Allowing more immigrant workers = more competition = economy functions better --
so even if there are hardships today (pandemic, etc.), a free economy which allows more immigration will better allow us to cope with it, whereas the restrictions only make bad conditions even worse.
(As long as immigrants are required to be vaccinated/tested.)
It's not that the jobs aren't there, but rather that there's a shortage of workers taking the jobs available. Maybe this is due mostly to the pandemic, which isn't over, and which is making employment less attractive.
Companies are even cutting back production for lack of needed workers. Who's to blame for this? And why basically is this bad?
What's wrong is not high unemployment, but that needed work is not getting done. There's a need for more truck drivers, dock workers at the ports, and some skilled workers like plumbers and electricians. Also firefighters, and many other kinds of workers -- but job-seekers are staying home rather than taking the jobs that are open.
https://nypost.com/2021/10/08/joe-biden-brushes-off-second-poor-jobs-report-in-row/
But the new report showed the US added just 194,000 jobs in September — far short of economists’ expectations of about 500,000.
The shortfall compounded a hiring slowdown in August, when the US added 366,000 jobs, according to revised figures released Friday — far below economists’ expectations of 720,000.
“President Biden is now a whopping 944,000 jobs short of what he promised from his last stimulus and worse, has lost the confidence of the American people to lead the economy.”
Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) said, “Over 300,000 FEWER jobs created than expected in September – further proof Biden’s economic policies are hurting our country.”
Brad McMillan, chief investment officer for Commonwealth Financial Network, explained the lower unemployment rate, noting that “the declines in the unemployment measures and the participation rate show that the movement of people back to the labor force has paused.”
Harvard economist Jason Fruman tweeted, “Job openings: 11.7m Unemployed: 7.7m The 1.5 openings per unemployed is the highest ever recorded.”
Unprecedented high-job-openings to number-of-unemployed ratio.
What's the solution?
Take in more immigrant workers!
There's obviously no shortage of potential workers.
Most of the vacant jobs could be filled, in a short time -- only 2 or 3 or 4 months -- by letting in an extra million immigrants who could take them. Only a few jobs are so high-skill that no immigrants could do them. Probably the whole problem would be solved in less than a year, if all the migrants needed would be taken in. And it would be easy to get all of them vaccinated, so that cannot be the obstacle.
So, what is the obstacle? Why can't Biden admit a half million or million migrants to take the jobs needing to be filled? Only because:
The American people are crybabies, who hate immigrants who might compete with them, and/or
they are crybaby-panderers who demand that companies pay workers more than their real competitive market value and not be allowed to hire them at low labor cost which would make it profitable to hire them. Maybe the labor cost is higher now, for domestic workers, because of the pandemic. But the simple solution to that is to take in a half-million or million immigrants, to meet the labor shortfall.
But the fear is that immigrants will drive down the wage level or steal jobs from red-blooded Americans.
Which means basically that we're a nation of crybabies and crybaby-panderers. And Biden and Trump are among the crybaby-panderers, not essentially disagreeing with each other, but united in their leftist employer-bashing philosophy to pander to the crybabies who hate competition and insist that work has to be done only by high-paid red-blooded native-borns who are entitled to the American Dream no matter how much it costs and are unable to compete against the newcomers.
The economy -- 330 million Americans -- are suffering because of this.
So both Reds and Blues think it's better to let the economy suffer, let the production be lower, so less wealth is created, and so American consumers -- ALL Americans -- must have their living standard reduced, because of our need to pander to the crybabies who feel threatened by competition from immigrants.
What other reason could there be for not taking in enough migrants to fill the vacant jobs?
It’s a bit less that there’s a shortage of workers than it is that there’s a shortage of people willing to risk their lives for low wages.
Arguably it's both. So, what are the solutions? What would fix the problem of the shortages? When there are multiple causes of the problem, there are multiple solutions. One solution is to allow an increase in the labor supply = allow more immigrant workers. And make the existing immigrant labor force more safe and secure, easing the enforcement of current bad laws which hinder companies from acquiring the labor they need. Recognize the current reliance on immigrant labor and legalize it, or more of it. If we can't legalize all of it, we must move more toward legalization, to increase the immigrant labor as our need for it continues and increases.
The solution of higher wages and safer conditions also happen anyway within the free market system which encourages employers to do whatever can be done to make the business perform more efficiently. Employers do these improvements when they are cost-effective and don't impose damage onto consumers who must pay the higher costs. So that improvement happens anyway, automatically, when it's cost-effective.
But the problem of low labor supply is the fault of the government, interfering into the economy by restricting the natural flow of immigrants across the artificial national borders. This artificial intervention into the economy is an easy problem to correct, by just letting people be free as individuals to move, which is natural for them to do in pursuit of their survival, as our ancestors and all animals have been doing for millions of years as dictated by the natural environment.
Employers need to ensure that their employees are safe at work and that they are fairly compensated.
Those needs are met within the normal free market process which happens as cost-effectively as practical within the natural limits on the economy. The wage incomes and working conditions today are vastly improved over that of 100 years ago, and 200 and 300 years ago, as science has improved the conditions, and there will continue to be improvement farther into the future, as technology improves, and as employers and workers and consumers are left individually free to make their choices according to what serves their individual interests, and as government plays its proper role of enforcing the rules for general public safety and honest business practices, but not making private personal choices for individuals, such as dictating prices and terms of employment.
Yeah, Walmart, I’m talking to you and all retailers and food service as well.
You're entitled to your freedom to preach moralistically at anyone you think should behave more generously. But demanding that some have to show pity toward others is not what makes the economy function better. Workers who want better terms must be free as individuals to make their own choices, to seek alternative opportunities, without interfering with the freedom of other individuals, including poor job-seekers and consumers they serve, who also are seeking their own alternatives and opportunities.
The current tight labor market is an opportunity for some low-paid workers to seek better opportunities, without needing the government to do anything for them. But one thing we do need the government to do is get out of the way of the free market which needs more labor, by easing its artificial immigration restrictions, easing the enforcement, so the needed work can get done.
Government's positive role right now is to get it right as to the mandates, for vaccinations and masks, etc., and find the proper limit as to how far it should go in enforcement vs. allowing individual free choice.
But often the need is for LESS government, less restriction, like right now the need to ease the immigration restrictions -- less of this rather than more. The only increase in demands on immigrants should be requirements for vaccinations or testing, which should not meet with much resistance by immigrants wanting to enter. Except for this, the rules should be eased and more immigrants allowed, especially work visas. Americans opposed to this are not patriots, but crybabies or pseudopatriots pandering to crybabies who don't understand the value that competition contributes to the economy.
I’m all for sane and humane immigration policies but we . . .
"I'm for immigration,
but . . ." here it comes -- get ready for the crybaby immigrant-bashing and employer-bashing:
. . .but we cannot let employers who wish to exploit immigrants by paying them poorly, not offering benefits . . .
No, this pseudopatriotic preaching does not improve the nation or the population generally. When the word "
exploit" shoots out the mouth, you know it's Crybaby Economics on the way. "Exploit" means to use what's available, at low cost, in order to get the work done for the benefit of consumers who must pay the price for it -- and otherwise that production or service will not get done and consumers will be worse off. That the company makes a profit from it is what drives the production which otherwise would not get done. If the company is not supposed to gain anything from it, then the production won't get done and everyone is worse off, including that job-seeker who now has no job.
No one is made worse off when a worker gets "exploited" instead of having no job at all (or an even lower-paying job).
. . . and not improving poor working conditions drive immigration policy.
Making the country (or all consumers) better off is what must drive the policy, not pandering to this or that limited special interest group wanting to impose costs onto all the rest of us. Every worker always wants better working conditions. If no work is allowed until all imaginable working conditions are improved to everyone who wants them, then the economy must grind to a halt and no work can get done. That you have to get out of bed earlier is a "poor" working condition -- even possibly damaging to health, but some of those "poor" conditions are necessary in order for the needed work to get done. And in the future when new technology changes that, maybe some of those poor conditions will improve, as changes become cost-effective and profitable and beneficial to all.
The "working condition" (its being "poor") is a subjective attitude for each individual worker who must decide what is acceptable or what is poor, according to each one's individual taste and tolerance level. For government to interfere into this and banish immigrants who might have a different subjective taste or tolerance level makes no more sense than to interfere with domestic workers who might also have the wrong subjective attitude about the proper "working conditions" or other terms of employment. These are subjective judgments just as much as the choice of what shirt to wear or how to fix your hair or what music to listen to.
There is no way to efficiently regiment every workplace according to one standard of what are the proper "working conditions" for all. This has to be left open to the individual workers and employers who can locally make the detailed decisions on each point where there is conflict. To not allow this is to restrict production and make all consumers worse off. Artificially interfering with production in order to satisfy everyone's personal moral and subjective tastes can only make the whole economy worse and reduce the general living standard.
If the working conditions and compensation are not good enough for Americans, they aren’t good enough, period.
But they ARE good enough for Americans, just not enough of them to fill all the jobs needing to be done. Just because some Americans reject certain terms does not mean ALL Americans reject them. What is the judgment you have against those who do accept those terms? How do you judge that those Americans are somehow invalid as workers because they have a different subjective judgment of what is "poor"? What's wrong with the employer hiring Americans for whom the terms are good enough, but then saying "Why can't there be more workers than only these? Are there other potential workers like these who could also work for me at these terms, like these ones do?"
If you say "No, you must pay higher terms than this," then you're also saying that even their current workers are not legitimate, and that even the work already being done is invalid and should be stopped, so that even the current level of production is too high and should be reduced, and that the current standard of living in this country is too high, and we need a lower standard of living in order to eliminate what someone judges to be "poor" working conditions somewhere. And so therefore the whole country must suffer a reduced standard of living, by that reasoning. Any reasoning which arbitrarily excludes a class of workers, like immigrants, saying they are invalid because the terms are "poor" and thus unacceptable, also condemns the domestic work being done already, by similar workers, in similar working conditions, and so rejects the prosperity and higher living standard we have already achieved.
Whereas allowing in needed immigrant workers to fill the current need simply affirms the prosperity we've already created and serves to preserve this high living standard and increase it into the future, based on the good economic principles which have already proved successful. Of course there could be negative trends, like climate change, etc., which threaten our future living standard, but in that case increased immigration is a factor which can help salvage the current higher living standard, or help to salvage as much of it as possible in view of some changing negative trends we might not be able to prevent.
It isn’t being a crybaby to expect safe working conditions, reasonable and predictable work schedule and a liveable wage.
It's "crybaby" when your tantrum reaches the point where you must impose your personal subjective demands onto others instead of letting the other individuals make their own free choice. Interfering with another's choice to travel, to hire an outsider, a newcomer, because of the increased competition, is
Crybaby Economics, whereas
Grown-Up Economics is to make your own personal adjustments, to meet your personal demands, to get what you want as an individual producer, but still allowing everyone else to be equally free to make their own individual free choice. Including the choice for a lower hourly wage rather than no job at all, or the choice to travel, to migrate, to search for better opportunities, such as better employment opportunities, in an economy where you produce for the benefit of ALL consumers, because it's
competitive and therefore
requires you to perform better in order to increase your profit/income.
The difference is that "Crybaby Economics" means
those who whine the loudest are the ones who prosper, whereas in "Grown-Up Economics"
those who perform better are the ones who prosper, and the latter school of economics is the one which produces a better functioning economy for the benefit of all rather than only the benefit of the best and loudest whiners.
I’m fine with the govt. providing wage supports for small businesses and gradually tapering off as the employer reaches benchmark revenues and income and number of employees.
In theory perhaps, but today, with today's Blues and Reds ruining the country and the economy, there is no form of corporate welfare for the small businesses which can do anything but make it all worse. The Big Government lobbyists and demagogues would be the only winners.
And for immigration per se, the need is equally great, whether it's the small or large companies. For all of them there is an urgent need which could be met by allowing much higher numbers of immigrant workers, and the result would be a net gain for the whole economy, i.e., for all consumers = the whole population.
Walmart and Amazon and other behemoths can start paying taxes at a fair level and help subsidize rather than cannibalize small businesses.
It's not subsidies which small businesses need or want (except a few crybabies). What they need is to be left free to hire immigrants or anyone they can find willing to accept the terms, without interference from the government or pseudopatriotic moralists pretending to dictate to others what their choices ought to be.
