ballsalsa said:

this is why we need campaign finance reform, Enlil.

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qman said:

"since when is $15/hr. a living wage?"

We all know the minimum wage is down significantly in real terms, but so is US economic growth and real wages. If the US is declining in those areas, why would anyone be surprised that even hiking the minimum wage is inadequate?

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Why would a group that favors BOTH legal and illegal immigration have issues with lower wages?  It comes with the territory.

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millzy said:

qman said:

"since when is $15/hr. a living wage?"

We all know the minimum wage is down significantly in real terms, but so is US economic growth and real wages. If the US is declining in those areas, why would anyone be surprised that even hiking the minimum wage is inadequate?

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that's ad hoc though - those models that blame low wages on declining growth and wages are promoted by the wealthiest americans, who influence the decisions of policymakers, who create the conditions for low wages and declining growth. low wages are the result of greed. if they were not, we would see a drop in wages across the board; instead, we see a shrinking middle class and a wealthier 20% - 1%. those low wages and declining growth are working out great for them. low wages are largely driven by belief systems, namely the neoliberal worldview.

Quote:

Why would a group that favors BOTH legal and illegal immigration have issues with lower wages?  It comes with the territory.

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i hear what you're saying here. but i don't think low wages are tied into illegal immigration as much as they are with the neoliberal order. does undocumented labor help neoliberalists? absolutely. but there isn't a causal connection there because it's not just illegal labor that suffers under neoliberalism.

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Enlil said:

What evidence do you have that immigration lowers wages?  From what I can tell, immigration actually raises wages for native workers.

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"immigration actually raises wages for native workers"

So everyone's complaint about low wages for US workers isn't justifiable because our immigration polices have clearly helped "raises wages for native workers"?

Enlil said:

That's an absurd statement. 

So, I guess you have no evidence that immigration lowers wages.  We can disregard that idea at this point.

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qman said:

Enlil said:

That's an absurd statement. 

So, I guess you have no evidence that immigration lowers wages.  We can disregard that idea at this point.

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"That's an absurd statement"

So why did you make it?

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Enlil said:

We can disregard that idea at this point.

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Quote:

The third reason we need to control immigration is its effects on jobs and wages. Again, when we arrived in government, we found that the official impact assessments assumed that the job displacement of British workers by immigrants was zero.

Now, we all know that the ‘lump of labour’ argument – that there is a fixed number of jobs to be divided up and handed round – is wrong, and that things are far more complicated than the idea that all immigrants come to Britain and ‘take British jobs’. But it was surely wrong that those impact assessments assumed absolutely no job displacement of local workers.

So we asked the migration advisory committee to look at the effects of immigration on jobs, and their conclusions were stark. They found a clear association between non-European immigration and employment in the UK.

Between 1995 and 2010, the committee found an associated displacement of 160,000 British workers. For every additional one hundred immigrants, they estimated that 23 British workers would not be employed.

So, there is a ‘lump of labour’ fallacy in the immigration debate, but there is also a ‘zero displacement’ fallacy. And government must never again make the mistake of falling for it.

There is evidence, too, that immigration puts a downward pressure on wages. Drawing on several academic studies, the committee found that immigration can increase wages for the better-off, but for those on lower wages, more immigration means more workers competing for a limited number of low-skilled jobs.

The result is lower wages – and the people who lose out are working-class families, as well as ethnic minority communities and recent immigrants themselves.

So uncontrolled, mass immigration is damaging to social cohesion, puts pressure on public services and infrastructure, and can lead to job displacement and undercut wages, particularly for the lowest paid.

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qman said:

"low wages are the result of greed"

That's true, that's why the elite have been in favor of both illegal/legal immigration and globalization.

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