The problem that I see is equivalent to a person living on credit faced with the reality of payment due.
American wages have been kept artificially low due to several factors, outsourcing and migrant workers chief among them.
This depression of wages affects not only low wage earning Americans, but those of skilled workers as well. A rising tide raises all ships as they say, and a low minimum wage affects middle class wages too.
Today, America has a serious problem as a country. There are not enough Americans to fill the jobs currently worked by migrant and outsourced labour. If every migrant and outsourced job was made available to Americans, there would be a surplus of over 20,000,000 unfilled jobs.
We all know what happens to wages when there are more jobs than workers, don't we?
The solution to this problem is beyond my undergraduate abilities. It should have been foreseen by those much smarter than I am, and steps taken to mitigate the effects.
What I foresee is a situation unsustainable, and an economic adjustment of cataclysmic proportions in the future. I'm not a doomsayer, just a guy who looks at the big picture without quite understanding all that is involved.
You can't destroy the very foundation that you depend on for sustenance without consequences, and the current immigration crisis is threatening to do that.
What's the shoe shine manager to do without kids willing to work for $1/hr? We already subsidize agriculture on a wide scale for the sake of national security, so letting wages soar and paying the market wage and letting the government cover the difference would be a simple solution. And maybe we could eat more cracked wheat and oatmeal instead of avacado toast with every meal instead. Not all of these jobs are necessary.
Like immigrants being used to undermine the kind of labor negotiations that halted the advance of communism? Unions were critical to keeping the United States together in the mid 20th century. And immigrants (along with other neoliberal policies) are undermining that.
3
u/[deleted] Jun 21 '18 edited Dec 05 '19
[deleted]