[dukeluke]

Good. The income of laborers and low-wage workers has been artificially suppressed due to uncontrolled immigration working at rates lower than minimum wage. My hope is that these actions will increase the wages of the lower class, which will increase the velocity of the dollar in America and get our economy going again.

It is sad that many illegal immigrants will be deported, but if we provide a path to citizenship, it sends a message to others thinking about coming illegally that if you come and wait long enough, you'll gain citizenship. That's a dangerous message in my opinion.

[DannyBee]

"Good. The income of laborers and low-wage workers has been artificially suppressed due to uncontrolled immigration working at rates lower than minimum wage. My hope is that these actions will increase the wages of the lower class, which will increase the velocity of the dollar in America and get our economy going again."

Or, you know, we'll just import whatever it is for 2 cents more instead of paying people to do it. Unless you start to make it artificially expensive to do that through tariffs. In which case, you are essentially trying to prop up the entire economy on a house of cards. Which is what got us into a mess in the first place.

You can't build a sustainable economy on pretending things aren't actually cheap and that people aren't willing to get paid next to nothing to do them.

It's the same thinking that, for example has us building m1 abrams tanks that we toss in the desert, never to be used again, because "these people need jobs", despite the military not actually wanting to build them anymore and desperately trying to get congress to let them cancel it.

In the best case, this kind of silliness lasts until things get automated. In most cases, this kind of silliness lasts a lot shorter time period than that because your economy is not competitive with others who aren't pretending (IE China, et al).

So unless step 2 of this master plan is "somehow completely isolate ourselves from the rest of the world while making tons of money, ..."

[shard972]

> Or, you know, we'll just import whatever it is for 2 cents more instead of paying people to do it. Unless you start to make it artificially expensive to do that through tariffs. In which case, you are essentially trying to prop up the entire economy on a house of cards. Which is what got us into a mess in the first place.

What about the negative externalities that come when a country no longer has an industry that many others rely on? When it comes to things like quality and having a stable supply chain, those kinds of things can be glossed over when "it's always 2c cheaper from china".

Steel is a good example, the main reason why china is still banned from trading steel on the open market even though it's so much cheaper is their lack of QA and also their government's lack of market reforms which would prevent china from effectively pumping and dumping on the world market.

Or what about food? Sure you can just import 100% of your food and let all the farmers in your country go out of business to the subsidised farmers from other countries because it makes economic sense, but anyone could see the potential dangers that could occur in the long term that would make such a plan more trouble than it would be worth.

[kuschku]

No matter what you do, the jobs won’t come back.

Adidas has moved almost all their textile production back to Germany, for example – it’s all automated now, cheaper than in China, and the QA is the best in the world.

There is no way the US can ever compete with that.

[lhnz]

Wouldn't it be better for both the environment and local automation industries [0] if we produced goods within the countries that consume them?

Whether or not local manufacturing jobs never come back, I just don't see why you would want to continue with something which seemingly has so many negative externalities (ethical, environmental, as well as a loss of means to innovate).

[0] https://srconstantin.wordpress.com/2016/11/19/industry-matte...

[kuschku]

Well, no.

Production in Germany (~30% renewable, ~20% nuclear) or France (~85% nuclear) or Norway (~100% renewable) is far better for the environment than in the US (~3% nuclear and renewable combined).

Additionally, you can’t produce everything in every country – so producing as much as possible at one place and then shipping it out will be better.

[mrep]

Renewable energy in the United States accounted for 13.44 percent of the domestically produced electricity in 2015, and 11.1 percent of total energy generation.

First sentence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_the_United...

[lhnz]

Big corporations send manufacturing to countries where it can be done for cheaper due to fewer regulations protecting local environments and sweatshop working conditions (China, etc). They then place the products into shipping containers and burn the lowest-grade fuel we can extract from the ground in order to send it all over the world.

It might be cheaper in the short-term and supported by all of the most progressive corporations but the damage we're doing will affect all of us eventually.

Edit: I'm not saying that globalisation is all bad, but in the war against Trump it seems people are forgetting all of the bad parts...

[mindslight]

> You can't build a sustainable economy on pretending things aren't actually cheap and that people aren't willing to get paid next to nothing to do them.

I'll type this until I'm blue in the fingers, but the fundamental issue driving the wedge is that any savings is prevented from actually benefiting consumer prices, due to explicit national policy.

If Walmart comes in with imported goods and cuts prices in half, then people's cost of living should go down. Even though work is leaving, people should actually need to work less to support their same lifestyle.

But as market progress would cause the CPI to decrease, the federal reserve explicitly creates enough new money to compensate and then some. The new money inflates prices precisely where it can be injected into the consumer economy - anything that can be financialized (eg houses, cars, healthcare, education).

The people are correct to be upset about their economic position - they're bearing the downsides of market progress while sharing few of the gains, by policy. Unfortunately their ire is easily misdirected toward other unfortunate victims, to keep this society-scale wealth extraction scheme going.

[dukeluke]

You also can't build a sustainable economy by importing everything and expecting everyone to be highly educated. Not everyone is capable of earning a degree, and those in the lower class need to have the potential for a comfortable life.

Edit: to those downvoting me, can you please explain?

[DannyBee]

hence, the only real hope being basic income and friends, not sticking head in the sand and pretending world has not changed.

You simply aren't going to be able to provide a lower class a comfortable life by giving them work that doesn't actually need doing. Worse, trying probably ends very badly.

[dukeluke]

Ideally you are right, but instead of arguing about an ideal that will never happen in our two-party political system, I think we should try to think of a solution that will at least somewhat work in this country. At very least, it will work as an economic band-aid until we can change our political system.

[DannyBee]

But it won't work, and will make things worse.

As for "until the system changes": How do you think the system changes if you try to band aid it? Who is then fighting to change it?

Systems change not generally in smooth realization that things are not going to go well 50 years from now, but instead when things hit the breaking point and the lower class revolts.

See,e.g., the history of the world elsewhere.

Sad, but true.

[jacquesm]

> At very least, it will work as an economic band-aid until we can change our political system.

But that's the problem right there: It will not work, and in fact it will make things (possibly much) worse.

[yokisan]

> the only real hope being basic income and friends

This may the the only real hope. But what about these people until then?

Rather than doling out welfare, it looks like Trump is shifting wealth around by increasing the incentive to hire Americans at the cost of more expensive goods and slightly smaller margins.

It's unorthodox, but is it foolish?

[denzil_correa]

> The income of laborers and low-wage workers has been artificially suppressed due to uncontrolled immigration working at rates lower than minimum wage.

Source?

[shard972]

It's just supply and demand isn't it? If you have a larger supply of workers due to laws around immigration being laxed, does it not stand to reason that the increased competition would lead to lower wages?

Especially when an economy is not at full employment, like the the US.

[denzil_correa]

There are two important points in the comment above : (1) Immigration is "uncontrolled" in the U.S. and (2) Wages are artificially suppressed.

I'd like to see a source on both of those parts. Each and every word chosen in the comment above is critical to the claim being made (artificial and uncontrolled; in particular).

[shard972]

> (1) Immigration is "uncontrolled" in the U.S.

If you are taking uncontrolled in it's most literal definition then you won't find a source, otherwise all you need to do is look at situation in the US with sanctuary cities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctuary_city

As an Australian, I find the whole concept a bit baffling. That a city just decides "If you make it to this city, we will protect you from immigration laws". I don't see how you could describe an immigration system as "under control" if all the rules can be thrown out the window if you get to a "safe zone".

I know this shooting has been referenced alot in the US and i think it's a good example of this, how can immigration be considered under control when a man can be deported 5 times and still get back in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Kathryn_Steinle

> (2) Wages are artificially suppressed.

Well again, like all things in politics definitions are not always a constant. Artificial in this case could describe a host of valid definitions from Any government action on a free economy to overly burdensome regulations and mandates that force a market obviously in one direction. I'm sure some people would argue that taxation itself is wage suppression.

So for this case, I would say when you take the fact the US's labor particpation rate still hasn't recovered to pre-GFC levels http://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2016/jun/13/da..., the laxing of immigration laws combined with stagnating wages http://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/.

I think you can definitely make an argument that wages have been suppressed by these policies.

[denzil_correa]

(1) A "sanctuary city" does not prove that immigration to the U.S. is uncontrolled. At best, it shows that illegal immigrants are protected.

(2) I'm not looking for political definitions. I'm looking for facts via research and data which show that wages are "artificially" suppressed due to uncontrolled immigration.

So far, I've only seen are plausible theories and hypothesis. Now, I'm waiting for actual data and research to back it up via a credible independent process.

[bruceb]

George Jesus Borjas, Harvard Economics prof has thoughts on this: http://cis.org/Borjas

[denzil_correa]

I'm not really an expert in Economics. I tried to read through it but couldn't quite understand the main take away. What exactly is the relevant take away wrt this discussion?

[shard972]

The best empirical research that tries to examine what has actually happened in the U.S. labor market aligns well with economy theory: An increase in the number of workers leads to lower wages. This report focuses on the labor market impact of immigration.

[denzil_correa]

I get what the report focuses on. The report has to be contextualized with two important phrases used in the parent comment "uncontrolled immigration" AND "artificial suppression" of wages.

[dukeluke]

Logic. There are 11 million illegal immigrants in a country of about 300 million. Assuming around 7 million of those work & assuming 6 million of those work at or below minimum wage, that means that 2 percent of the population is probably underpaid. That doesn't sound like much until you consider that almost all of that 2 percent is working in some sort of manual labor, whether it's agriculture, construction or housework.

[denzil_correa]

If the logic is so sound, it should not be difficult to prove. So, I'd wait until you prove it via data and get accepted by an independent fora. Until then, this is one of the many plausible theories.

[newmanships]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_impact_of_illegal_i...

Tl;Dr - wages for lower class/lower educated minorities are hurt, but employers gain an advantage (lower labor costs). There's also a paper by professor in econ from Cornell about African Americans suffering the most from it, but my phone won't link to the PDF.

Outside of academia you just have to go to your local home depot to see how much cheaper you can get someone to come work for you for the day, or go to any massage shop charging $25 / hour instead of $60+ while employing illegal immigrants.

[denzil_correa]

Thanks.

> while employing illegal immigrants.

It's important to note what the original claim of the parent comment was. It was not "illegal immigrants" but "uncontrolled immigration" which includes both legal AND illegal immigrants.

[newmanships]

In regards to legal immigrants there seems to be frequent discussions on HN about H1B visas and their effects.

Here's an article talking about them. http://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2015/05/economists-h-1b-vi... (the direct link to the study is in there as well)

Edit: I should clarify - this isn't the only way to immigrate / cover all use cases, etc etc - just that in this & my first comment there does seem to be some wage suppression occurring in some forms related to various immigration.