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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   20502 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026

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Then where exactly is this mass of currently non working American citizen

In the case that you are actually asking this question seriously, and not as a half-assed attempt at a rhetorical dunk, they're in the Appalachians. I have some family and old acquaintances in ${UNDISCLOSED}. One of the largest employers in the area has historically been a prepared food facility, which recently came under new management. This new executive team has been doing rolling waves of layoffs, and regularly furloughing workers who they retain an attempt to force them to quit. For the last year, both a relative and a friend have repeatedly noted that despite the rolling layoffs, the overall workforce at the plant has not decreased. It has, however, started to feature an increasingly large number of five foot tall Guatemalan men in their 20s who don't speak English, but present work papers claiming that they're John Billings from Madison, Wisconsin. It's agonizingly obvious that they're hiring people with stolen identities.

My cousin got laid off recently, and he's looking at trying to file some sort of suit against the company. I doubt it will go anywhere. He has placed upwards of thirty job applications in the fields of construction, municipal maintenance work, security, and HVAC. He hasn't heard a damned thing back from any of them. In the interest of full disclosure, I will admit that he has a felony drug charge on his record from 20 years ago, but in that area, that's not really uncommon.

You're welcome to pretend this is all about "jobs nobody wants to do", but believe me when I tell you it's climbing up the food chain.

In the case that you are actually asking this question seriously, and not as a half-assed attempt at a rhetorical dunk, they're in the Appalachians. I have some family and old acquaintances in ${UNDISCLOSED}.

As another commentator pointed out, unemployment rates don't match and if you go back historically they've never really matched, unemployment has never been all that high except for temporary disruptions with obvious causes like Covid or the recession. Maybe your family and old acquaintances are unlucky anecdotes, but they are absolutely not representative of the general economy in any way.

This ain't a conversation to be had with individual anecdotes but with data and statistics, and what those suggest is that there isn't some massive amount of capable American job seekers who are unable to find employment.

He has placed upwards of thirty job applications in the fields of construction, municipal maintenance work, security, and HVAC. He hasn't heard a damned thing back from any of them. In the interest of full disclosure, I will admit that he has a felony drug charge on his record from 20 years ago, but in that area, that's not really uncommon.

Maybe it is the drug charges, maybe it's more than just the drug charges. Sometimes terrible employees do exist and they will obviously lose out to better alternatives. It's what happens.

I will not hire a bad employee in my department simply because I feel bad for them, and no one else will either. Businesses want efficient and lean workplaces so we can compete for customers, we are not charities.

It’s impossible to get a job now. I had some business failings a few years ago. Tried to find a reasonable pivot to survive and not blow my savings. With 2 Ivy equivalent degrees I did the apply to anything on LinkedIn and think I submitted 5k applications. Maybe 3 interviews. Luckily business is now going well but it’s basically impossible to get a job.

It’s why there is a huge increase in left the labor market that isn’t showing up in the official statistics. I have no idea how to get a job in this environment especially if you need to do any kind of career pivot. It actually scares me a lot if business goes bad again that I would be able to find something to survive on. I guess I could work at McDonalds.

Sometimes terrible employees do exist and they will obviously lose out to better alternatives. It's what happens.

I will not hire a bad employee in my department simply because I feel bad for them, and no one else will either.

Are you claiming that @birb_cromble's cousin is (or would be) a terrible employee, apropos of nothing besides the fact that he's sent out thirty job applications with no success?

I know it's not the point of your post, but I just want to say that I've always found the whole "jobs nobody wants to do" argument infuriatingly obtuse and borderline offensive.

While nobody (that I am aware of) literally follows the argument up with "...and that's why the abolition of slavery was a bad thing" that is kind of what they are implying. What they are saying in effect is that people who do {dirty job} do not deserve to be compensated in such a way that someone would work {dirty job} voluntarily because {dirty job} is sub-human.

What they are saying in effect is that people who do {dirty job} do not deserve to be compensated in such a way that someone would work {dirty job}

I don't think this is is quite a fair summary; the implication is that it is impossible to compensate someone enough that they will work {dirty job} - either literally impossible, or at the very least economically infeasible to do at scale.

While nobody (that I am aware of) literally follows the argument up with "...and that's why the abolition of slavery was a bad thing"

Slavery was economically inefficient, as Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, Bastiat, and many other early capitalist/capitalist aligned thinkers would point out. And therefore anyone who tried to argue "the economy is why the abolition of slavery is a bad thing" would be incorrect from the very start.

A free market of goods and labor however is economically efficient, and therefore any protectionist argument against that has to showcase why any claimed moral gains are worth the economic tradeoffs. There might be some things where that's true, but they aren't the same.

do not deserve to be compensated in such a way that someone would work {dirty job} voluntarily

They are doing it voluntarily. It's just that they are voluntarily doing it for wages that some people believe are too low. It's basically "the myth of consensual employment".

But when a lot of these immigrant subsidies programs come with implied PR or citizenship pathways the work is massively overpaid not underpaid.

If I get a UK care worker from Nigeria at 10k GBP a year below prevailing rate for 5 years, but the government allows them ILR and a potential passport after that 5 years the latter is worth millions of pounds in benefits. Especially if there's any sort of family reunification at play. If anything the majority of foreign low skilled workers in the West are being massively overpaid due to their potential to get citizenship

You know what drives me apeshit? I've worked on a dairy farm, and an orchard. Sure, it's hot, dirty, and uncomfortable work, but it wasn't really any worse than a dinner rush in a commercial kitchen on a Friday night. I really get the impression that a lot of people assume manual labor is worse than the ninth circle of hell.

I don't think that's what they are implying, they mostly see it as a way to imply white people are too lazy, and since those mean right wingers won't let them import hundreds of millions of better, hardworking brown people permanently and legally then they have to settle for bringing them illegally or temporarily. The lack of legal protections afforded to legal residents is only a feature in so far as it enables them to enlist the help of capital for this venture, they don't like it either.

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