Some good data on the economic consequences of immigration

[ksen]

http://www.politico.com/magazine/st...-immigration-economy-unemployment-jobs-214216

Yes, it improves our economy overall--but at the expense of transferring wealth from workers to employers. Right now we are tipped too far in that direction already.

Whoa, hold on. Do you think there is some infinite pool of profits out there to help fix this?

 

[whichphilosophy]

Wages:
If wages are driven down then spending is less. Labour costs are only a fraction of the overheads. Increased costs of oil gas and other fuels. Foreign workers put up with poor accommodation in the host country because they can send money to Poland or Romania to build new homes at the expense of local labour. Meanwhile the taxpayer can pay unemployment for the local displaced workers.

Productivity and Good Management:
Productivity as you imply a key factor. A good worker is worth more than a cheaper one who is incompetent. However HR departments and poor management tend to know the cost of labour but not the value.

Productivity is the driving force but in the USA wages were also reasonable thus directed a higher proportion of spending on more goods and services. As you say productivity (requiring good management and organization to appreciate and ensure valuable final products within less time from good labour.
We don’t need to import cheap labour to make them more valuable, and later pay them more; we need to manage our own labour properly but pay them reasonably. Cheap labour from abroad will drive wages down with no benefits except to the Employer.

Good management has to become more skilled in managing its workforce to ensure productivity. Poor management just tries to save labour costs. Without productivity higher or lower wages will not benefit a company.

Labour Costs:
Lower labour costs may result in lower prices but less people would have money anyway. Countries like Norway have high overall wages and labour costs but the overall standards of living are generally higher than most of Europe.

I’ve seen one director write off millions of pounds a failed expansion for a famous brewery stating to the shareholders it was investment o the same amount in plant. I understand he did this a few times.

Skilled Professions and Labour:
At the same time he replaced one experienced and competent employee who and had resolved problems affecting design and delivery of raw materials and components and replaced with a new person for less than half the rate.

Take an engineer who quietly designs plant equipment with no problems. . His wages are high and his employer thinks the job can be done cheaper. He is replaced with another engineer for less than half the cost. Then in 3 months there were design issues. The design changes and scrapping of existing work costs millions. The project runs late and the company incurs 10% liquidated damages, plus escalating costs for replacement materials and extended labour contracts with subcontractors.

Human Resources:
HR departments will just say the poorer worker was better because he was cheaper. They think one worker is just like another worker but one can be cheaper. Good experienced managers will pay more for skills. Poor management will not.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

Bashing employers will only make it worse, not better. Consumers end up paying the price.

To Hell with the enforcement. The country as a whole benefits from the improved production, the lower costs. We should stop forcing companies to babysit the workers and instead let them serve consumers, which is their real function.

Cheap labor is good for the economy!

300 years ago that would have been a popular argument when workers worked in sweatshops for very little and in some cases were paid in tokens to spend at the company shops.

It was good for the economy then and still is today.

400 years ago they were worse off still. Those sweatshops improved their lives.

In reality, employees who are paid reasonably so can . . .

"reasonably"? If everyone had to be paid "reasonably" before any work could be done, we'd still be living in the Stone Age.

. . . so can afford homes and cars spend for that in the economy.

You can't afford something that isn't being produced. And less is produced if you force employers to pay workers more than their value. It's their greed and dirty profit which made all that production possible.

More goods are sold in the shops thus creating more jobs.

No, less is produced if employers are not allowed to hire cheap labor. They can't sell more if the prices are forced up higher in order to pay the higher labor cost.

Foreign workers who have lower costs back home and work for lower wages in richer countries improve their own economies back home but add very little to the host country.

Goods and services at lower prices is a large addition to the economy of the host country. It's mainly the work they do that is their contribution, and more work gets done when employers are allowed to hire cheap labor.

Cheap Labour is perceived as good for the company but in not practice beneficial for the employee . . .

If it were not beneficial for the employee then that employee would not choose to work for that company. You're assuming the employee does not know what's beneficial for him. So then who will play the role of deciding what is good for us? We are not capable of deciding for ourselves what is in our individual interest?

. . . or the actual economy itself since spending is stagnated.

No, with more people working and more being produced and prices being lower, spending does not stagnate but increases. Crippling employers by not letting them hire all the help they need is what makes the economy stagnate.

In countries where cheap labour is the norm, poverty and lack of consumer spending is the norm.

But it's the poverty which produces the lower wages. They also have lower profits in those countries. It's the poverty which came first, and this produced the lower wages and profits.

All the rich countries today once had "poverty" and low wages and child labor etc.

Countries like India have a large economy because it has over one billion people but a lot of people have nothing. Europe benefitted from plundering its colonies more than cheap labour back home. I don't see India actually booming. I've been there a few times and it looks like a rubbish tip even in the capital full of squalor. Yet a few years ago the media reported Indian industrialist Mukesh Ambani built a 27 story house surrounded by slums.

There's not harm in being rich but building a one billion dollar home while 5 million people in Mumbai have no toilets in the house and many have no running water is an affront.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antilia_(building) India of course is one of the countries where people are regarded as expendable and many paid derisory wages.

It would all be made worse if they forced employers in India to pay workers more than the market value for their labor. In fact, they do force them to. Even the poorest countries have their bad laws forcing wages higher than market value, and other obstructions which discourage production.

Remember what happened to Samoa when they tried to push up the minimum wage.

However bad it is, nothing is improved by cracking down on employers and artificially forcing up their cost of production.

Even worse, I posted a whole string of examples where companies in the UK were given Eu grants to move UK factories to their own countries, or in other cases European companies were given grants to purchase British companies.

Huh? Forget the grants -- just let companies move their factories to wherever they want to, and let them purchase other companies.

Let them do whatever's good for business (minus the "grants") and stop trying to turn them into babysitters for uncompetitive wage-earners and job-seekers.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

Just let the Law of Supply and Demand do its job.

No, it's good to tip the economy to transfer wealth from the less productive/less valuable to the more productive/more valuable. Rewarding wage-earners who are a dime a dozen and have such low value and are so easily replaceable does not benefit the economy.

It's good when these low-value producers get replaced by someone or something to do the job at lower cost. It benefits ALL consumers for the lower-value workers to be replaced and for the labor cost to be reduced for the lower-value overpaid workers who just drive up prices and hurt all consumers because of the extra cost they impose onto the production.

Just like it's good for consumers when the low-value workers are replaced by robots, so also it's good when they're replaced by lower-cost labor, including immigrant labor.

I figured you would show up here sooner or later.

You're not presenting anything new here, but you are missing the point of the article.

Yes, the overall standard of living goes up--but at the expense of transferring more from workers to employers. In today's economy that's not a good thing.

Yes it is. The workers today are decreasing in value, and employers are INcreasing in value.

Everyone should be paid according to their value. If their value goes up, their income should increase. If their value goes down, their income should DEcrease.

It's not the fault of employers that workers today are becoming less valuable. Their supply is increasing while the demand for them is decreasing.

Basic supply-and-demand.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I figured you would show up here sooner or later.

You're not presenting anything new here, but you are missing the point of the article.

Yes, the overall standard of living goes up--but at the expense of transferring more from workers to employers. In today's economy that's not a good thing.

Yes it is. The workers today are decreasing in value, and employers are INcreasing in value.

Everyone should be paid according to their value. If their value goes up, their income should increase. If their value goes down, their income should DEcrease.

It's not the fault of employers that workers today are becoming less valuable. Their supply is increasing while the demand for them is decreasing.

Basic supply-and-demand.

Except the change is only due to immigration, not any actual change.

 

[whichphilosophy]

I figured you would show up here sooner or later.

You're not presenting anything new here, but you are missing the point of the article.

Yes, the overall standard of living goes up--but at the expense of transferring more from workers to employers. In today's economy that's not a good thing.

Yes it is. The workers today are decreasing in value, and employers are INcreasing in value.

Everyone should be paid according to their value. If their value goes up, their income should increase. If their value goes down, their income should DEcrease.

It's not the fault of employers that workers today are becoming less valuable. Their supply is increasing while the demand for them is decreasing.

Basic supply-and-demand.

The more cheap labour there is the poorer the country. We only have to look at India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Philippines and other squalid holes. Complimenting these are a lack of safety standards pensions and the worst working conditions. A supermarket cashier in the Europe may sit on a chair. This is because the law provides for this. In the Philippines the cashiers are forced to stand for their whole shift. Thanks to Aquino (mother of the previous president) employers hire people for 6 months, so as to avoid paying holidays and pensions.

Who benefits? The employer. In these poor countries, squalor rules for people on peanuts don't spend. Thus the shops lack variety and quality goods in the most cases. Try to purchase cheese in Manila that contains cheese which is not processed and only some shops contain items such as cheddar cheese. Pay workers well for efficient work and their additional spending increases trade and expands businesses.

 

[whichphilosophy]

300 years ago that would have been a popular argument when workers worked in sweatshops for very little and in some cases were paid in tokens to spend at the company shops.

It was good for the economy then and still is today.

400 years ago they were worse off still. Those sweatshops improved their lives.

In reality, employees who are paid reasonably so can . . .

"reasonably"? If everyone had to be paid "reasonably" before any work could be done, we'd still be living in the Stone Age.

. . . so can afford homes and cars spend for that in the economy.

You can't afford something that isn't being produced. And less is produced if you force employers to pay workers more than their value. It's their greed and dirty profit which made all that production possible.

More goods are sold in the shops thus creating more jobs.

No, less is produced if employers are not allowed to hire cheap labor. They can't sell more if the prices are forced up higher in order to pay the higher labor cost.

Foreign workers who have lower costs back home and work for lower wages in richer countries improve their own economies back home but add very little to the host country.

Goods and services at lower prices is a large addition to the economy of the host country. It's mainly the work they do that is their contribution, and more work gets done when employers are allowed to hire cheap labor.

Cheap Labour is perceived as good for the company but in not practice beneficial for the employee . . .

If it were not beneficial for the employee then that employee would not choose to work for that company. You're assuming the employee does not know what's beneficial for him. So then who will play the role of deciding what is good for us? We are not capable of deciding for ourselves what is in our individual interest?

. . . or the actual economy itself since spending is stagnated.

No, with more people working and more being produced and prices being lower, spending does not stagnate but increases. Crippling employers by not letting them hire all the help they need is what makes the economy stagnate.

In countries where cheap labour is the norm, poverty and lack of consumer spending is the norm.

But it's the poverty which produces the lower wages. They also have lower profits in those countries. It's the poverty which came first, and this produced the lower wages and profits.

All the rich countries today once had "poverty" and low wages and child labor etc.

Countries like India have a large economy because it has over one billion people but a lot of people have nothing. Europe benefitted from plundering its colonies more than cheap labour back home. I don't see India actually booming. I've been there a few times and it looks like a rubbish tip even in the capital full of squalor. Yet a few years ago the media reported Indian industrialist Mukesh Ambani built a 27 story house surrounded by slums.

There's not harm in being rich but building a one billion dollar home while 5 million people in Mumbai have no toilets in the house and many have no running water is an affront.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antilia_(building) India of course is one of the countries where people are regarded as expendable and many paid derisory wages.

It would all be made worse if they forced employers in India to pay workers more than the market value for their labor. In fact, they do force them to. Even the poorest countries have their bad laws forcing wages higher than market value, and other obstructions which discourage production.

Remember what happened to Samoa when they tried to push up the minimum wage.

However bad it is, nothing is improved by cracking down on employers and artificially forcing up their cost of production.

Even worse, I posted a whole string of examples where companies in the UK were given Eu grants to move UK factories to their own countries, or in other cases European companies were given grants to purchase British companies.

Huh? Forget the grants -- just let companies move their factories to wherever they want to, and let them purchase other companies.

Let them do whatever's good for business (minus the "grants") and stop trying to turn them into babysitters for uncompetitive wage-earners and job-seekers.

Would you accept a pay cut so that your company can train staff from abroad to work at 50% of what you are paid.
Or would you accept redundancy because imported labour can live in dormitories and send the money home to purchase what you wanted to purchase such as a house.

 

[atrib]

Foreign students are allowed to work for one year as part of a vocational training program related to their education, while staying on their student visas. I don't see how it would be effective for companies to pay for foreigners to go to school in the US just so they could work for them for 12 months.

The loophole (but not really on inspection ) was to take interns who are doing work experience and pay them a pittance as expenses (token intern payments) to work for the company. That pittance would be comparable with countries such as India.

Interns typically do not get paid market wages. Sometimes they get paid nothing since the internship is considered training. If IBM was hiring foreign students on student visas, they would only be allowed to work for 12 months anyway, intern or not, so I don't understand what your point was.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

We should not make a religion out of HIGHER WAGES. Lower labor cost benefits consumers.

Wages:

If wages are driven down then spending is less.

(In some cases less spending is really good.)

If the lower wages are due to market forces, then the result of it is best for the economy, whether spending increases or decreases.

If the value of workers is decreasing, then paying them less increases the production over what it would be otherwise, and all consumers benefit, and more spending is the result if consumers want more stuff. But if the companies are not producing what consumers want, then the less spending is really good for the economy. More spending is not automatically always best. Serving consumers better is always the best result.

Labour costs are only a fraction of the overheads. Increased costs of oil gas and other fuels. Foreign workers put up with poor accommodation in the host country . . .

They make that choice. They decide what's in their interest. If they are poor workers in a rich country, then their accommodations are probably better than where they came from.

. . . because they can send money to Poland or Romania to build new homes at the expense of local labour.

But to the benefit of consumers who pay lower prices = net gain to the economy. The function of these workers is to serve consumers, not spend their paychecks. Where they spend their money is irrelevant.

Meanwhile the taxpayer can pay unemployment for the local displaced workers.

Same as when those same workers are displaced by robots/computers. So does it hurt the economy when employers replace them with new technology? because the displaced workers end up on welfare/unemployment? Good luck ripping out all those computers/robots! Are you going on a crusade to prohibit employers from replacing workers with computers/robots?

dirty little secret: It's good for us all when companies replace high-paid workers with machines or with cheap labor!

Productivity and Good Management:

Productivity as you imply a key factor. A good worker is worth more than a cheaper one who is incompetent.

The employer is the best judge of the quality or competence of the worker. Also the consumers have to make that decision, in choosing whether to pay a higher price for higher quality, or lower price to save money. They are entitled to have that choice. They don't need Leftist pro-union crusaders to dictate their choices to them such as imposing higher prices onto them. Leave the consumers alone to make that judgment.

However HR departments and poor management tend to know the cost of labour but not the value.

The company is the best judge of the value vs. the cost of labor.

You're not entitled to impose your subjective value judgments onto employers and consumers.

Employers and consumers do not need Left-wing pro-Union labor bosses and Leftist politicians and protectionist nativist demagogues and populist lynch-mob mentality pseudo-patriots to dictate these choices to them.

We get the best economic results by letting all individuals make their own personal free choices, without anyone imposing their theories onto them about quality. The consumers and employers, ALL buyers of any kind, are entitled to judge this, and sometimes it is legitimate to choose a lower price even if it means lower quality. You're entitled to choose a Yugo over a Mercedes-Benz. And often a lower price does NOT mean lower quality at all. No one is entitled to make this choice for another and impose their judgment onto consumers or employers.

Productivity is the driving force but in the USA wages were also reasonable thus directed a higher proportion of spending on more goods and services.

The only "reasonable" wage is the one dictated by market forces of supply-and-demand, not by pity for the workers or demagoguery or pandering to a mindless mob. Or by abstruse theories about how the spending should be proportioned.

We don’t need to import cheap labour to make them more valuable, . . .

The employers are the best judge of that. Usually it's to save on cost. So the production can increase and consumers have more choice at lower prices. No one is more qualified than the employers to judge the benefits of importing the labor.

. . . and later pay them more; we need to manage our own labour properly but pay them reasonably.

That's exactly what employers do if it's left to them and not to politicians and demagogues and labor union fanatics driven by emotion rather than what's good for consumers.

Cheap labour from abroad will drive wages down with no benefits except to the Employer.

No, TO CONSUMERS as well, who are the ones who benefit from the lower costs which are passed on to them in the form of lower prices. Just as consumers benefit from workers being replaced by machines which saves on cost. If you think consumers do not benefit from the lower labor cost, then you're also against robots and computers replacing workers in order to save on cost.

Good management has to become more skilled in managing its workforce to ensure productivity. Poor management just tries to save labour costs.

So does GOOD management, when the labor costs are too high, as it often is, when the workers are being overpaid, because their value is going down but the artificially-high wage levels are forced to stay up.

Leave it to the employers to decide if those workers can be replaced by something less costly, whether it's new machines to replace workers, or cheaper labor to replace overpaid workers.

Without productivity higher or lower wages will not benefit a company.

You think the company is too stupid to figure that out? They know when they have to offer higher wages in order to attract more workers, or better workers. They're not stupid. They increase their profit if they improve the production and the service. If they need to pay someone more in order to serve consumers better and increase their profit, they have every incentive to increase those wages. They don't need labor-union crusaders or demagogues or Left-wing ideologues to dictate these decisions to them.

Labour Costs:

Lower labour costs may result in lower prices but less people would have money anyway.

Yes, the person paid less has less money. So then no one should ever be paid less?

It does not follow that everyone has to be paid more money so that everyone will have more money. Making sure everyone has more money is not the guiding principle for all decision-making. If someone's value is decreasing, then HIS INCOME SHOULD ALSO DECREASE, despite the fact that someone then has less money. We don't decide what someone's income should be based on some dogma that people must have more money. Everyone's income must be determined by how much value they produce. If that value goes DOWN, then that person's income also must go down.

And many many workers today are becoming less valuable. Nothing is gained by paying them more than they are worth just because you feel sorry for them.

Countries like Norway have high overall wages and labour costs but the overall standards of living are generally higher than most of Europe.

Its standard of living has been higher, and this is what drove up the wage level. And the value of the Norwegians is generally higher. They were not paid more because there was an increase in pity for them and so they were paid more out of guilt. Their value went up first, and so their income went up.

But don't forget that much of Norway's wealth is due to OIL revenue.

And don't compare Norway to other countries which are less homogeneous. And especially not to the U.S. which has a military/defense budget to pay for.

I’ve seen one director write off millions of pounds a failed expansion for a famous brewery stating to the shareholders it was investment o the same amount in plant. I understand he did this a few times.

He had a few too many and needed to go home and sleep it off.

Skilled Professions and Labour:

At the same time he replaced one experienced and competent employee who and had resolved problems affecting design and delivery of raw materials and components and replaced with a new person for less than half the rate.

You're worried about bad hiring and firing decisions? You want the government to do all the hiring for private companies? You're saying a company must be prohibited from ever replacing a worker with a lower-paid worker?

We don't need busybodies dictating to companies who to hire and fire or what's in the company's interest. They have every incentive to make the best decisions. If they make bad decisions it will only hurt the company and their profit. If they lose a good worker, that worker will be taken by another company which needs him/her.

Take an engineer who quietly designs plant equipment with no problems. His wages are high and his employer thinks the job can be done cheaper. He is replaced with another engineer for less than half the cost. Then in 3 months there were design issues. The design changes and scrapping of existing work costs millions.

So, the company paid a price for the mistake (if this really happened). So what's the problem? The capitalist system already has the built-in incentives to discourage companies from making such mistakes. It hurts the company's profits. The system works fine. Don't dictate to companies that they have to babysit workers because you're afraid they'll lose a good worker otherwise.

Leave them alone to make the decisions that are in the company's interest. They know better than you what is good for the company. If you think it would help the company's profit to babysit the workers, then go to the company and show them the proof of this -- they have every incentive to believe you if you're right. They'll even hire you if you're right and know so much more than they do and can save them millions of dollars.

The project runs late and the company incurs 10% liquidated damages, plus escalating costs for replacement materials and extended labour contracts with subcontractors.

Then go start your own corporation and compete with that company. If you're right, you'll beat them in the competition and get rich by improving on their performance. Why are you wasting your talent here, whining in this message board, when you could be using your superior knowledge and reaping huge profits making the companies and consumers better off?

Human Resources:

HR departments will just say the poorer worker was better because he was cheaper.

Your simplistic formula of forcing the consumers to pay higher prices is just as bad, or worse. Making companies increase wages out of pity for the workers makes us all worse off.

They think one worker is just like another worker but one can be cheaper.

And they're right. Or in the few cases where they're wrong the market will punish that company for making a bad decision.

Isn't the buyer, the employer, the right person to make the decision whether a worker is worth paying a higher price for?

Isn't it the customer's proper choice who is shopping and sometimes chooses the cheaper item? Why isn't it good to let the buyer make that decision? Why should anyone other than the individual buyer and individual seller make that choice? Who is more qualified than those two individuals/entities to make that decision?

Why should this free choice be denied to the employer anymore than it should be denied to a customer shopping at a store?

Good experienced managers will pay more for skills.

Even when it's not worth the extra cost? Doesn't a good manager know when to say, "No, you're not worth that extra cost to the company" -- there's never a proper time to make that choice? The higher price is always the right price? No, it's legitimate to sometimes reject the higher price and take the lower-cost item or lower-cost worker.

Poor management will not.

Yes it will. Poor management sometimes wastes money on overpaid workers and other unnecessary costs.

Good managers will cut unnecessary costs, and most cost-saving measures hurt someone, probably some workers, taking income away from someone who would otherwise go out and spend it to stimulate the economy. But wasting money paying workers more than their value is always bad for the economy because it makes consumers worse off.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

Getting the job done at low labor cost is the bottom line, not how the workers spend their money.

It was good for the economy then and still is today.

400 years ago they were worse off still. Those sweatshops improved their lives.

In reality, employees who are paid reasonably so can . . .

"reasonably"? If everyone had to be paid "reasonably" before any work could be done, we'd still be living in the Stone Age.

. . . so can afford homes and cars spend for that in the economy.

You can't afford something that isn't being produced. And less is produced if you force employers to pay workers more than their value. It's their greed and dirty profit which made all that production possible.

More goods are sold in the shops thus creating more jobs.

No, less is produced if employers are not allowed to hire cheap labor. They can't sell more if the prices are forced up higher in order to pay the higher labor cost.

Foreign workers who have lower costs back home and work for lower wages in richer countries improve their own economies back home but add very little to the host country.

Goods and services at lower prices is a large addition to the economy of the host country. It's mainly the work they do that is their contribution, and more work gets done when employers are allowed to hire cheap labor.

Cheap Labour is perceived as good for the company but in not practice beneficial for the employee . . .

If it were not beneficial for the employee then that employee would not choose to work for that company. You're assuming the employee does not know what's beneficial for him. So then who will play the role of deciding what is good for us? We are not capable of deciding for ourselves what is in our individual interest?

. . . or the actual economy itself since spending is stagnated.

No, with more people working and more being produced and prices being lower, spending does not stagnate but increases. Crippling employers by not letting them hire all the help they need is what makes the economy stagnate.

In countries where cheap labour is the norm, poverty and lack of consumer spending is the norm.

But it's the poverty which produces the lower wages. They also have lower profits in those countries. It's the poverty which came first, and this produced the lower wages and profits.

All the rich countries today once had "poverty" and low wages and child labor etc.

Countries like India have a large economy because it has over one billion people but a lot of people have nothing. Europe benefitted from plundering its colonies more than cheap labour back home. I don't see India actually booming. I've been there a few times and it looks like a rubbish tip even in the capital full of squalor. Yet a few years ago the media reported Indian industrialist Mukesh Ambani built a 27 story house surrounded by slums.

There's not harm in being rich but building a one billion dollar home while 5 million people in Mumbai have no toilets in the house and many have no running water is an affront.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antilia_(building) India of course is one of the countries where people are regarded as expendable and many paid derisory wages.

It would all be made worse if they forced employers in India to pay workers more than the market value for their labor. In fact, they do force them to. Even the poorest countries have their bad laws forcing wages higher than market value, and other obstructions which discourage production.

Remember what happened to Samoa when they tried to push up the minimum wage.

However bad it is, nothing is improved by cracking down on employers and artificially forcing up their cost of production.

Even worse, I posted a whole string of examples where companies in the UK were given Eu grants to move UK factories to their own countries, or in other cases European companies were given grants to purchase British companies.

Huh? Forget the grants -- just let companies move their factories to wherever they want to, and let them purchase other companies.

Let them do whatever's good for business (minus the "grants") and stop trying to turn them into babysitters for uncompetitive wage-earners and job-seekers.

Would you accept a pay cut so that your company can train staff from abroad to work at 50% of what you are paid.

If this would save on cost so the company earns more profit, it's good for the economy, and the company should do it, whether the worker "accepts" it or not. That worker's function is to serve consumers, so the company should do whatever makes consumers better off and not worry about the uncompetitive worker who got replaced or took a pay cut.

Or would you accept redundancy because imported labour can live in dormitories and send the money home to purchase what you wanted to purchase such as a house.

It would be none of my business how the competing foreign worker spends his money or how he manages to live on a tighter budget.

Are you saying a native worker has a legitimate complaint against a foreign worker who is more competitive? because that competing foreign worker is not spending enough of his paycheck on rent or other costs?

Are you saying foreign workers have an obligation to spend their wages in the host country only?

Don't you understand that the contribution of a worker is not how he spends his paycheck, but how he performs the work? The function of the work is to perform the job, i.e., get the widget made, get the bridge built, etc., i.e., to serve consumers or the public. How the worker spends the money he's paid is not a social issue or an economic issue for the society to judge.

 

[whichphilosophy]

The loophole (but not really on inspection ) was to take interns who are doing work experience and pay them a pittance as expenses (token intern payments) to work for the company. That pittance would be comparable with countries such as India.

Interns typically do not get paid market wages. Sometimes they get paid nothing since the internship is considered training. If IBM was hiring foreign students on student visas, they would only be allowed to work for 12 months anyway, intern or not, so I don't understand what your point was.

This was a loophole to take on staff but call them interns.

- - - Updated - - -

The loophole (but not really on inspection ) was to take interns who are doing work experience and pay them a pittance as expenses (token intern payments) to work for the company. That pittance would be comparable with countries such as India.

Interns typically do not get paid market wages. Sometimes they get paid nothing since the internship is considered training. If IBM was hiring foreign students on student visas, they would only be allowed to work for 12 months anyway, intern or not, so I don't understand what your point was.

This was a loophole to take on staff but call them interns.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

free market + competition + supply & demand + cost saving = winning combination for 99% of the population

Yes, the overall standard of living goes up--but at the expense of transferring more from workers to employers. In today's economy that's not a good thing.

Yes it is. The workers today are decreasing in value, and employers are INcreasing in value.

Everyone should be paid according to their value. If their value goes up, their income should increase. If their value goes down, their income should DEcrease.

It's not the fault of employers that workers today are becoming less valuable. Their supply is increasing while the demand for them is decreasing.

Basic supply-and-demand.

Except the change is only due to immigration, not any actual change.

The immigration is an actual change, and it's a good change if it means more competition in the economy, and that "the overall standard of living goes up" as you acknowledge. This means the population in general is made better off, even though there might be "winners and losers" -- still the net change is an improvement making most of us better off.

It's not the fault of employers that workers today are becoming less valuable.

Except the change is only due to immigration, not any actual change.

Granted, immigration itself could cause some decreased value of labor, because of the higher supply. Even so, this lower labor cost is a net gain, as ANY cost reduction is a net gain, as long as quality remains the same.

The only bad immigration is the criminal element and the parasite element (seeking handouts of one kind or another). It's only this kind of immigration we need to crack down on, not the employment of immigrants, which is the good immigration.

And don't overlook the high percentage of immigrants starting businesses and hiring cheap labor. You're really on shaky ground when your premise is that increased competition makes us worse off because it's "unfair" to the less competitive. That's a loser at least 99.9% of the time.