Need for Immigrant Workers

[ZiprHead]

As pointed out before, wage increase is only a partial solution, even minor in some cases, because the fact still remains that employers can't raise the wage level above the point where profit drops to zero. In all those cases the only alternative is to cut production = lower supply = higher prices and shortages and reduced living standard for all.

More poor economic reasoning. Higher wages do not mean a reduced living standard for all.

No, he's right. Raise labor costs, you raise prices, you get a spiral of inflation. In the long run the government has no control over business profit margins except in monopoly situations. Force profits too low, businesses that fail won't be replaced. Profits go too high, competitors enter. You can force it away from it's natural value but in time it will return to it in anything resembling a free market.

Taxing the rich works.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

First, if my wage increases by proportionally more than inflation, I am better off.

But only at somebody else's expense. Workers in general do not benefit.

Second, an increase in wages need not cause an increase in prices if productivity is increasing.

And if productivity were increasing in time workers would end up with more, anyway, as competitors would take advantage of the extra profit to lure away the better workers.

Third, the notion that there is a natural value for profit margins is bizarre. Profit margins are the result of market forces. If labor costs rise, profit margins can "naturally" (to use your phrase) shrink.

Short term thinking. In the long term profit margins are a function of the perceived gain vs the perceived risk. This decides whether players enter the market and ultimately will drive profit margins back to the normal values. (Or destroy the industry if it's impossible for them to reach the normal value.)

So, your response is based on 3 economically false premises. It is an example of poor economic reasoning.

No, just because you don't like the reality doesn't make it go away.

 

[bilby]

And if productivity were increasing in time workers would end up with more, anyway, as competitors would take advantage of the extra profit to lure away the better workers.

In time, we are all going to be dead.

The boss might be able to think long-term, but short-term thinking is the only option for someone who's got to find the rent this week, or who would like to eat today.

In timescales relevant to real workers working for real companies today, productivity increases go to the owners of the company. Some might be returned to managers as bonuses. None goes to workers, unless they're represented effectively by a powerful union that can negotiate such a thing.

Changing employers is not a trivial thing, and most workers do it very infrequently (even where it might be highly beneficial to them to do so). One important reason is that such a change is a big gamble that must be undertaken with very limited information; And employers look down on disloyalty and people with a history of frequent changes of employer (despite having exactly zero loyalty to their workers).

The employer-employee relationship is MASSIVELY one sided for most people; Your pretty economic hypotheses that assume a roughly equal relationship are therefore total shit.

If the boss doesn't like your new haircut, he can fire you and lose a tiny percentage of his workforce on a very temporary basis until he finds a replacement worker.

If you are being severely underpaid, you can quit and lose your entire income for an indefinite period, while you try to persuade potential new employers that they should hire a person who is prepared to stand up for himself, and not the poor bastard who was fired for his bad haircut and who is happy to accept stupidly low wages and awful conditions just so he doesn't starve or become homeless.

Clearly, this is an approximately equal relationship

 

[laughing dog]

First, if my wage increases by proportionally more than inflation, I am better off.

But only at somebody else's expense. Workers in general do not benefit.

That was not the issue - the claim is that all were worse off.

Second, an increase in wages need not cause an increase in prices if productivity is increasing.

And if productivity were increasing in time workers would end up with more, anyway, as competitors would take advantage of the extra profit to lure away the better workers.

That is shifting the goal posts. And it assumes a level of competition and mobility in the labor market that has not been established.

Third, the notion that there is a natural value for profit margins is bizarre. Profit margins are the result of market forces. If labor costs rise, profit margins can "naturally" (to use your phrase) shrink.

Short term thinking. In the long term profit margins are a function of the perceived gain vs the perceived risk. This decides whether players enter the market and ultimately will drive profit margins back to the normal values. (Or destroy the industry if it's impossible for them to reach the normal value.)

That is delusional. Profit margins are the result of market forces and decisions. There is no such thing as a "normal value" of any market driven outcome.

So, your response is based on 3 economically false premises. It is an example of poor economic reasoning.

No, just because you don't like the reality doesn't make it go away.

The irony of your response is surely lost on you. Your analysis is based on assumptions about the economy and economics that are unsupported by the facts and reason.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

PBS NewsHour | HELP WANTED JOBS | Season 2022 | Vermont Public

HELP WANTED JOBS

video.vermontpublic.org

The part about immigrant labor begins about 2:20 into the video.


This PBS Newshour segment shows that immigrant labor is a normal part of the U.S. economy and has decreased in the last 1-2 years, causing shortages in industries which rely on immigrant labor.

Some of the shortage is due to a "clogged process" of approving immigrant workers, keeping them waiting, and deporting them.

No one is giving any reason why it's bad to have these services provided by immigrant labor and why such workers should be subject to deportation. Everyone is made better off by allowing such immigrant labor: the workers themselves, the consumers, and the companies. By excluding them, denying the visas, deporting them instead of letting them work, nothing is accomplished. The companies only reduce their service. They don't increase the wages and hire red-blooded Americans instead. It is delusional to say they must increase the wages and provide the same service as before. These are not the rich corporations mostly, but small companies struggling to survive.

atrib: The jobs will get filled if the employers offer a competitive wage. If not, the employers will find ways to automate production to save on the need for expensive human labor, or go out of business, and someone else will take their place . . .

This is fantasy and delusional. We don't gain better producers by crushing producers we judge aren't good enough.

By condemning these companies (as we do by limiting their access to the needed labor) what you are saying essentially is that all businesses which rely on immigrant labor are "not viable" and undesirable -- because of the "exploitation" -- and should have to shut down. This exclusionism and suppression of production, on the pretense that workers are "exploited" so capitalists get rich, is a factor which reduces our living standard and makes the nation poorer, hurting rich and poor alike.

 

[laughing dog]

This is fantasy and delusional. We don't gain better producers by crushing producers we judge aren't good enough.

The free market crushes producers it judges are not good enough. You routinely condemn workers who are not "good enough" earn a wage they want to receive.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

And if productivity were increasing in time workers would end up with more, anyway, as competitors would take advantage of the extra profit to lure away the better workers.

In time, we are all going to be dead.

The boss might be able to think long-term, but short-term thinking is the only option for someone who's got to find the rent this week, or who would like to eat today.

In timescales relevant to real workers working for real companies today, productivity increases go to the owners of the company. Some might be returned to managers as bonuses. None goes to workers, unless they're represented effectively by a powerful union that can negotiate such a thing.

The feedback cycle is a lot shorter than that.

Changing employers is not a trivial thing, and most workers do it very infrequently (even where it might be highly beneficial to them to do so). One important reason is that such a change is a big gamble that must be undertaken with very limited information; And employers look down on disloyalty and people with a history of frequent changes of employer (despite having exactly zero loyalty to their workers).

They don't need to move often for the effect to work. When an employer is having a hard time finding qualified people they're likely to raise wages.

If you are being severely underpaid, you can quit and lose your entire income for an indefinite period, while you try to persuade potential new employers that they should hire a person who is prepared to stand up for himself, and not the poor bastard who was fired for his bad haircut and who is happy to accept stupidly low wages and awful conditions just so he doesn't starve or become homeless.

Really, now??? No, you find the new job while you have the current one.

 

[bilby]

When an employer is having a hard time finding qualified people they're likely to raise wages.

You cannot possibly be so ignorant of the wider world as to genuinely believe that this is true.

It's a quirk of the employment of skilled coders and programmers in the IT industry. It's not even true for other workers in that same industry, much less for workers in general across the economy.

A quick glance at history suggests that wage rises are almost invariably either the absolute last resort, (after seeking ways to avoid using qualified people; or importing qualified people from places with lower wage expectations; or training people in-house in return for below market wage rises; or employing new people at market wages but not changing the wages of existing employees [and engaging in psychological warfare to prevent people from discussing their pay with each other]; or pretty much anything at all other than increasing wages for all employees in the relevant role). Where wages have increased, it's been the result of organised campaigning by workers, not an employer response to scarcity of qualified people.

 

[bilby]

No, you find the new job while you have the current one.

No, I don't. And nor do most people. Because doing so is seen as disloyal - and puts your current job at risk for that reason. And because finding work is hard work in itself, and not something you can just fit in around your current paid employment.

Real people in the real world generally don't do that. It's yet another idiosyncrasy of your employment environment, that's not generally true of employment in the economy at large. It happens, but it's not normal.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

More opportunity, more individual free choice,
less exclusionism

Immigration is a weird thing. Legal immigration is typically tied to the immigrant having a desirable skill to fill a supposed skill shortage.

But it isn't only that. It's also about acquiring a new skill, and this might be possible only in certain countries where there is more opportunity than in one's native country. It is totally legitimate for a person to seek to relocate somewhere else where there's more opportunity, and for any decent country to absorb these newcomers seeking self-improvement. --- But not those who are parasitic and criminal. Some discrimination to weed them out is appropriate. But the facts show that the newcomers are far less parasitic and criminal than the native-borns already in the country. So this is no legitimate reason to be imposing the current barriers and exclusionism of immigrant workers.

But this [the skilled ones migrating] often means leaving the source country of the headache of brain drain, particularly in the medical field. I believe the USA pulls in a lot of nurses from other countries for care givers.

There would be nothing wrong with helping those "source" countries develop more opportunities to encourage education and training for their populations, or in other ways helping them improve conditions to make the country more attractive and less oppressive, and thus change the conditions which drive some to migrate. But this cannot mean punishing the immigrants who leave in hopes of finding a better life elsewhere, as if they are guilty. There are already incentives for people to stay where they are and put up with the bad conditions, and the vast majority of them do stay. The idea that some of the migrants should suffer danger -- e.g., be killed or tortured by bandits -- as a way to deter others from this bad behavior (seeking to get the hell out of that "shithole") is not legitimate.

Pro-lifers give reasons why a pregnant woman, even a 15-year-old girl, is obligated to go through the childbirth, as a duty, in disregard of her personal self-interest. One could preach a similar sermon to victims in 3rd-world countries who want to escape, by immigrating, telling them they're obligated to remain and suffer the bad conditions, as a duty. Maybe it's OK to preach the sermon to them, but the choice has to be left to the victim facing the bad prospects, because individual free choice has to be given priority over the sermon.

Of course in some cases maybe immigrants should hear a sermon from a preacher telling them the wisdom of staying where they are and suffering the conditions as their fate, or seeking to improve the conditions. Most of us probably need sermons preached at us for one reason or another. But individual free choice has to take priority.

You could argue that some immigrants have a more legitimate motive to leave than others, are more oppressed than others, are more deserving and worthy to receive consideration. However, the complicated and convoluted process to distinguish these from the less worthy migrants is not worth the cost. The costly interviews and court cases are a huge waste of dollars needed elsewhere, and no one can seriously claim these procedures are doing an efficient job of separating the more worthy migrants from the less worthy. It's better to do away with the subjective separating of the more worthy from the less worthy and instead admit all the needed immigrant workers.

It would be fine for the U.S. or other developed countries to enact programs in the poor countries to educate poor people, dispel some of their myths about utopia awaiting them in the "Land flowing with milk and honey," etc., make them aware of the dangers, the unknown, which they face if they venture to migrate, explain what opportunities they already have which they could take advantage of.

But the foremost value, especially in America, is that of individual free choice, because of which the Civil War was fought primarily, and this liberty/individualism value is more important than nativistic instincts or the fear of alien hordes invading and destroying our culture, etc. So we should not feel guilty taking away the "brains" from those countries, and also not try to ward off the newcomers like pests posing a threat.

Illegal immigrants may or may not have skills other than labor. More likely not.

So those less skilled will not fare as well as the skilled ones. But everyone is made better off as a result of the immigrant workers, even the unskilled ones needed in several important service industries. And many who arrived unskilled had a tough life but raised kids who took advantage of the opportunities to become skilled and later did much better than their parents. This is a basic part of American history, and also of most other developed countries.

E.g., a good example of such mixed ethnicity population today is Singapore, which arguably has the most functional economy in the world, though having a higher percent of "foreigners" than other countries, with open trade and mostly free market principles, and doing as well as any country to deal with modern environmental and population density difficulties. If such a small nation is able to handle the mish-mash of ethnicities and foreign influx and competition, why shouldn't the U.S. and West European countries be able to do it? Why do these require any more protections against the "outsiders" swarming in than Singapore does?

So what are they [unskilled immigrants] going to do? Most likely eke out a living doing menial work with little opportunity for advancement until amnesty or whatever.

They will do the same as earlier immigrants did, having more net prospects to succeed, struggling to survive, doing a little better than they would if they'd remained where they came from, and in many cases leaving a better life for their descendants. And their hardship, probably less than in their homeland, is a price they pay which benefits those already here, so it's a win-win-win-win for everyone: The immigrants themselves are (a little) better off, U.S. consumers are all better off, employers are better off being able to produce and profit more, and the descendants of those immigrants are given opportunity lacking back home where they came from. So, what they're "going to do" is make the world better off.

Does the USA need immigrants? If yes, what does it really need them for? Fill skill gaps? Hmm, why not train the “natives” rather than . . .

We already do that, or are trying to. And we should try harder to make education better, maybe spend even more (U.S. is almost 1st place worldwide in per capita investment in education), but more importantly improve the return on every dollar spent. There are probably a million improvements we could do, not only to improve the quality, but also increase the quantity, make education less expensive, make it free to everyone without limit, to all ages, not just K-12. There's virtually no limit to how much is needed to "train the 'natives'" better, although there are also a million conflicting theories about how to improve the schools.

But what does that have to do with excluding immigrants coming here? warding them off like pests? We don't have to choose between these 2 options -- taking more immigrants and improving education for all, as if these are in conflict with each other. In fact they are both part of the same goal -- making the whole society better, improving everyone's performance to produce a better life for all. Better education for all plus more immigrant workers (which partly means more competition) are both part of the program to produce better performance and better production = higher living standard for all.

. . . train the "natives" rather than plunder another country’s assets?

Usually that other country doesn't appreciate those human assets, and if we turn them away they will go to waste, even perish, rather than be taken and valued and put to use by that other country. It's better to "plunder" and "exploit" that other country's human assets rather than letting those assets go to waste.

But again, there is nothing wrong with helping other nations do better, to improve their education and their opportunities. This does not contradict the value of accepting the immigrants who choose to come rather than stay in their home country. The best outcome is from pursuing both these values -- to help the other country do better internally but also to accept (even "plunder") those who leave in search of a better life. The highest value is that of the individual free choice of those seeking whatever would improve their lives, and then along with this trying to improve the conditions everywhere in order to improve the choices for those struggling to survive no matter what choice they make.

Whereas the option to impose suffering onto them, as punishment for their wrong decision to make a change, leads to worse outcomes and worse conditions everywhere.

The USA is not as an attractive proposition as it was say 20 years ago. I’m not sure the USA could attract talent from most EU countries now. For the unskilled immigrants fleeing third world hellish conditions, any port in a storm I suppose but they will be taken advantage of here while they lack the legal ability to work.

That's why we need to increase the legal ability for them to work. Issue more work visas, reduce the deportations, raise higher the caps/quotas, or even eliminate some of the quotas, especially the ones which divide immigrants into various categories, like cattle herded into separate corrals and branded according to their identification or to what stock or classification they got put into during the inspection procedure.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

When an employer is having a hard time finding qualified people they're likely to raise wages.

You cannot possibly be so ignorant of the wider world as to genuinely believe that this is true.

It's a quirk of the employment of skilled coders and programmers in the IT industry. It's not even true for other workers in that same industry, much less for workers in general across the economy.

I've overheard management discussing doing exactly that. We needed to match a competitor to keep enough installers. They agreed with the supervisor who was asking for it.

A quick glance at history suggests that wage rises are almost invariably either the absolute last resort, (after seeking ways to avoid using qualified people; or importing qualified people from places with lower wage expectations; or training people in-house in return for below market wage rises; or employing new people at market wages but not changing the wages of existing employees [and engaging in psychological warfare to prevent people from discussing their pay with each other]; or pretty much anything at all other than increasing wages for all employees in the relevant role). Where wages have increased, it's been the result of organised campaigning by workers, not an employer response to scarcity of qualified people.

That's what the unions would have you believe.

 

[bilby]

When an employer is having a hard time finding qualified people they're likely to raise wages.

You cannot possibly be so ignorant of the wider world as to genuinely believe that this is true.

It's a quirk of the employment of skilled coders and programmers in the IT industry. It's not even true for other workers in that same industry, much less for workers in general across the economy.

I've overheard management discussing doing exactly that. We needed to match a competitor to keep enough installers. They agreed with the supervisor who was asking for it.

A quick glance at history suggests that wage rises are almost invariably either the absolute last resort, (after seeking ways to avoid using qualified people; or importing qualified people from places with lower wage expectations; or training people in-house in return for below market wage rises; or employing new people at market wages but not changing the wages of existing employees [and engaging in psychological warfare to prevent people from discussing their pay with each other]; or pretty much anything at all other than increasing wages for all employees in the relevant role). Where wages have increased, it's been the result of organised campaigning by workers, not an employer response to scarcity of qualified people.

That's what the unions would have you believe.

Yes. And they're right.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

When an employer is having a hard time finding qualified people they're likely to raise wages.

You cannot possibly be so ignorant of the wider world as to genuinely believe that this is true.

It's a quirk of the employment of skilled coders and programmers in the IT industry. It's not even true for other workers in that same industry, much less for workers in general across the economy.

I've overheard management discussing doing exactly that. We needed to match a competitor to keep enough installers. They agreed with the supervisor who was asking for it.

A quick glance at history suggests that wage rises are almost invariably either the absolute last resort, (after seeking ways to avoid using qualified people; or importing qualified people from places with lower wage expectations; or training people in-house in return for below market wage rises; or employing new people at market wages but not changing the wages of existing employees [and engaging in psychological warfare to prevent people from discussing their pay with each other]; or pretty much anything at all other than increasing wages for all employees in the relevant role). Where wages have increased, it's been the result of organised campaigning by workers, not an employer response to scarcity of qualified people.

That's what the unions would have you believe.

Yes. And they're right.

Since I've seen the opposite I find your argument lacking.

 

[bilby]

When an employer is having a hard time finding qualified people they're likely to raise wages.

You cannot possibly be so ignorant of the wider world as to genuinely believe that this is true.

It's a quirk of the employment of skilled coders and programmers in the IT industry. It's not even true for other workers in that same industry, much less for workers in general across the economy.

I've overheard management discussing doing exactly that. We needed to match a competitor to keep enough installers. They agreed with the supervisor who was asking for it.

A quick glance at history suggests that wage rises are almost invariably either the absolute last resort, (after seeking ways to avoid using qualified people; or importing qualified people from places with lower wage expectations; or training people in-house in return for below market wage rises; or employing new people at market wages but not changing the wages of existing employees [and engaging in psychological warfare to prevent people from discussing their pay with each other]; or pretty much anything at all other than increasing wages for all employees in the relevant role). Where wages have increased, it's been the result of organised campaigning by workers, not an employer response to scarcity of qualified people.

That's what the unions would have you believe.

Yes. And they're right.

Since I've seen the opposite I find your argument lacking.

What would even be 'the opposite' here?

Are you suggesting that where wages have decreased it has been the result of organised campaigning by workers?

And of course, you have seen the opposite; as I said earlier, "It's a quirk of the employment of skilled coders and programmers in the IT industry." Your atypical experience is not a guide to the general case, it's a specific and well known outlier.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Since I've seen the opposite I find your argument lacking.

What would even be 'the opposite' here?

Are you suggesting that where wages have decreased it has been the result of organised campaigning by workers?

And of course, you have seen the opposite; as I said earlier, "It's a quirk of the employment of skilled coders and programmers in the IT industry." Your atypical experience is not a guide to the general case, it's a specific and well known outlier.

I've seen management decide to raise wages to get enough workers, based on one fairly short discussion.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

Law of Supply-and-Demand + Greatest Good for the Greatest Number
= Increase the number of immigrant workers.

From an economics point of view, a shortage is always caused by a below market-clearing price.

That's just jargon which pretends there's no limit on how high the wage can go. . .

That is an ironic straw man of economic ignorance. The market-clearing price does indicate that the level of production associated with the market-clearing wage is worth the cost.

You're just throwing around jargon ("market-clearing price" and "market-clearing wage") meaninglessly. You have to state the logic without dependency on the jargon alone.

The economic reality, experienced in real life (not in jargon) is that the supply has decreased, which leads to higher price in order to pay the new production/labor cost, and this higher price is too high for the producers to pay for producing the same output as before. = reduced production = bad for consumers.

There is nothing in your "market-clearing price" or "market-clearing wage" which contradicts this reality. If the supply of labor is not increased, then the only alternative is reduced production. Increasing the wage can help increase the labor supply, but only at reduced production and higher prices for consumers. If you want to refute this, do it without falling back into econo-jargon.

If it weren't [the market-clearing wage is worth the cost], the demand for labor would not be as high.

The demand is the same as before, but the labor supply has decreased, making the same wage level not enough, but a higher wage level too high in order to produce at the same output level as before.

Let's apply this to the recent shortages, pandemic-related: The fact is that the demand is no different than before the pandemic. If the cost goes up (for the same production), that does not change the demand, except in the sense that consumers won't pay the higher price now for the same product, but will reduce their purchases. But that doesn't mean "demand" has decreased. What has decreased is output, or supply, which can mean higher value or price than before; you can insist that in response to the higher price the new "demand" has decreased, if you mean by "demand" only what consumers will now buy at the new higher price, i.e., less than they paid before. But this is not necessarily the meaning of "demand" -- it also means simply the degree of desire consumers have for item x in comparison to item y, and this demand has not changed.

So the demand for labor, or for the product and thus for whatever produces it, is the same as before, but now the cost of production is higher. You can say nothing has changed other than the new market-clearing price and wage, or that nothing has changed except that the value of labor is higher than before. But you cannot say that the production will remain the same if the wage is raised higher, because you must acknowledge that the production decreases as a result of the higher labor cost.

Nothing in the jargon about "market-clearing price" and "market-clearing wage" changes the fact that higher labor cost -> reduced output, or lower output at the new higher cost-per-unit. And there's nothing in science or economics or logic which decrees that the previous output is not viable or preferable -- it is preferable if there's a way to restore the output to the earlier level before the disruption. We want the production, output, to be what it was before, and this can be made possible by increasing the labor supply, without insisting that the wage has to increase.


What should be the new higher-wage-level ULTIMATUM?

The reality is that some wages have increased, unavoidably. But a certain prescribed higher wage level Ultimatum is probably not possible, i.e. not enough to attract the same labor and also maintain the same output as before. But increasing the labor supply can correct the shortage and return the production up to where it was before --

-- unless you're just fantasizing that every employer has some unlimited magic goldmine of dollars (pounds, Marks, Francs, etc.), to suddenly pop out by surprise to comply with any ultimatum, with which to pay unlimited higher and higher wage as needed to make up for an unexpected downturn or rise in cost.

This new higher cost is something negative in the economy which makes consumers worse off than before. Any possible correction to this is legitimate, including an increase in the labor supply. Although higher wage can be a partial solution, offsetting some of the harm, it isn't sufficient because higher wage forces the new production level to decrease as a result, still leaving consumers worse off. (Production has to decrease because the employer always chooses to maximize profit (or minimize loss), forcing the reduced production in response to higher cost.)

Increasing the labor supply is a totally appropriate response to this and has been done successfully again and again historically.

There's nothing in basic economics which says employers must be denied immigrant labor as a way to produce higher output.

True. There is nothing in basic economics which says employers must have access to immigrant labor as a way to produce higher output.

Yes there is: it would benefit everyone, making everyone better off, in cases where there is a drop in the labor supply which disrupts the current production and supply chain. There is no reason why this disruption should not be offset by whatever means possible that does no net harm. No one can give a good reason why a harmful disruption in production should not be offset by whatever means would work and would inflict no harm onto the population. Basic economics does say that higher benefit to the population is a preferred option over lower benefit -- or rather, maintaining the current level of production rather than letting the current production level be disrupted and thus causing net damage to the population. And the economy right now is suffering net damage because of the disruption.

Immigration is not a sickness or epidemic which has to be eradicated as a threat to the nation's economy. For the economy, immigration is one factor which can be increased as one remedy to the problem of rising cost causing downward pressure on production level.

Another straw man argument. Who is arguing to eradicate immigration?

To say it should not be increased as a way to address the labor shortage is to say there is something inherently threatening about immigration, or about increased immigrant workers. If you oppose increased immigrant workers for reducing the labor shortage, you are saying there is something inherently threatening or damaging about immigrants or immigrant workers. What is this threat or damage which you think they pose to the economy?

There is nothing in the market now that prevents employers from inducing more people to work by paying sufficiently higher compensation. Nothing.

Yes there is something that prevents it: the lack of profit, or resulting profit reduction. How can employers be expected to choose reduced profit?

Your persistent misuse of basic economics drives your responses. If employers cannot afford the resources to produce their desired level of output, then they should not be producing that level of output.

Yes they should: "that level" is the same level as before, which they should try to maintain rather than let it fall, because keeping the production up as it was is in the interest of all consumers = best for the whole nation, or the whole population.

They should try to restore the production to the same level as before, to meet the demand, to continue serving consumers the same as before. They can do this at the same labor cost/wage as before (or minimum cost increase) if the labor supply is increased, or if the artificial restriction of immigrant labor is loosened so the labor supply can increase and make up for the new shortage.

Nothing in basic economics decrees that producers should not try to maintain the same level of production if there's a way to do it which inflicts no net harm. Rather, basic economics does say it's good to keep the production going at the same level, to meet the same ongoing demand, without decreasing, if there's a practical way to do this.

And suppressing immigration or labor supply is arbitrary, not something required by the basics of history or economics or the social good or the national good.

Allowing more immigration is arbitrary, not something required by the basics of history or economics or the social or national good.

Yes it is something required (to serve the greater social good), and it's arbitrary to disallow it. Increasing immigrant labor has been used repeatedly in history in order to offset a labor shortage, and it has always led to good results, not bad. You can't name any case where it did anything other than net benefit for the economy.

But at least your final statement shows a glimmer of reality. Whether or not increased immigration is a good policy is a social question. Despite your persistent misunderstanding of basic economics, allowing more immigrants into the US is not justified by economic theory.

Yes it is justified, and is even required as a necessary way to address a sudden labor shortage, because it fixes something wrong -- shortages -- keeping the production up, or restoring it back up where it was (or as close as possible) before the disruption in production.

There may be economic benefits associated with increased immigration but there are also economic costs . . .

No, there is no net cost. The real cost is the policing and enforcement cost of trying to impose the unnecessary limits. Reducing the immigration laws and bureaucracy and log-jams due to the restrictions would be the best way to reduce the costs. E.g., the extreme court costs and inspection/interview costs required in order to evaluate each applicant to determine who to admit or turn away. All these costs would be REDUCED by admitting more immigrant workers.

. . . there are also economic costs, along with the social benefits and social costs.

The need usually (and especially right now) is for increasing the number to be admitted and reducing the restrictions, because of the unusual disruption in production recently. Relaxing the artificial barriers at this time would lead to more social benefits and lower social costs and lower economic costs.

I.e., increase the work visas and decrease the quotas and limits and artificial requirements.

There are many artificial requirements. The Sept. 14 hearing listed many of these. One especially obnoxious requirement which stood out conspicuously is the requirement that immigrants training in the U.S. and completing their credential procedure must first go back home for 2 years before being allowed to begin work in the U.S. Explain why such harassment of immigrants seeking to work does any social or economic benefit for the U.S.

 

[laughing dog]

Law of Supply-and-Demand + Greatest Good for the Greatest Number

You are just throwing around meaningless jargon to justify your views. Nothing in your word salad of "analysis" shows that your position is justified by history or economic theory. You parrot memes such "Greatest Good for the Greatest Number" as if that is an accepted basis for policy. You use "Law of Supply and Demand" without displaying any real indication of what it actually means or entails.

You seem to be unable to grasp on the basic underpinning of economic theory - that the price of something indicates its market value and nothing else. When there is a shortage of an item or labor, that indicates that the market value is too low because more people want to buy the item than others are willing to sell. There is no rational for accepting the state of the economy at any particular point in time as the standard to which we must return. None.
Your entire argument is based on beliefs and nothing else.

We get your position - people only matter as consumers or producers. That drives your walls of text misuse of economic theory in your justification of your underlying premise. But no one is required to accept your beliefs as valid or your policy views.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

more immigrant workers = more production takes place, counteracting the current shortages which consumers are experiencing due to shortage of workers, or reduced production recently, maybe due mostly to the pandemic. Increasing the supply of labor (rather than artificially restricting it, as we're doing) is a logical part of the process to correct what has happened to cause these shortages.

Of course more workers mean more production. More workers also mean lower compensation than otherwise would have prevailed.

No, it means higher for the competitive workers but lower for some of the less competitive. It has to cause higher and better production than before, overall, because of the increased competition, which in turn benefits everyone as consumers, 100% of the population -- except that a small percent of workers (the least competitive) probably see a wage decrease and thus a real income decrease.

In other words, it means higher production = lower prices = higher real income for all consumers except for a few uncompetitive workers who suffered lower wage.

Your position is not an economic one, but an ideological one.

The only ideology is "Greatest good for the greatest number" which everyone agrees with.

Right now, even you agree that the foregone production due to the labor shortage would be unprofitable at market-clearing wages.

At the new higher labor cost, yes. This is due to the new labor shortage, which can be alleviated by increasing the number of immigrant workers. And then the former production level could be mostly restored, thus making virtually everyone better off. So the only ideology here is to make people better off. This value of making humans better off can be legitimately combined with the economic theories of supply-and-demand and competition and profit etc.

The issue is whether it is considered a net social beneficial to the nation to admit more immigrant workers. You are arguing it is because more production means serving consumers. That is a very narrowly-based criterion that has little basis in rationally applied economic thought, . . .

How is serving consumers (all the population) "narrowly-based"? What kind of "economic thought" is it which disregards the interests of consumers, or all the population? How much more broad can "economic thought" be than to protect the interests of everyone?

. . . let alone a more expansive view of what the overall net social benefit should encompass.

What should the net social benefit encompass if not to serve all consumers? or maximum number of them? or of all the population?

There is no argument that something will "disappear" -- the argument is that consumers will be made better off by the production being restored to what it was earlier (or closer to it), by resuming needed work which is not getting done but which could be done if the labor supply was not kept artificially low due to unnecessary limits on immigrant workers. If you can't understand that increased work results in increased production, then you need to learn basic vocabulary, before trying to tackle economic theory.

What has happened might be called a "labor shortage" or some other term. Whatever it's called, the damage from this reduced production can be corrected by allowing more immigrant workers, to correct a pattern which is doing damage to all consumers, i.e., to the whole economy, making everyone worse off.

You can argue that consumers must be punished until employers are forced to increase the wage levels, but the truth is that wages have already increased, and there's no way to prove what the proper wage level has to be. Probably over 5-10-20 years the reduced production level and higher wage level would settle in -- some reduced profit level and higher prices for consumers. There's no reason to believe this would be better than the alternative of allowing more immigrant labor, which would correct the shortage problems much sooner.

Prices reflect the cost of production. If it costs more to make something then its price increase. That price increase is not a punishment to consumers.

Whatever it's called, it makes consumers worse off. It's fundamental in economics that consumers -- all the population -- should always be served, so we need to maintain the competition among producers as much as possible. If you don't agree, then you're opposed to price-fixing laws and antitrust laws. If the supply of something decreases suddenly, causing higher prices to consumers, it's appropriate to do something to counteract this to restore that supply, and/or restore the earlier competition which had kept prices down. Higher production (quantity and quality) at lower price is a fundamental economic value, to the benefit of all the consumers, which overrides all else.

Using your logic, keeping wages from rising (or allowing them to fall) is punishing workers (who are also consumers).

Wages need to rise or fall as the value of the workers (or need for them) rises or falls. The competitive market performs this function. It's true that uncompetitive workers/producers who don't improve themselves to become better at serving consumers might experience "punishment" as they lose out in the competition. It's good for the market to do this, or reward the better producers and penalize the worse ones.

Restricting the supply of labor, or anything else needed for production, is artificial and harmful to all consumers (the whole economy). Allowing more immigrant producers is good for competition, so that any restriction on the needed immigrant producers/workers is bad for all consumers and should be reduced, during all times. But especially during a time of reduced supply and resulting disruption and shortage, it is appropriate to offset that reduced supply, to try to maintain at least the same supply as before, and thus minimize the disruption. So reducing the restriction on immigrant workers is an appropriate measure to take during a time of unusual labor shortage.

Dictating a certain artificial increased wage doesn't automatically solve what's wrong, or produce a better social outcome, ... {inept reasoning snipped>

A market-clearing wage is not an artificial increase.

It is if it increases because of a sudden new labor shortage which could be offset by allowing more immigrant workers. What's artificial is to restrict immigrant labor in order to drive up the wage level higher than necessary, such as can happen in a new labor shortage. There is nothing necessary about the limits on immigrant workers. It's better to relax these limits when a labor shortage occurs. What's "better" always is to do whatever makes all the consumers better off, or keep high the level of service/production for the benefit of consumers.

Maybe it's not necessary (or it's less necessary) to try to suddenly drive down the labor cost by allowing a sudden influx of immigrant workers. Keeping the production level steady might be preferable to causing a sudden increase in production. But at least when a labor shortage suddenly occurs it's appropriate to take steps to offset this by increasing the immigrant labor.

So your argument is simply based on a stupid premise.

The only premise is that consumers (everyone, the whole population) should be better served by having the production maintained, along with the competition which drives producers to perform better. It is not "stupid" to try to get the producers to perform better. Which is the whole point of competition. How can it be "stupid" to make the economy perform better so people are made better off?

We need to stick to the basic principles of serving the whole society -- all consumers, r...,inept reasoning snipped>..

Serving the whole of society...all consumer may be one of your basic principles but there is no census on that as a basic or even secondary principle.

So your point is: the reason it's wrong to increase immigrant labor is that doing so would serve all society, which is bad because there's no consensus for doing that. So to prevent society from being served better, we need to restrict immigrant labor. OK, got it. You get a Nobel Prize in economics for your brilliant innovative thinking.

Yes, in the sense that for decades there has been a damaging policy of restricting immigrant labor, to the detriment of consumers.

That is your opinion and it is certainly not true for all consumers.

Yes it is, because all consumers benefit from the added competition = lower production cost = lower prices which all consumers pay. Of course some consumers benefit more than others, depending on which sectors take in more immigrant workers. And there is a small percent of native-born workers who might lose out in the added competition, but even they are made better off as consumers. It's fine to say the influx of immigrant workers should not be suddenly increased in an abrupt thrust so as to disrupt the normal process. But surely when something abruptly drives down the labor supply, it's reasonable to increase admission of immigrant workers.

You seem to forget that workers are also consumers.

No, that's the fundamental point. All the workers benefit, as consumers, by the higher level of competition to cause better performance and production to serve all consumers.

Keeping wages lower [i.e., they rise slower] than would have occurred otherwise means those workers have lower incomes than they would have had.

Some of the least competitive perhaps. But it's only their nominal income which decreases. While the higher level of performance, due to more competition, improves the overall production, for everyone -- for all consumers including the workers. And increased production = higher supply and lower prices to all = higher real income, regardless of the nominal dollars.

Economics does not preclude a legitimate value judgment, that the production should return to where it was before the pandemic, without the disruptions we've been experiencing. Nothing about basic economics excludes all value judgments. You can question the value judgment if you disagree with it, but not because it conflicts with economic criteria.

One can certainly inject their value judgments when applying economic theory. But when one conflates their value judgment with the dictates of the theory, one is making an error. There is no criteria established in economic theory that suggests that production should return to its pre-pandemic levels or . . .

Yes there is. As long as the production process is in place and able to continue, there's no reason to allow the economic performance to decrease abruptly due to a shortage of anything which could be corrected by letting the supply increase. If the production is functioning well, and then a sudden shortage occurs which disrupts the production, there is no reason to maintain artificial limits on the supply of whatever is needed to offset the shortage so that the production can resume and continue its good performance it was doing earlier.

. . . return to its pre-pandemic levels or that the ultimate goal is to serve consumers.

Yes, the correct criteria of economic theory is that the ultimate goal is to serve all consumers = the whole population. To be totally correct, this has to mean also "the public" in general, or all consumers of public benefits as well as privately produced benefits. So even government is one of the producers, and it too should perform efficiently to the benefit of the whole public. And since competition may not be possible, for government, there has to be some special pressure applied to the public sector to drive its performance up and keep costs down -- the same as if it did have competitors -- to try to compensate for its lack of competition. So fundamentally ALL the producers, even government, have an obligation to serve all the population = all consumers, or all those in the society, or everyone being served by all the producers.

What other goal can there be for the producers than to serve all those who are supposed to benefit from the production? What are the producers for if not to serve the people in the society or community?

Those criteria are based on your value judgments.

What other value judgment is there than to serve everyone in the society?

 

[Patooka]

Lumpy, I've got a question for you; which political party do you think is more likely to implement immigration reform as you have specified?

 

[laughing dog]

more immigrant workers = more production takes place, counteracting the current shortages which consumers are experiencing due to shortage of workers, or reduced production recently, maybe due mostly to the pandemic. Increasing the supply of labor (rather than artificially restricting it, as we're doing) is a logical part of the process to correct what has happened to cause these shortages.

Of course more workers mean more production. More workers also mean lower compensation than otherwise would have prevailed.

No, it means higher for the competitive workers but lower for some of the less competitive. It has to cause higher and better production than before, overall, because of the increased competition, which in turn benefits everyone as consumers, 100% of the population -- except that a small percent of workers (the least competitive) probably see a wage decrease and thus a real income decrease....<snipped economic nonsense>

That is economic nonsense and contradicts your increasingly inane wall of text argument that more immigrant worker are needed to increase production without increasing labor cost.

The only ideology is "Greatest good for the greatest number" which everyone agrees with.

Where on earth do you get such ideas? Not everyone agrees with that. It was the one of the tenet of the Communists in 1917. , I have heard racists use such an argument to defend horrible policies.

You can serve your word salads with half-baked internally inconsistent economic reasoning all you want. Perhaps you will persuade some shallow thinkers but the bottom line is that immigration issues extend way beyond "me want my stuff more plentiful and cheaper", and that nations have struggled with immigration issue for centuries trying to balance all of the interests.