This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Ah, so I realize now that the comment I was replying to was talking about the rising cost of low-end labor more generally; when I had written my reply, I was for some reason just focusing on the change in hotel cleaning strategies.
I do not know fully what the nature of it is. There's probably a JMP somewhere that does a good job. Here are a couple fed papers talking about it.
I did, however, notice that there was an NYT article this morning claiming that the price for crops is apparently low enough that some farmers are considering letting it rot in the field. Not even unharvested; it's talking about possibly dumping them back onto the field. Also last week Brian Potter took a longer view, observing that crop prices have trended significantly down. These things would be a bit strange for a view that is sort of one-dimensional (labor shortage from immigration restrictions/COVID/magic/etc -> higher wages -> higher prices). These things are obviously multifactored. That second fed paper definitely talked about higher wages on the low end being a thing. Perhaps the price of crops would have been even lower if we could have counterfactually, magically tweaked just the one variable of agricultural workers/wages.
The multifactored nature of an incredible interdependent thing like an economy makes it pretty dangerous to overly focus on any one component. That's why I find it useful to scope back out to more broad reasoning to at least level set. Tightening immigration restrictions moves the supply curve to the left, which raises prices and reduces output. How much? It depends. Probably not infinity. It will likely also have effects that spread beyond the narrow markets that employ the most illegals. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? More information is required about the value function in question.
More options
Context Copy link