You mean, supply and demand affect price?
If America elected accountants instead of lawyers, we wouldn't have needed this study.
That is because the demand for housing went up as the population increased. But the price of construction labor sank like a stone. Case in point: my BIL was a drywall professional. He had a job with benefits and paid $30 an hour. Then the workers at the other, newer companies all spoke Spanish and worked under the table for less than minimum wage. The company that BIL worked for folded because they were now overpriced, and BIL's next job paid him $8.00 with no benefits.Originally Posted by Origanalist
I think we older RPFers remember when construction was a "good job." Now there is a surplus of laborers, and it pays practically nothing.
Right before the big wave, we saw fast food places offering workers signing bonuses of $1000 if they would only stay 6 months. We speculated that we had probably reached saturation in the fast food market, because with the labor shortage prices would start to rise. A lot of businesses can't afford to double their payroll costs, and increasing prices reduce sales, so we thought the days of "Fast Food Row" were dwindling - that a lot of them would go out of business and the market would contract.
Instead....13 million new workers came in, wages sank back down to minimum, while prices stayed the same.
Of course you guys are right - it is ultimately the responsibility of the individual to specialize and increase his own value. But it is also true that cheap labor brings wages down for the population as a whole.
Replace the income tax with import tariffs, and you level the playing field.
Last edited by angelatc; 04-27-2015 at 11:34 AM.
And it's probably being done on purpose. A vibrant middle class who's historical perspective exceeds the last 25 years is inherently dangerous to the interests of the elite. This has always been the case. The elite fear the middle class as opposed to the poor, who can barely tie their shoelaces.
A question for everyone here:
I have not really looked at new houses or have not been in one lately. I would think they are of low quality, with shoddy workmanship. I would think that one gets what he pays for. I remember being in a medium size, 2 floor office building a few years ago. It was several years old. They built it on the cheap for 3 million. I saw where the concrete was falling off the building. Saw other things falling apart too.
Same with cars. I bought a car all made in Japan. You have to go over to the Japs to get a decent ride.
Anybody seen these new houses? What's your impression?
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Foreign born population (as percent of overall population) was similar (mirror image in trends) prior to 1970. Blame foreigners for the rich getting richer via tax breaks and incentives.
But aren't low wages supposed to be good? We don't want minimum wages so companies can pay as little as possible and give us cheaper goods and more jobs. Don't we? Aren't lower taxes for the wealthy supposed to create more jobs?
The global wage leveling agenda of the NWO/WTO continues.
In 1970, we were still using the remnants of a gold standard for international trade and were also taxing imports.
That "Lower wages are good for workers" argument would be true only in a free market. As it is, minimum wage laws, entry barriers and social spending programs skew the equations.
Last edited by angelatc; 04-27-2015 at 04:53 PM.
Taxing imports is not a "free market". It is an "entry barrier". Should the government protect jobs?
Adjusted for inflation, the Federal Minimum wage was higher in 1970 (about $10) than it is today ($7.25). http://money.cnn.com/interactive/eco...ge-since-1938/
Are you arguing that if we lowered or got rid of the minimum wage that somehow the median income for the lower 90% of workers would be higher?
Nixon started it all and since then it's been a runaway train.
Last edited by AuH20; 04-27-2015 at 06:33 PM.
Only liberals want labor unions back and higher wages.
I sure don't. In this respect I'll say progressives and protectionist conservatives agree, they want to protect and artificially prop up wages, I don't. I want wages to be lower because employers are people too.Wages also declined as many jobs expanded globally. Do people want to shut off the internet and other global competition?
I don't agree product quality and service quality have declined, but if so, it would be because people accept it.Wages, product quality, service quality, etc. declined from multiple factors, one of which is our acceptance of lower standards.
Quality is overrated when you can't afford it.People weren't interested in rivets on Levis Jeans, so they accepted fewer rivets and lousy stitching from Asian factories. People weren't interested in fishing rods baked in 3,000 degree ovens, so they accepted a painted stick. People aren't interested in Honda engines, so they buy a $150 mower from walmartt and insist it's the same thing.
this much I agree, people who are losing jobs and pay have nobody to blame, blaming is for liberals and losers, libertarians take personal responsibility.People fail to see their own failings. They blame Toyota for faulty brakes when they insert their own floor mats. They blame foreigners when they're too stupid or lazy to do math or get a medical degree.
I guess you're the next best thing to a progressive bot on forum. Too bad you get paid more than a bot. lol
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Wow - the supply of labor increases and the wages decrease. Who could have predicted that?
Out of every one hundred men they send us, ten should not even be here. Eighty will do nothing but serve as targets for the enemy. Nine are real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, upon them depends our success in battle. But one, ah the one, he is a real warrior, and he will bring the others back from battle alive.
Duty is the most sublime word in the English language. Do your duty in all things. You can not do more than your duty. You should never wish to do less than your duty.
only if they're employers.
I don't care if lower wages are good for workers, I want lower wages anyway, lower wages is good for employers and consumers.
Gotta love how issues like these will get our closet statists running out cheering. This issue, and GMO labeling are their "exceptions".The global wage leveling agenda of the NWO/WTO continues.
Why are Japanese cars better? Is Japan on a gold standard or is their healthcare system laissez faire? Is Japan pro-immigrant or anti-immigrant? Do they have higher taxes and tarrifs and minimum wage? Or lower?
Cheap and crappy houses can be made easily, it all depends on where you are and how codes are enforced. If you wanted to make quality houses that sell for top dollar, you can find those too.Anybody seen these new houses? What's your impression?
More specifically, I'd add that loans were easier to make, that's why housing bubble inflated between 2001-2007
Yep, competition hurts.But the price of construction labor sank like a stone. Case in point: my BIL was a drywall professional. He had a job with benefits and paid $30 an hour. Then the workers at the other, newer companies all spoke Spanish and worked under the table for less than minimum wage. The company that BIL worked for folded because they were now overpriced, and BIL's next job paid him $8.00 with no benefits.
Yeah, not to mention automation. Life was better when you were protected against competition.I think we older RPFers remember when construction was a "good job." Now there is a surplus of laborers, and it pays practically nothing.
While import tarriffs are not taxes on income for workers, they're taxes on consumers, for what? To protect overpriced businesses?Right before the big wave, we saw fast food places offering workers signing bonuses of $1000 if they would only stay 6 months. We speculated that we had probably reached saturation in the fast food market, because with the labor shortage prices would start to rise. A lot of businesses can't afford to double their payroll costs, and increasing prices reduce sales, so we thought the days of "Fast Food Row" were dwindling - that a lot of them would go out of business and the market would contract.
Instead....13 million new workers came in, wages sank back down to minimum, while prices stayed the same.
Of course you guys are right - it is ultimately the responsibility of the individual to specialize and increase his own value. But it is also true that cheap labor brings wages down for the population as a whole.
Replace the income tax with import tariffs, and you level the playing field.
Why do you want to protect businesses and workers and jobs? Instead of want things to be as cheap as possible?
You have talked about buying a house on a river and global warming for the river, so I'll consider the source. Thanks anyway.
Last edited by NorthCarolinaLiberty; 04-28-2015 at 02:07 AM.
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Never said all Japanese cars were better. Some Japan car, motorcycle, electronics, etc. companies are much better than others. Nice try with your follow-up progressive trolling questions though. The questions that aren't much related to some very significant differences in some of these companies.
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So then tell me what the very significant differences are.
I am aware you never said all Japanese cars are better.
Why?
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I thought you had a point, fine if you don't.
Are you buying a car?
You have talked about buying a house on a river and how global warming would affect that 25 years hence, so I don't think you know the first thing about quality or how to determine value.
Nice try trolling with your progressive theoretical debate though. Again.
Last edited by NorthCarolinaLiberty; 04-28-2015 at 03:01 AM.
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What really sucks is when you consider that your money bought more in the 1970s than it does today.
Basically what this report should go on to say is, 'you make less money than you did decades ago and congratulations, your money ain't worth $#@! compared to back then.'
This is getting silly.T.S. Eliot's The Hollow Men
"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors." - Plato
We Are Running Out of Time - Mini Me
I never said we had a free market. Therefore I do believe that if the government is going to set wage floors and pass out benefits, the government should also protect jobs.
I did not say that we had a free market. I said your theory would only hold true in a free market.
The minimum wage may have been lower, but again, our international trade was based on a gold standard and we had import tariffs. Additionally, goods are cheaper now than they were then. If you adjust the value of the dollar for inflation, then you also have to adjust the cost of goods in perspective. A computer with far less storage capacity and abilities than a cheap Boost cell phone cost about a million dollars then. Cars were less gas efficient. Albums cost $10 each, now we can download them for free. Just about everything is less money now than it was then. Working televisions were a major luxury purchase. Today, working televisions sit on the curb with a "Free" sign on them.
While I think we should always work toward a free market, from a pragmatic standpoint import tariffs should exist to in effect adjust the wages of the rest of the world's workers. China and Mexico might run sweatshops, but the American employers can't compete.
If we lowered or abolished the minimum wage, unemployment would go down. The only that that will ever improve income for the unskilled laborers is competition for jobs.Are you arguing that if we lowered or got rid of the minimum wage that somehow the median income for the lower 90% of workers would be higher?
I respect your position! I am headed out the door, and don't have time for a detailed answer. But the short answer to that is simply that I don't want to live in the 3rd world.
If the government were to drop environmental laws, minimum wage demands, artificial wage enhancements and other assorted entry barriers, then I would agree with your position whole heartedly. But that isn't going to happen.
I believe in competition, but I also know that we will not ever stand a chance to win the game when our rules seriously handicap our players.
The good old protectionism - the philosophy that brings together socialists & pseudo free-marketers together for the perpetually failing cause of authoritarian wage-controls!
+1
The living standards of many Americans would undoubtedly have been better if the Fed hadn't devalued the dollar as much it has over the years. Nonetheless, I doubt that that would have had an effect on protectionists because protectionists hate competition, they may blame different factors in different times but their hatred for competition never changes. So not surprisingly, even under the gold-standard, when purchasing-power actually used to increase, protectionists still used to moan about the falling nominal wages (even though real wages were increasing), so they just hate competition, as simple as that!
Na! High wages are the best! That's why we should raise minimum wage to $100/hr, put 1000% tariffs on imports & put 99% taxes on the wealthy; I'm sure that will help usher in an age of unprecedented levels of prosperity.
Maybe it's possible that there are people on this forum who are in the know of what the NWO want but interestingly enough, whenever there's a discrepancy in the price of similar goods & services (price of labor in this case), the markets always seem to want the price to move towards the equilibrium.The global wage leveling agenda of the NWO/WTO continues.
As I've already said, even under the gold-standard, it was business as usual for protectionists; back then they were crying foul about falling nominal wages even as real wages were increasing; there's no shortage of stories of robber baron capitalists wanting to reduce (nominal) wages year after year (without paying any heed to the fact that prices of goods & services were also falling!). Protectionists whine about falling nominal wages under a deflationary monetary system like a gold-standard, & falling real wages under an inflationary monetary system like the present one.
This is one of the reasons why I'm unsure if any country (or the world as a whole) would want to remain on a gold-standard even if they did get on a gold-standard in the near future. The thing is because people simply don't take kindly to falling wages, be it nominal wages or real wages, people always want more than what the markets are giving them; they may want competition but only when they think it will benefit them, not when the competition hurts their perceived self-interest.
There is enormous inertia — a tyranny of the status quo — in private and especially governmental arrangements. Only a crisis — actual or perceived — produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable
- Milton Friedman
You are absolutely correct, immigration reduces wages, especially for the poor. It just makes sense that if a large quantity of unskilled workers entered the market, the price for unskilled labor will fall. This is very simple Supply and Demand. However, the question you should be asking yourself, is whether or not this is a bad thing.
Picture American wages as an Egyptian pyramid. The higher layers correspond to higher salaries, and lower layers to lower salaries. The width of each layer corresponds to roughly the number of people at that wage level. The American economy might look something like this:
But then, all of a sudden, a large quantity of unskilled migrant workers show up on the market. They underbid native citizens and drive wages down. Over time, the "pyramid" flattens out into more of a pancake as the economy absorbs the new workers.
But then, slowly, after temporary factors are ironed out, the economy expands back to it's old shape. Only now it's larger and more powerful, because it has more people, and therefore more production.
Comparing the original economy, to the final economy, we can see the long term benefits of the extra labor. Short term pain, long term gain.
Just think about it, imagine a small island economy with 4 workers. Suddenly, 4 more people show up on the island. Initially, the island's economy flattens out, because the new migrants take over responsibilities that the original inhabitants used to perform. If Tom, who was here originally, used to fetch water. But now Pablo, who migrated turns out to be much better at the job, now Tom has to spend time learning to make himself useful at a different task. The wages of the island economy are depressed in the short term.
But in the long term, 8 workers is simply better than 4. The island will be much better off, and the people on it much wealthier thanks to the extra help.
Last edited by DevilsAdvocate; 04-28-2015 at 12:53 PM.
This explains why we need more lawyers - its a bigger economy.You are absolutely correct, immigration reduces wages, especially for the poor. It just makes sense that if a large quantity of unskilled workers entered the market, the price for unskilled labor will fall. This is very simple Supply and Demand. However, the question you should be asking yourself, is whether or not this is a bad thing.
Picture American wages as an Egyptian pyramid. The higher layers correspond to higher salaries, and lower layers to lower salaries. The width of each layer corresponds to roughly the number of people at that wage level. The American economy might look something like this:
But then, all of a sudden, a large quantity of unskilled migrant workers show up on the market. They underbid native citizens and drive wages down. Over time, the "pyramid" flattens out into more of a pancake as the economy absorbs the new workers.
But then, slowly, after temporary factors are ironed out, the economy expands back to it's old shape. Only now it's larger and more powerful, because it has more people, and therefore more production.
Comparing the original economy, to the final economy, we can see the long term benefits of the extra labor. Short term pain, long term gain.
Just think about it, imagine a small island economy with 4 workers. Suddenly, 4 more people show up on the island. Initially, the island's economy flattens out, because the new migrants take over responsibilities that the original inhabitants used to perform. If Tom, who was here originally, used to fetch water. But now Pablo, who migrated turns out to be much better at the job, now Tom has to spend time learning to make himself useful at a different task. The wages of the island economy are depressed in the short term.
But in the long term, 8 workers is simply better than 4. The island will be much better off, and the people on it much wealthier thanks to the extra help.
Out of every one hundred men they send us, ten should not even be here. Eighty will do nothing but serve as targets for the enemy. Nine are real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, upon them depends our success in battle. But one, ah the one, he is a real warrior, and he will bring the others back from battle alive.
Duty is the most sublime word in the English language. Do your duty in all things. You can not do more than your duty. You should never wish to do less than your duty.
You're overlooking things like crowding though. Enough workers and you'll up like Easter Island.But in the long term, 8 workers is simply better than 4.
Personally I don't mind a slightly lower income if I don't have to sit in traffic all day.
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