up. But it goes up because you're letting more people in. For the people who were already here and working, what's in it for them? Maybe the economy is a bit more robust, but their wages are down.

• However, even if wages do not change on average, immigration can still shift the relative pay of workers of different types. A large inflow of low-skilled people could push down the relative wages of low-skilled natives, assuming that they compete for the same jobs. On the other hand, if the immigrants had complementary skills, natives would be relatively better off. To gauge the full effect of immigration on wages, therefore, you need to know how quickly capital adjusts and how far the newcomers are substitutes for local workers.

See the italicized paragraph. What facts would you need to see to believe that immigration of low-skilled workers helps domestic low-skilled workers?

[ltl/fb]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Please think about the claims in these two paragraphs:

• In fact, the relationship between immigration and wages is not clear-cut, even in theory. That is because wages depend on the supply of capital as well as labour. Alone, an influx of immigrants raises the supply of workers and hence reduces wages. But cheaper labour increases the potential return to employers of building new factories or opening new valet-parking companies. In so doing, they create extra demand for workers. Once capital has fully adjusted, the final impact on overall wages should be a wash, as long as the immigrants have not changed the productivity of the workforce as a whole.

The argument is that wages go down, but the workforce goes up. But it goes up because you're letting more people in. For the people who were already here and working, what's in it for them? Maybe the economy is a bit more robust, but their wages are down.

• However, even if wages do not change on average, immigration can still shift the relative pay of workers of different types. A large inflow of low-skilled people could push down the relative wages of low-skilled natives, assuming that they compete for the same jobs. On the other hand, if the immigrants had complementary skills, natives would be relatively better off. To gauge the full effect of immigration on wages, therefore, you need to know how quickly capital adjusts and how far the newcomers are substitutes for local workers.

See the italicized paragraph. What facts would you need to see to believe that immigration of low-skilled workers helps domestic low-skilled workers?

That in areas where there aren't any (or are very very few) low-skill immigrants, the jobs that low-skilled workers have (e.g., bus boy, valet parker, day laborer, gardener, cleaning staff) just don't exist, or exist as a very much smaller job category relative to other jobs. E.g., Dallas and LA both have more valet parking than I've ever seen anywhere. Seems plausible to me that it's prevalent because it's affordable because of the influx of workers, and it seems like more people have someone else do the gardening and cleaning.

Oooh, and handwashing cars. NEVER really saw that anywhere other than here. Or, not for cheap. So I think more people here get their cars washed than just use the drive through or wash them themselves.

ETA see, you are assuming they compete for the same jobs. So you would want facts showing that they don't compete for the same jobs.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by ltl/fb
That in areas where there aren't any (or are very very few) low-skill immigrants, the jobs that low-skilled workers have (e.g., bus boy, valet parker, day laborer, gardener, cleaning staff) just don't exist, or exist as a very much smaller job category relative to other jobs. E.g., Dallas and LA both have more valet parking than I've ever seen anywhere. Seems plausible to me that it's prevalent because it's affordable because of the influx of workers, and it seems like more people have someone else do the gardening and cleaning.

Oooh, and handwashing cars. NEVER really saw that anywhere other than here. Or, not for cheap. So I think more people here get their cars washed than just use the drive through or wash them themselves.

ETA see, you are assuming they compete for the same jobs. So you would want facts showing that they don't compete for the same jobs.

Around here you can get your car handwashed any Saturday morning when the weather is good - as a fundraiser for an athletic team or extracurricular activity at the local high school.

So obviously, the immigrants are robbing the children of California and Texas of a good education.

All the discussion on economics is interesting, but, frankly, who gives a damn? The reason to permit broad immigration is that it's the right thing to do. The US should be a home for people who have hopes and dreams, whether those hopes and dreams are to escape poverty or to escape tyranny.

So, open the borders wide, and let those who are here stay absent a good reason (crime, for example) for deporting them.

Fact is, the President hasn't been as bad on these issues as many Rs would be - he is at least looking to legalize many who are here - and no politician in their right mind is going to be as idealistic on the issues as I'd like. But I really see little reason for the wholesale closing of borders that began with the Chinese Exclusion Act in the 1880s.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by ltl/fb
That in areas where there aren't any (or are very very few) low-skill immigrants, the jobs that low-skilled workers have (e.g., bus boy, valet parker, day laborer, gardener, cleaning staff) just don't exist, or exist as a very much smaller job category relative to other jobs. E.g., Dallas and LA both have more valet parking than I've ever seen anywhere. Seems plausible to me that it's prevalent because it's affordable because of the influx of workers, and it seems like more people have someone else do the gardening and cleaning.

Oooh, and handwashing cars. NEVER really saw that anywhere other than here. Or, not for cheap. So I think more people here get their cars washed than just use the drive through or wash them themselves.

What you are saying is that an influx of immigrants drives wages down to a point where it's economically feasible to hire unskilled labor to do certain menial tasks, like valet parking and hand-washing cars. In Peru, there's so much unskilled labor looking for work that middle-class families can hire full-time drivers and maids.

[Did you just call me Coltrane?]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
What you are saying is that an influx of immigrants drives wages down to a point where it's economically feasible to hire unskilled labor to do certain menial tasks, like valet parking and hand-washing cars. In Peru, there's so much unskilled labor looking for work that middle-class families can hire full-time drivers and maids.

In Soviet Russia, maids and full-time drivers hire you!

[Not Bob]

Originally posted by Did you just call me Coltrane?
In Soviet Russia, maids and full-time drivers hire you!
http://www.yankeepotroast.org/archives/yxsmirno.jpg

For you, Coltrane:





http://www.glarkware.com/securestore...6544331.2.html

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Spanky
I didn't get a chance to stop by my Dentist's office to peruse through Business Week but I did get a chance to read the Economist. Below is an interesting article that was pertinent to our disucssion, especially about immigration pusing down low end wages. Of course the article does completely contradict what you have been arguing, so maybe you should suggest to the Economist management that the staff at the Economist attend an economics 101 class.

Myths and migration
Apr 6th 2006
From The Economist print edition

Do immigrants really hurt American workers' wages?

EVERY now and again America, a nation largely made up of immigrants and their descendants, is gripped by a furious political row over whether and how it should stem the flood of people wanting to enter the country. It is in the midst of just such a quarrel now. Congress is contemplating the erection of a wall along stretches of the Mexican border and a crackdown on illegal workers, as well as softer policies such as a guest-worker programme for illegal immigrants. Some of the arguments are plain silly. Immigration's defenders claim that foreigners come to do jobs that Americans won't—as if cities with few immigrants had no gardeners. Its opponents say that immigrants steal American jobs—succumbing to the fallacy that there are only a fixed number of jobs to go around.

One common argument, though not silly, is often overstated: that immigration pushes down American workers' wages, especially among high-school dropouts. It isn't hard to see why this might be. Over the past 25 years American incomes have become less equally distributed, typical wages have grown surprisingly slowly for such a healthy economy and the real wages of the least skilled have actually fallen. It is plausible that immigration is at least partly to blame, especially because recent arrivals have disproportionately poor skills. In the 2000 census immigrants made up 13% of America's pool of workers, but 28% of those without a high-school education and over half of those with eight years' schooling or less.


In fact, the relationship between immigration and wages is not clear-cut, even in theory. That is because wages depend on the supply of capital as well as labour. Alone, an influx of immigrants raises the supply of workers and hence reduces wages. But cheaper labour increases the potential return to employers of building new factories or opening new valet-parking companies. In so doing, they create extra demand for workers. Once capital has fully adjusted, the final impact on overall wages should be a wash, as long as the immigrants have not changed the productivity of the workforce as a whole.

However, even if wages do not change on average, immigration can still shift the relative pay of workers of different types. A large inflow of low-skilled people could push down the relative wages of low-skilled natives, assuming that they compete for the same jobs. On the other hand, if the immigrants had complementary skills, natives would be relatively better off. To gauge the full effect of immigration on wages, therefore, you need to know how quickly capital adjusts and how far the newcomers are substitutes for local workers.

Empirical evidence* is as inconclusive as the theory. One method is to compare wage trends in cities with lots of immigrants, such as Los Angeles, with those in places with only a few, such as Indianapolis. If immigration had a big effect on relative pay, you would expect this to be reflected in differences between cities' wage trends. David Card, of the University of California, Berkeley, is one of the leading advocates of this approach. His research suggests that although there are big differences between cities' proportions of immigrants, this has had no significant effect on unskilled workers' pay. Not everyone is convinced by Mr Card's technique. His critics argue that the geographical distribution of immigrants is not random. Perhaps low-skilled natives leave cities with lots of immigrants rather than compete with them for jobs, so that immigration indirectly pushes up the supply of low-skilled workers elsewhere (and pushes down their wages). Mr Card has tested the idea that immigration displaces low-skilled natives and found scant evidence that it does.

An alternative approach, pioneered by George Borjas, of Harvard University, is to tease out the effect of immigration from national wage statistics. Mr Borjas divides people into categories, according to their education and work experience. He assumes that workers of different types are not easily substitutable for each other, but that immigrants and natives within each category are. By comparing wage trends in categories with lots of immigrants against those in groups with only a few, he derives an estimate of immigration's effect. His headline conclusion is that, between 1980 and 2000, immigration caused average wages to be some 3% lower than they would otherwise have been. Wages for high-school drop-outs were dragged down by around 8%.

Immigration's critics therefore count Mr Borjas as an ally. But hold on. These figures take no account of the offsetting impact of extra investment. If the capital stock is assumed to adjust, Mr Borjas reports, overall wages are unaffected and the loss of wages for high-school drop-outs is cut to below 5%.

Gianmarco Ottaviano, of the University of Bologna, and Giovanni Peri, of the University of California, Davis, argue that Mr Borjas's findings should be adjusted further. They think that, even within the same skill category, immigrants and natives need not be perfect substitutes, pointing out that the two groups tend to end up in different jobs. Mexicans are found in gardening, housework and construction, while low-skilled natives dominate other occupations, such as logging. Taking this into account, the authors claim that between 1980 and 2000 immigration pushed down the wages of American high-school drop-outs by at most 0.4%.


None of these studies is decisive, but taken together they suggest that immigration, in the long run, has had only a small negative effect on the pay of America's least skilled and even that is arguable. If Congress wants to reduce wage inequality, building border walls is a bad way of going about it.

The thing I find funny is the built in assumption that if we stop immigration, the people purchasing the services provided by immigrants will pay more for Americans to perform them.

I have a lawn service. They charge $50 a week to cut the lawn. Two nice Mexican cats show up and do a great job. If Americans did it, it would cost $100. I would not use the service, nor would anyone on my street. Consequently, there'd be two hard working Mexicans not getting paid and a business owner probably working for someone else. Should I go on to discuss the sellers of lawn equipment and trucks and weed eating machinery who don't make money because our entrepreneur chooses not to open a business because labor costs are prohibitive?

If we staunch immigration, we fuck everyone. If we don't, we fuck a sector which is getting fucked anyway.

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I have a lawn service. They charge $50 a week to cut the lawn. Two nice Mexican cats show up and do a great job. If Americans did it, it would cost $100.

You'll crack when the lawn gets long and the wife starts bitching. You'll get the lawn service half as often.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
You'll crack when the lawn gets long and the wife starts bitching. You'll get the lawn service half as often.

I'd just cut it myself, with a smaller, less effective mower, which guzzles gas, thus benefitting Big Oil, which is price gouging the American Worker.

A butterfly slaps its wings in China and the American Woker gets fucked... blah blah blah...

Immigration is a good thing. I like immigrants. They create great restuarant centers. Thats my position.

[ltl/fb]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
A butterfly slaps its wings in China and the American Woker gets fucked... blah blah blah...

Interesting typo. Stir fry, anyone?

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Immigration is a good thing. I like immigrants. They create great restuarant centers. Thats my position.

If we must show preference to different countries, I'd do it on the basis of their food.

Thai, Indian, Mexican, Russian, Jewish - all in.

Irish, English, Portuguese, Brazilian - please apply again next year.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
That's not a valid criticism. The value of the product is market driven, while the cost of labor is statutory. The business owner is fucked because, although he could profit if wages fluctuated with market forces, they don't. While the value of his product can fluctuate terrifically, and the cost of raw materials used to make the product will follow suit, his wage costs remain high, by law.

Look at GM. But for the cost of employee health care, the company would be fairly sound (or in much better straits).

What statute sets the cost of GM health care?

[Gattigap]

For those of us following the breast-beating on Iran, James Fallows has an interesting (if depressing) article in the latest Atlantic which war-games this possibility.

• It was at this time, in September 2004, that The Atlantic sponsored a “war game” to consider what choices the United States might have if the Iranian problem built to a crisis. War games are not a staple of this magazine’s operation, but in light of difficulties in Iraq, we wanted to play out the long-term implications of possible U.S. moves and Iranian countermoves. So under the guidance of Sam Gardiner, a retired Air Force colonel who had conducted many real-world war games for the Pentagon, including those that shaped U.S. strategy for the first Gulf War, we assembled a panel of experts to ask “What then?” about the ways in which the United States might threaten, pressure, or entice the Iranians not to build a bomb. Some had been for and some against the invasion of Iraq; all had served in the Pentagon, intelligence agencies, or other parts of the nation’s security apparatus, and many had dealt directly with Iran.
  
  The experts disagreed on some details but were nearly unanimous on one crucial point: what might seem America’s ace in the hole—the ability to destroy Iran’s nuclear installations in a pre-emptive air strike—was a fantasy. When exposed to “What then?” analysis, this plan (or a variant in which the United States looked the other way while Israel did the job) held more dangers than rewards for the United States. How could this be, given America’s crushing strength and wealth relative to Iran’s? There were three main problems:
  
  * The United States was too late. Iran’s leaders had learned from what happened to Saddam Hussein in 1981, when Israeli F-16s destroyed a facility at Osirak where most of his nuclear projects were concentrated. Iran spread its research to at least a dozen sites—exactly how many, and where, the U.S. government could not be sure.
  
  * The United States was too vulnerable. Iran, until now relatively restrained in using its influence among the Iraqi Shiites, “could make Iraq hell,” in the words of one of our experts, Kenneth Pollack, of the Brookings Institution. It could use its influence on the world’s oil markets to shock Western economies—most of all, that of the world’s largest oil importer, the United States.
  
  * The plan was likely to backfire, in a grand-strategy sense. At best, it would slow Iranian nuclear projects by a few years. But the cost of buying that time would likely be a redoubling of Iran’s determination to get a bomb—and an increase in its bitterness toward the United States.
  
  That was the situation nearly two years ago. Everything that has changed since then increases the pressure on the United States to choose the “military option” of a pre-emptive strike—and makes that option more ruinously self-defeating.
  
  ***
  
  Perhaps the American and Israeli hard-liners know all this, and are merely bluffing. If so, they have made an elementary strategic error. The target of their bluff is the Iranian government, and the most effective warnings would be discreet and back-channel. Iranian intelligence should be picking up secret signals that the United States is planning an attack. By giving public warnings, the United States and Israel “create ‘excess demand’ for military action,” as our war-game leader Sam Gardiner recently put it, and constrain their own negotiating choices. The inconvenient truth of American foreign policy is that the last five years have left us with a series of choices—and all of them are bad. The United States can’t keep troops in Iraq indefinitely, for obvious reasons. It can’t withdraw them, because of the chaos that would ensue. The United States can’t keep prisoners at Guantánamo Bay (and other overseas facilities) indefinitely, because of international and domestic challenges. But it can’t hastily release them, since many were and more have become terrorists. And it can’t even bring them to trial, because of procedural abuses that have already occurred. Similarly, the United States can’t accept Iran’s emergence as a nuclear power, but it cannot prevent this through military means—unless it is willing to commit itself to all-out war. The central flaw of American foreign policy these last few years has been the triumph of hope, wishful thinking, and self-delusion over realism and practicality. Realism about Iran starts with throwing out any plans to bomb.

Gattigap

[andViolins]

Originally posted by Sidd Finch
What statute sets the cost of GM health care?

One could certainly argue the National Labor Relations Act.

aV

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by andViolins
One could certainly argue the National Labor Relations Act.

aV

and in Mass. the mandatory health care act. Don't know if they have plants there.