[philipallstar]

> And there is an anti collectivist culture in the US now. In labor and in community, there's much less "let me give up my time for the community" and much more "how can I get mine" mindset.

Well. We doubled the labour pool with women entering it full-time, but we didn't double the value created. We increased it further with blind-eyeing illegal immigration. Both of those lower wages and increase costs, which mean there's less time available (if only one of you works, then the other has a lot of free time to build community).

I'll avoid moron-baiting by stating the obvious that women entering the workforce isn't a bad thing, etc etc, but it does have a certain economic effect, and it doesn't stop at the women who want to work. It pulls everyone in, as house prices are up-bidded by double incomes.

[sc68cal]

> We doubled the labour pool with women entering it full-time, but we didn't double the value created.

How can you say that? GDP _grew_ by adding more workers to the workforce.

You didn't even bother making an argument about households being forced to have double-incomes in order to sustain their standard of living. You just think the cause is women entering the workforce and the effect is cost of living increases.

[philipallstar]

> You didn't even bother making an argument about households being forced to have double-incomes in order to sustain their standard of living.

What about when I said this?

> It pulls everyone in, as house prices are up-bidded by double incomes.

[dh2022]

What costs increased because of immigration? If anything immigration helps keep labor costs down in agriculture, restaurants, hospitality, and construction.

[philipallstar]

> What costs increased because of immigration? If anything immigration helps keep labor costs down in agriculture, restaurants, hospitality, and construction.

Why would that be true? I'm talking about legal immigration, not illegal.

[FloorEgg]

Housing...

Anything with limited supply...

[dh2022]

Immigrants help with housing - because a lot of builders are immigrants. In my Seattle/Bellevue area - any time I needed help with anything housing related it was either Latinos or Ukrainians or Eastern Europeans. By housing related I mean plumbing, electrical, re-building a deck. The outside of the house next door was repainted (and some of its siding replaced) by Latinos. The roofers on a house on my walk spoke Spanish. Same with the workers who were doing a remodel.

When I installed French drains the guy that inspected and calculated the bid was American. The guy that dug the ditches and connected the house drains was Latino (I need to add that the Latino's English was better than mine. He used to be elementary teacher in Everett and switched to construction. He explained to me the term "lingua franca" :)).

In my neighbourdhood I also see a lot of Chinese laborers working in construction (the population of my neighbourdhood is probably 50% Chinese, and the rest either Korean or Japanese or South East Asian or Indian.)

I hardly ever see US born people working in construction around me.

[FloorEgg]

This is a good point, and I agree! Though when supply growth is bottlenecked by zoning, permitting,etc and not labor, immigration could still result in higher prices.

However if immigration disproportionately adds to construction labor supply, and if construction labor supply is the primary bottlebeck for housing supply growth, then immigration would indeed lower the price of housing.

To be clear I'm not anti immigration, I'm not Republican and I'm not even American.

I just saw a question (which I realize in hindsight was politically charged) that seemed to ignore some basic economic principles, and for some reason today I felt compelled to respond.

It's also worth noting that the comment I replied to was edited after I replied to it.

[bigyabai]

There are over 15 million vacant homes today in the United States. Housing is unequivocally an investing issue, not an immigration one.

[FloorEgg]

In any market if you increase demand without increasing supply, prices will increase.

For something like housing there are a lot of factors; construction supply chain, construction labor, permitting processes, zoning, private equity/speculation, tax rates, inter-state immigration, inter-country immigration, etc.

If you have people immigrating into a localized area faster than housing supply increases, it will increase the price of housing.

If you have vacant homes somewhere else in the country than the places people want to be (or where the immigrants are going) then it will have no downward pressure on pricing. There is nothing meaningful in a point that assumes the entire country is one market, as if supply/demand isn't tightly coupled specific locations.

[philipallstar]

> Housing is unequivocally an investing issue, not an immigration one.

Lots of them are holiday homes, not investments. But the fundamental economic driver that makes them investments is ever-increasing demand.