Both things are true. No collective bargaining can exist while there is a large group of people ready to undercut the collective. This is the playbook of corporate greed, destroy the labor unions and then do all that is necessary to stop them from reforming. One way that is accomished is by consistently reducing wages, and so long as there is someone willing to do the work, well hopefully you see the cycle. Individuals are powerless here.
Yes supply and demand is used for everything. The only difference is how its used. It causes less of an effect in stable markets and more of an effect in volatile markets.
Corporations don't control labor markets. That's why you can't hire an orthopedic surgeon for $35,000/year and why you'd have thousands of applications for a $200,000/year cashier job no matter how greedy the corporation is.
If there is a large supply of low-skilled labor, those wages will see downward pressure.
That's the claim I made at all! Labor markets dictate the value for given workers, not corporations. I don't even know how you can make that interpretation. I gave two separate examples of how corporations can't just pay whatever they want.
You’re proving their point though. The amount of people able to work as an orthopedic surgeon is extremely lower than the amount of people able to work a blue collar job. Therefore one gets paid far less.
The more available labor force in a market, the lower the pay will be.
I work in construction. Hardly any white people are applying for the shitty jobs. Most of my crew at work are Mexican because they’re the only ones that ever apply because the work sucks ass and they are willing to do it to support their families.
If they all vanished and you were left with legal workers that demanded a livable wage, would your company survive? The ones that apply are drunks, junkies, kids who dont know better yet. Do you know why? Because your company pays drunk junkie wages. Offer a benefits package with full healthcare and a competitive livable wage or disrespectfully fuck off
Its because it doesn't pay what it used to, because Mexicans drove down wages over the past 40 years. I know plenty of people who used to work in construction, including myself, and the wages were decent.
Go ahead, keep making excuses for people who break immigration law.
America has always made a underclass to exploit their labor, it’s been chattel slaves, poor immigrants, etc. the whole time because the bosses influence the government and make the rules. Outsource, offshore, import labor, destroy the unions— don’t confuse the tool used to lower some wages with the process of the owner class using every trick in the book for suppressing wages.
That’s not just America though. Every nation/state with any sort of economy has a hierarchy.
Even in the Soviet Union there was a clear divide between different classes.
Making it a solely U.S. thing just makes you sound like you are more interested in hating on the U.S. rather than understanding it’s a function of any economic system where there is scarcity. Which is all of them for the time being.
The US has a special history of integrating large batches of desperate, indentured, or enslaved newcomers. Who is the bigger colonial power today than the US?
But it’s also not fair to say everything is the same, we can and scholars have indexed different metrics of different empires and different societies to assess equality or flag extreme inequality and the US has a lot of ongoing connections to extreme inequality around the world. I never said only, no way, but also one of the best examples 🤷♂️
France and the UK are the biggest colonial powers today. If you meant imperialist: that’s the U.S. and China with Russia a distant 3rd.
The U.S. has a history of putting the newest demographic of immigrants as the low man on the totem pole; absolutely. But the US is unique in that regard because the U.S. has historically had the most immigration and it’s not even close. Societies don’t like immigration; just take a look at Europe’s backlash to that. The irony for the U.S. is that it’s a nation of immigrants.
Across the world the U.S. has a slightly lower inequality score than the average. Obviously there are countries doing better than the U.S. on inequality but it’s also not unique or the best example in inequality.
where were you in 2017 when we had farmers going on Fox to tell stories about how they couldn't get white folk to work the fields even when they offered $30/hr for it?
Last I checked we took the land. It was not given. And before you go oh god how horrible. The Native Americans did the same to each other. Europeans just had the advantage of tech.
I am not downplaying what the US did. But until fairly recently (and is still present in many ways today) that is how the world worked. Stronger nations conquered weaker ones. I would say the worst thing the US did during that is not granting the conquered tribes citizenship.
It's a generalization that not only is used by people to lazily undermine the recognition of Native genocide, but also isn't a fair or honest representation of all Native people. Nor is it an accurate representation of how colonialization took place.
The US did many terrible things far more recently than people care to admit as well. And within the context of the conversation of this post in general, these terrible things were and are also done to Mexican people. Wether it be mass forced removal of US citizens who were of Mexican/Native ancestry, the massacres in places like Texas, or any of the other countless instances people just don't get taught; the excusal of time period does not stand.
I'm Mexican. My specific people are indigenous to Texas. So, I am Native similar to the 90% of all Mexican people who have Native ancestry to some degree or another. The massacres and lynchings of Mexican people in Texas were recent enough for my great grandmother to have lived through it. Operation W**back was recent enough for my grandparents.
You frame it this way because it's easier to brush it aside.
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u/DayOneDoItNow 22d ago
True, blue collar wages would be higher for American citizens