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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   25318 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 23, 2026

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Both the US and Apartheid South Africa demonstrate that the economic conditions of a country are largely detached from immigration/demographics. In right-wing UK circles, I see a lot of "cope" around the plans of Reform/Restore, in which the major factor for productivity collapse is entirely low skilled immigration, and once they are kicked out companies will be forced to pay much higher wages. It's an oddly left-wing viewpoint, one in which greedy companies are keeping all the money for themselves, and you just have to force them in order to get that money to the wider public.

The argument, as expressed by Mark Carney below*, is that cheap labour functions as a good enough solution that doesn't force companies to become more productive and thus able to raise wages for those they do hire (and doesn't force the government to figure out how to create incentives towards this end). Why bother?

I don't know that this is particularly "leftist". It's about as stereotypically leftist as claiming that companies faced with higher goods prices they can't pass on will either shrink the item or stop selling it. The left wing answer (that we saw post-COVID/stimulus) would be to deny that the business' options are limited this way in the first place in the first place, and that the companies are using it as an excuse to be greedy.

It can totally be the rational decision for UK employers until something changes without it being pure greed.

*

Yes, that's absolutely right. There can be short-term, and you're familiar with it.... Mr. Macklem was just in Fort McMurray, and I'm from the area as well, so we're familiar with the kinds of gaps you get there. One doesn't want an over-reliance, certainly, on temporary foreign workers for lower-skilled jobs, which prevent the wage adjustment mechanism from making sure that Canadians are paid higher wages, but also so that firms improve their productivity as necessary. We don't want to mask it, and the intent of the government's review is to ensure that this is used for transition, for those higher-skilled gaps that exist and can hold our economy back.

I think the spirit of the program and the spirit of the government's review is to ensure that this program is concentrated on higher skills, number one, to fill gaps, and to recognize that those are temporary gaps, so that we are ensuring that Canadian businesses are providing Canadian solutions—the training—and that we're working together to ensure that Canadians can meet those gaps. For the lower-wage jobs, it is important over a reasonable time period to ensure that the market adjusts and that those market wages adjust; then there will be productivity and other adjustments that ensure that Canadians are paid more, but also that we're a more productive economy as a whole. Getting that balance right is what is necessary.

To be clear, I don't actually disagree that access to low skilled labour can suppress business investment. It's more the specific idea that this access is the biggest factor in low productivity or wage growth which I find absurd. I would be surprised if was even one of the top 5 most important factors.

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