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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:
Hotels/farms are low hanging fruit, it's easy to pick up illegal immigrants from these locations.
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.
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."
An infinite supply of slave labor is as much of a resource curse as infinite oil. As the people become a less crucial resource, it warps the incentives of those in power away from investing in the people towards exploiting their cursed resources. Rome collapsed as landowners farmed their estates with slave labor, and foreign mercenaries were hired for defense. Meanwhile Roman citizens were given bread and circuses. On the other hand, the Industrial revolution was kicked off by a labor shortage, which spurred investment in things that would skyrocket labor productivity.
How low is "unemployment" really? Teens don't work anymore. Men don't work as much as they used to. You also have to remember that labor is substitutable. Nobody is suggesting that high school students go work on the farm. We're suggesting that high school students work at McDonalds, and the possibly legal Mexicans who currently work at McDonalds can go work at the farm, both at higher wages than are currently paid for those jobs. And no, working a service job is not a degrading thing to do for a kid.
Labor is substitutable for capital to a degree If wages go up, that doesn't directly translate to a 1:1 cost increase to the consumer, because farmers can choose to use techniques that save labor but require more of other inputs such as chemicals or equipment.
Goods are substitutable too. If prices for some goods go up, consumers will choose to buy other goods that are less affected. So the overall cost of living will increase less than the increase of the affected goods. For me, beef has been expensive recently, so I've been eating more pork, which is dirt cheap. This is in stark contrast to across the board inflation, where anything and everything is up.
If you paid enough and also improved working conditions, you could guaranteed get better people to work on the farm. And if you did hire high IQ high conscientiousness people to do the work, they would actually do a better job than the illegals. All the "experiments" to get local people to work on the farm failed because they didn't seriously try and it was too easy to give up and say it's impossible. If your life is on the line you'll find people to do the work.
Three events that took place separately over about four centuries.
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