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The Alpine
Big Wall climber
Tampa, FL
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Feb 11, 2009 - 12:37pm PT
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The problem isn't the immigration. The problem(s) are the wages paid for such jobs. No one wants to do it for $2/hr!? No sh#t. Pay more and "americans" will find those jobs desireable.
I'd like to see the numbers as to what percentage of total revenue from a produce/farm company is expensed on wages.
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jstan
climber
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Feb 11, 2009 - 01:16pm PT
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Good thread folks!
Blue:
About my family planning item. I would be very surprised if more than one migrant in five were here for any reason other than they had to do it to feed their own family or their family of origin. It really is not easy to stand at the curb with a hundred others, hoping a car will stop next to you. What are the odds?
Over population contributes to what is happening. No doubt about it. Each situation is a little different so to help, someone has to be there to sense the dynamics and offer options.
As an example look at my family. Between 1750 and 1850 Stannard families had as many as twelve children. Then in 1840 Daniel Stannard could not support his twelve and he had to emigrate to Montana to work in mining. We have not been able to discover what happened to him. One of his daughters, Ellen, went to live with Dan's brother Albert who emigrated in 1853 from New Marlborough MA to the Binghamton NY area by oxcart. Ellen married John Stannard, one of Albert's sons and she, my great grandmother, was known as "mother". She died in 1928 and her picture suggests she was one lively but tough cookie.
Out of all these huge families there are now only two breeding males from that line. In our case it was almost like a bloom of algae. This is the problem that nature presents us. Our reproductive capacity has allowed the specie to surmount many challenges these past million years. The challenge now is to harness our intellect so as to find an answer.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 11, 2009 - 01:41pm PT
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Jstan, okay I gotcha. I agree too, maybe not forced family planning like China but education. Things like how much of a family can you support (legally) and birth control options. I'm generally against abortions though as a solution to this. If you don't want children, either use birth control or don't breed!
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Feb 11, 2009 - 01:51pm PT
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fattrad,
I know I seldom disagree with you, but I need to make one correction. What you call "the Theory of Marginal Utility" is actually the principle of comparative advantage. The principle you cite, though, is correct. In an efficient economy, workers will work at the job where they can produce for the least cost -- provided that the measure of cost includes opportunity cost.
This can get messy in practice, though, because people often ignore opportunity costs (or believe that they don't exist. I often need to spend quite a bit of time on the concept to get my students to understand -- and then as soon as I apply it to international trade, they forget again.)
I wish more people understood the concept. As you rightly point out, many propose "solutions" that run up against this problem.
bluering,
Again, I seldom disagree with you, but I don't think high school students could possibly take over all of the jobs currently performed by those whose presence in the United States violates existing immigration laws (for brevity, I'll use the term "illegal immigrants" hereafter. I just don't want to hear another "no human being is illegal" slogan.)
I assume without admitting that much agricultural labor gets done by illegal immigrants. The timing of that labor is incompatible with high school, and much of it always was. I'd posted earlier how the trend toward an earlier start of the school year disrupts teenage workers' participation in the grape harvest. Pruning, dormant sprays, and harvesting of citrus and cherries usually take place from December to May. Harvesting cotton and late stone fruit takes place in the fall. I don't think it would do our economy much good to have students drop out of school to perform this work.
In addition, the alleged costs of illegal immigration ignore a key factor in the analysis: the costs of stopping it. This includes not only direct law enforcement costs, but disruptive costs to the economy as industries reorganize their production methods to cope with the shortage of labor.
In short, I don't know an easy solution, but I admit that I have a latent hostility to any proposal that makes it harder for people to come here (or anywhere else) to work.
John
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Feb 11, 2009 - 02:02pm PT
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jstan,
Population growth and stability affect this discussion in some complicated ways. Economic theory says that if we increase one factor of production (e.g. labor) and do not increase other factors of production proportionately (e.g. land, equipment, technology, etc.), the marginal productivity of the one increased input falls. The wage rate depends on the marginal productivity of labor. Thus if you increase the labor supply, the wage rate will be lower than if you do not.
Population growth certainly increases the labor supply, but it is not the only factor here. The substantial increase in the participation rate of women in the labor force since the 1950's has dramatically increased the labor supply. As an older brother of sisters and a father of daughters, and as a human being that values fairness (Democrats are free to disagree on this last one), I'm grateful for that trend. Even though that trend plays a significant part in a slowing of real wage growth, I doubt that many want to stop it.
Also, the welfare state works best in stable or growing populations. In much of Western Europe and Japan, the low birth rates have caused a long-term strain on their economies because it leads to fewer workers supporting retirees and other recipients of government benefits. The same would happen here, and already has with Social Security.
Having said that, I think humans have populated the Earth quite enough, and I'd love to see population stability. After all, at some point, natural constraints will create that stability for us. All I'm saying is that if we want popultation stability, we will need to modify much of the social contract to take this into account.
John
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 11, 2009 - 02:32pm PT
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Interesting points, John.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Feb 11, 2009 - 02:42pm PT
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Bluering, which part of there is no supply-side solution don't you get? The only ones with managable numbers, fixed addresses, and accessible bank accounts are employers. Crack down on them in any real way and the entire immigration 'problem' evaporates overnight.
When people ignore or attempt to obfusticate that reality and continue whine about the issue it's pretty hard to take it as anything but ignorance, corporate lackeyism, or the usual Rovian politics of hate.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Feb 11, 2009 - 02:50pm PT
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healyje,
The problem with "cracking down" on employers is that we already have. Their workers produce documentation, but it's fraudulent. If you make employers act as law enforcement, you're inviting them to discriminate against anyone who is an immigrant (legal or otherwise) and even against those who speak, look and act like people born in the States, but whose background suggests that their parents may have come here illegally when the potential worker was very young (thus making them illegal immigrants, too).
The phrase "Rovian politics of hate" seems misplaced in your post. Your disdain of employers smacks of hatred itself, I'm just not sure what to call it. "Kucinichian politics of hate?" "Deanian politics of hate?" "Pelosian poplitics of hate?" I think I do better to call it a bias against employers, and leave it at that. As you note, this issue is much too big for bias against any group.
John
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Feb 11, 2009 - 03:17pm PT
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"The problem with "cracking down" on employers is that we already have."
No, we have never attempted a single serious effort of any kind at the federal level to crack down on employers - zip, nada, never.
"Their workers produce documentation, but it's fraudulent."
This is a straw dog - any number of technical means exist to provide bullet-proof unforgable documentation.
"If you make employers act as law enforcement, you're inviting them to discriminate against anyone who is an immigrant ."
Tripe. Workers provide reliable documentation, employers pass it on to government. Government's role is to provide reliable documentation. Refusal to address the 'reliable documentation' part of the problem simply means enforcement is impossible at any point in the system by anyone.
"Your disdain of employers smacks of hatred itself, I'm just not sure what to call it."
Ridiculous, there is no "disdain" for employers in the views I've expressed here - that's an emotional injection on your part. There is no other point in the system where illegal employment can be controlled execpt at the employers - none.
And bluering, your link is another futile attempt at a supply-side crackdown. There is no effective solution on the supply-side - none. Raiding tax accountants ('illegals' paying taxes - those are the smart ones to crack down on) and ecological disasters in the desert are expressions of gross institutional stupidity.
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the Fet
Knackered climber
A bivy sack in the secret campground
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Feb 11, 2009 - 03:18pm PT
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Higher wages so Americans will take the jobs won't work. It will increase prices dramaticaly for food/hotels/restaurants, etc. and/or places will go out of business.
Immigrants willing to work for low wages are a resource we should be utilizing (and already are, just illegaly). Low cost labor working for American companies to make profit is a good thing for the overall economy.
The problem isn't immigrants willing to work for low pay for menial jobs, it's that the laws don't reflect reality so there is a huge underground economy where breaking the law is the only way to make businesses profitable.
The Libs will say make all the illegals citizens with full rights. The Cons will say deport all illegals even if they have been productive members of our society for years. As a moderate I think we should have a guest worker program with approriate taxes and benefits, that doesn't penalize people who are currently illegal because that's the only choice they have or know about.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Feb 11, 2009 - 03:31pm PT
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Bluering, in the end, the entire immigration 'issue' comes down to documentation. The only question is: just how bad do you folks on the right want to solve the issue? If you want it solved the solution is simple, everyone carries a bulletproof national identity card. Period, end of story. No other solution of any kind - supply or demand side - will ever work.
Why do I get the feeling you'd be a card-carrying ACLU member before you accept the only solution which can work...
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jstan
climber
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Feb 11, 2009 - 03:42pm PT
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A comment on what would happen to the cost of food were there no low cost
immigrant labor.
In capitalism it is SOP to "externalize" costs, that is keep your cost low by making
others pay. My point is we do not even know the true cost of the broccoli we buy in the
supermarket. The true costs of the immigrant labor appear as a component of many
bills that we have to pay - but we are not able to part them out and see how big they
are.
Another example is the low cost of nuclear power. Nowhere is the cost of Yucca
Mountain included nor the costs of maintaining such a facility for hundreds of years.
An effort finally to have transparency for these and other questions is probably the
one thing we have to have if we are ever to begin solving real problems.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 11, 2009 - 04:23pm PT
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healyje, I'm not totally opposed to legalizing the workers. Maybe not their families.
In the link I posted earlier they were fraudulently over-collecting taxes they weren't due and the tax preparer was enabling them!
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Feb 11, 2009 - 04:26pm PT
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healyje,
What kind of reliable identification do you propose? I assume from your statements that the government issues no such thing now.
John
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