Presidential election, 2016

[Warren Dew]

(01-14-2017, 12:40 AM)gabrielle Wrote:

(01-13-2017, 11:50 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(01-13-2017, 11:03 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(01-13-2017, 01:37 PM)flbones too Wrote:

(01-13-2017, 06:16 AM)Danilynn Wrote: Pulling up bootstraps:

Yeah, I understand this and do it daily.

I've worked 2 and 3 jobs at a time my whole life. I still work 2 jobs.

I haven't been able and none of my Xer friends either to go out together because all of us are working like this. See we are taking care of our parents AND our kids.

SO if we seem a bit bitchy, it's because we are tired. Some of us are tired and doing all this while fighting life altering medical stuff. Some of us are just dead inside from exhaustion. I'm tired. I'm exhausted. And I know I'll drop dead working.

get out of here with that crap. no one should have to work 2-3 jobs just to make a living. no one.  wake up and stop defending a system that is rigged in favor of the rich. stop it.

Yes. I wonder when the Republican voters get with it, and start bitching at the right targets, instead of defending the folks that are causing the problems for us. It might take a little while, but I'm thinking some of them will. It will only take some of them.

Lots are already complaining about illegal immigrants, which are likely the right targets since there's such a close correlation between immigration and the fall of low end wages.  Whether the complaints are adequately directed to people who could do something with it, I don't know.

So we build the Great Wall of Trump and have taxpayers...er...Mexico pay for it, and then we will graciously be given living wages?

There won't be anything gracious about it; the elites will fight it tooth and nail.  They need the illegal immigration to keep wages and costs down and workers oppressed.

If it manages to be done - including the metaphorical wall of mandatory E-verify - yes, you'll get substantially better wages.  Wages stayed high and kept pace with productivity improvements while immigration was low, through about 1970.  Once the immigration floodgates were opened, immigrants willing to accept low wages accumulated, and wages consequently fell.  This included both legal and illegal immigration, but for the low wage positions today, it's mainly illegal immigration.  Take a look at the following graphs of first generation immigrant percent (red line in the first graph) and a measure of real wages relative to productivity (second graph).  Notice how wages track productivity gains right until around 1970, when immigrant population stops declining and starts rising, and wages immediately decouple from productivity and stay flat even while productivity continues to rise.  (The two graphs are not lined up so you'll have to look at the horizontal axis to pick out where 1970 is.)





If the wall were built and mandatory E-verify instituted, the wages at the low end of the scale would likely roughly double.