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Popping filter bubbles and picking up the Tuna Cans.
None of these stories on their own really warrant a top level post but taken together I feel like they both illustrate a trend and serve as a coda to my January post on "Tuna Cans" and how the Trump administration might be able to more effectively deliver on it's campaign promise to combat Immigration.
Last week the Trump administration announced that it would be rescinding a 2022 rule that prohibited US Customs and Immigration Services from considering an immigrant's use of Medicaid and other public benefits when deciding whether or not to renew their visa or grant them legal resident status. The usual suspects at NBC, CNN, the New York Times, Et Al are trotting out their usual tripe about "women and minorities hardest hit" but to me the most galling thing is that this rule existed in the first place, and that it wasn't quashed a year and a half ago. That said, while the best time to plant a tree (or repeal a bad law) is 20 years ago, doing it now is still something worthy of praise.
In the wake of Nick Shirley's expeditions to Minneapolis and LA, the Department of Health and Human Services has that announced that 199 million dollars a year allocated to the state of Minnesota and 860 million dollars a year allocated to the state of California has been frozen pending those states provide positive evidence that individuals and business originally slated to receive those funds actually exist and are not just a PO-box in a strip mall somewhere.
At the same time Vice President JD Vance and Interim Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling announced a "crack-down" on H1B visa fraud four days after Microsoft announced that it would be laying off 4,800 employees while simultaneously applying for permission to import over 2,000 foreign workers.
Meanwhile Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy continues to quietly do his job, announcing that the audit started back in January has resulted in the revocation of 28,000 commercial drivers licences and that nearly 200,000 drivers more could be effected by the reinstitution of English language proficiency requirements that had been relaxed by Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx under Obama back in 2016. The American Trucking Association is naturally angry about this complaining that the constricting workforce coupled with proposed crack-downs on "chameleon carriers" and rulings like Montgomery v. Caribe Transport is driving up costs for brokers and bulk carriers, but I think I speak for a lot of voters when I say "maybe that's a good thing".
Again I reiterate my position that more often than not it isn't the big headline grabbing stories that have the greatest impact but rather the things that happen quietly behind the scenes and that is why I feel obliged to signal-boost these sorts of stories.
Yes, because we don't need immigrants to work our jobs. We have no shortage of Americans willing to work. What we do have a shortage of are Americans who are willing to be underpaid, which is why companies love foreign labor so much. They are willing to be treated like slaves.
One wonders how one could advocate for workers' rights and treating employees fairly, and yet also support the importation of a workforce to be exploited by employers for the sole purpose of reducing costs.
Then where exactly is this mass of currently non working American citizens with no employment prospects who are perfectly happy and able to start any work again, yet alone backbreaking labor like dealing with farms in the south, and how are they currently living without any pay? The main groups out of the work force are either old, in college (and thus entering soon!), disabled, or in between employment because layover/hiring cycles means there's always some left just like how housing vacancies will (and should) always exist.
Even if we want to discuss the relatively few working age NEETs or mentally ill homeless addicts or whatever, I don't think they're gonna start picking up a hoe because you pay them a little more.
Unemployment in the US is currently at a historic low, but there doesn't need to be a mass of currently unemployed American citizens out there for immigration to depress wages.
As I argued in the comments of the linked post back in January, companies like Amazon and Tyson foods can easily weather things like Tariffs by simply passing the cost on to the consumer, but forcing them to pay American-level wages and provide American-level working conditions is much harder them to shrug off as it provides opportunities for other operators to start competing on cost and/or pick up market share.
It would seem to me that rule of supply and demand is the closest thing that economics has to a natural law. If the supply of labor is constrained relative to the demand, it stands to reason that the market price of labor (IE wages) will go up and vice versa.
Then historically there is a shortage of Americans who are willing to work but currently don't. Which is the claim being made here.
Of course it's classic supply and demand, more supply of labor (whether through automation or immigration or whatever) means cheaper labor costs. This also of course can mean products are cheaper and more available to buy as products become easier and cheaper to create. Immigration isn't as strong as automation since immigrants also consume (contribute to demand), but for very specific sectors where they cluster labor prices get driven down.
It's the inverse logic of why unions drive prices up and make stuff less affordable and less accessible to the average American. It's great for the union workers who get to hold the country hostage, it's bad for everyone else. Regulatorally enforced high labor costs benefits those who do labor by taking from those who need the labor done, like with elevators. Maybe it's a tradeoff we want to make, disabled people like the author, apartment dwellers, etc get less elevators in exchange for the elevator union having higher pay, but it is a tradeoff.
Same way that maybe we'd rather prefer American citizen construction workers get paid a lot of money over providing cheaper housing to our youth and our poor, we can make that tradeoff, but it is unavoidably one.
The catch here is that the “our youth and our poor” here would also largely be the people working these construction jobs, and all other jobs that now have the depressed wages. Easier to afford a $300,000 house on 40$/hour than a $200,000 house on $20/hour Not to mention that land is generally the largest price factor in housing, so the labor cost increase wouldn’t do that much anyway.
Your numbers are completely fictional though, the change in prices for buyers must be directly equal to the change in price for sellers. If I have a rare trading card and want to sell to a collector, the price is the same for both parties. If I make more, he must spend more. If he spends less, I must make less.
Even subsidizing the buyer just means a third party must take on the burden instead, it doesn't eliminate the problem. The only real world actual fix to have us both win (more than mutual trade already wins) without any losers is increasing productivity efficiency, devising ways to get two out of what previously only made one, like with agricultural science and food, or the economy of scale or ending artificial constraints on efficiency like regulation.
Increasing efficiency is the best way for sure. That’s unlikely to occur when extremely cheap labor is available. Besides, the increase in production would still result in the problem you pointed out: super efficient home building results in lower appreciation for existing homeowners. They lose in your scenario.
The numbers are fictional but the price on any given product would increase by less than the % gain in pay, as pay would not be increasing for the entire buyer-side, but only a portion, benefiting those being paid more at the expense of buyers who did not receive a pay increase. Sellers would win out, as in the made up numbers, but so would the now-better-paid workers.
Regardless yes markets are two sided, but the point here was addressing the “young and the poor.” Both of those groups could afford houses if they were being paid much more. The best houses in the best places? No, but most people don’t live in the 5 trendy metro hubs, and they still wouldn’t.
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