OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
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User ID: 359
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
4hr ago
You are correct.
However, we still ought to show her love. Because "this is not working" doesn't immediately lead to "this is what I should be doing instead." I think she is at the point of "This is not working." Now would be a good time to show her the unconditional fierce love that Christians in her life have so far failed to provide.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
19hr ago
It was average wage taken from several months in a year span. But you are right, your article is better.
Where did all the money go? What did Pete Butigeg spend his 7.5 billion that was earmarked for charging stations across America in the Infrastructure and Jobs Act?
Probably a lot went to the pockets of Beltway grifters. It certainly didn't go into the pockets of actual construction workers.
Then there was the child tax credits, the stimulus checks, etc. Money went to everyone across the class spectrum.
Reading your article, it looks like the increase in wages was caused primarily by Minimum Wage laws increasing wages by fiat. I do not suggest doing that. Creating artificial floors is not great for a market. Even so, your article sounds pretty happy about increasing lower decile wages? Why is that? If you are correct, then should not it be obvious to an economically savvy publication to be terrified of the resulting inflation?
Or is inflation a little more complicated than that?
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
19hr ago
That would lower GDP, while reducing immigrant labor to increase productivity and GDP. Possibly because there is an increase to automation when cheap laborers are less available.
Machines are different from cheap laborers in that they do not compete for housing, food, etc. Demand decreases if you swap out a machine for a human. Where does price equalize if demand decreases and supply stays the same?
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1d ago
Are you saying inflation was caused by wages increasing instead of the government printing money?
Real wages went down in the Biden years.
What I recall during the Biden years was employers complaining that they couldn't find people to work for them, without being willing to raise their wages. And then Biden imported millions of new low-wage workers for the complaining businesses instead of letting the market come to a new equilibrium.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1d ago
Even if we gave everyone citizenship, there would still be downward pressure from wages. The majority of immigrants are in low-skilled jobs. If we maintained immigration so that the same proportion of upper-, middle-, and lower-class people immigrated as US citizens, then there would not be distortion. Even with removing illegality from the equation, immigration creates a distortion to the labor market exerting downward pressure.
This is in addition to the cultural concerns of having 16% of people in America "foreign born" and the increased difficulty of passing along US values to immigrants as the proportion of native-born Americans goes down. Does American culture matter? Yes! It created the prosperity and freedom that Americans enjoy - the very reason why the world wants to come here. Don't kill the Golden Goose. Don't tear down Chesterton's fence.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1d ago
It doesn't help to just continue abuse because, "well, she's already been abused before so now it's on her to repent." Which is what it comes across as when all I said is that Christians should love her instead of verbally abuse her and people are objecting to that.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1d ago
Florida requires E-verify now: https://www.paychex.com/articles/compliance/florida-e-verify-requirements-for-private-employers
And so far it hasn't tanked their economy. In 2023 and 2024 Florida lead the nation in GDP growth with 9.2%. The number of construction jobs actually increased.
Except all across the board, in this scenario, the country removes the downward pressure to wages caused by the underclass who can get paid under the table, who cannot ask for help if they are abused, and who are desperate to accept any wage to avoid going back home. That changes the wage equilibrium everywhere.
If farm wages double (not quadruple, like in the example above - I think that the quadrupling was a hyperbole) and farm workers make $40 an hour, price of groceries increases $150/year per family of four. Let's say $50/year for a single person.
Then anyone else in a shitty job can say, "is this really any better than making 40/hr picking corn?" And so now Amazon has to raise wages, or provide better working environments, to at least be better than farm work. And so it goes, rippling through the economy. Wages for the bottom third of the country should rise more than 150/yr.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1d ago
I didn't say that anywhere. I'm saying, love comes first, then repentance. Repentance is necessary. But it doesn't happen first.
Les Miserables is on the mind, consider Jean Valjean and his moment of repentance. After a life of getting kicked around, he steals the Bishop's valuables. And in response, the Bishop loves him, saves him from going to Prison again, gives him more than he stole. And that is the moment that Jean Valjean actually feels sorry for his actions. Once he experiences true love.
You can say, that's just a story. But there is a reason why it rings true. The world is full of bitter people who will stay bitter forever unless someone breaks their shell with love.
Will it always work? No. But does it work? In my experience, yes.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1d ago
What year was this?
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1d ago
Sure, I can conceive that someone could be incorrect. But my point is, what do you mean by "American" here?
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1d ago
But then there's no more American people. Who will our elected leaders serve? "The people currently standing on the territory formally known as the USA?" Whose long-term interests do they protect?
Our leaders should have a referent "American people" and put the interests of these "American people" first. I assure you that leaders of other countries understand who "their people" are and serve their interests to the detriment of our own. If we do not have leaders who look out for our interest, then we will taken advantage of at every turn.
Who are the American people? Citizens, their children, and those they adopt in. Adoption isn't an uncaring, unnoticed act. It's always personal and usually planned for. The adoptee needs to want to join the family and take on the family's customs.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1d ago
down on the farm, labor costs are typically less than 20% or for specialty crops close to 40% of total operating costs, and the price from the farm is about one-third the price on the shelf...
Quadrupling those wages might cost the typical family $300 in a year.
From Oren Cass' "Jobs Americans Would Do" https://americancompass.org/jobs-americans-would-do/
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
2d ago
Lately I've been thinking of the argument made in this video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=F9xYqQDTHnk
God's love remains, even when we are at our worst. Basically, Christianity is a relationship with Jesus. Jesus looks at us, loves us, first. Being loved comes first, then repentance is the response to that.
Repentance is important, but it's not first. First is being loved by Jesus and us, His body on Earth.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
2d ago
In a normal, healthy, average relationship, a single man and a single woman partner together to provide each other with resources that would be difficult for the other to get. They do this because they have a shared vision of the future, a shared project to raise the next generation.
The historical norm was for a woman to be spinning cotton, wool, or flax from sunup to sundown to make enough thread to weave enough cloth to sew into enough garments for herself, her husband, and her children. There was a gendered world - every civilization had their own norms, but they all had norms surrounding what tasks belong to women (tasks that can be done by weaker people with the tendency to get pregnant and have babies/toddlers hanging off them.) For example, in a European village a man paid taxes by giving his lord crops, while women owed their taxes in eggs.
Men needed women's labor. Women needed men's labor.
There was a weird period in the 19th-20th century where machines took over a lot of the labor that women could do, while there was much less automation of male labor. Then in the later 20th century, the women's labor that wasn't automatable went overseas to cheaper labor. This lead to more "Homemakers" outside the upper class.
But now, the majority of the time, both men and women work outside the home. Both men and women need to labor productively to keep themselves in comfort. We are reverting back to the historical norm (except for the "women taking jobs they can do while minding their own children" part. We'd probably need to repeal the CRA and some license regulations before we could get there.)
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
2d ago
Breaking news: Trump is saying he will not be deporting illegal immigrants who work on Farms and in Hotels.
Gavin Newsom is claiming it for a win for the violent riots that have taken over LA and other major cities.
This is a bit of a let down for Trump Supporters and anyone who wants to take America back from those who were not invited. Especially with Gavin Newsom rubbing it in the public's face. Especially with American Approval of deportation efforts have been increasing.
Trump's rationale appears to be:
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Hotels/farms are low hanging fruit, it's easy to pick up illegal immigrants from these locations.
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After swooping these groups first, then the only applicants to these positions (at the wages the farms and hotels are willing to pay) are the criminal illegal immigrants.
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So focus on criminality first.
Does this mean that, once every last criminal is deported, he will then do sweeps of farms and hotels? Left ambiguous.
One problem is the effect of exploitable labor goes in one way. Over the past 2 decades, Landscaping businesses that employed high school students and ex cons went out of business because they couldn't compete against undocumented workers.
If one farm gets raided, and one farm growing similar things does not get raided for another year, then the first farm needs to hire more expensive people and raise prices while the second farm will still benefit from the lowered wages. The farm that got raided first goes out of business first, the second farm maybe gets to buy up the first farm, then when they are inevitably raided they still stay in business and make more money now.
It's not fair. It's not fair that the government has not enforced its own rules surrounding hiring employees uniformly across industries.
The fair thing would be to deport 100% of everyone deportable all at once. The shock of that will be destructive to every industry that is predominately illegal immigrants.
The next fair thing might be to deport 10% of employees in every business all together, then another 10% later, and so on until the bottom is reached.
Of course, the above two "fair" plans are ridiculous. We do not have the man-power to do it.
Any other fair ideas? Besides Trump's new plan of "Don't try to tackle this right now."
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
2d ago
Sounds like a Christian should have reached out to her and told her that she is loved - explained forgiveness, sanctification, and water that does not leave you thirsty. Instead, she got a mob calling her names.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
2d ago
US has started removing non-essential people from the Middle East. People assume that this means an attack by Iran is imminent. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-embassy-iraq-preparing-ordered-evacuation-due-heightened-security-risks-2025-06-11/
The expected series of events would be:
- Iran is very insistent on making nuclear weapons.
- US and Israel cannot allow this
- Israel attacks Iran
- Iran attacks Israel and US bases in the region directly.
The humanitarian concern that I need to address first is that our own lower class is dying deaths of despair, keeping unemployment down but also decreasing the life expectancy. I wasn't listing out things I want you to be concerned with, when I was talking about how exploitable the labor is. I was listing out several reasons why that labor is distortionary.
We have NEVER had over 16% of the US population foriegn-born since we became a country, and every time we approached this number we put hard breaks on to reduce immigration, usually to the benefit of the economy and rising labor standards.
Leaving the spigot on will quickly dilute American civic values. If it is so easy for someone from another country to maintain American values without being surrounded by native-born Americans, then why do they not just turn their countries into America? If they are already American's at heart, why does the world not have the same Bill of Rights, expectations surrounding civil duties, trust, and friendliness?
Instead, we have programs in place to inculcate legal immigrants on the path to citizenship into our civic values and ensure their loyalty to our nation over their former ones. Illegal immigrants and people here on temporary Visas don't have that.
The inculcation is made much easier when 90% of your neighbors, co-workers, shop keepers, etc are also already part of the American culture. If only 50% of the people surrounding a new immigrant are from their previous country, then obviously they will be very slow to adopt American norms, if they ever do. Look at the Enshittification of California for an example.
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