Immigration nation

POSTED BY: kaneman
UPDATED: Wednesday, August 12, 2026 04:42
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FLETCH2

Thursday, June 21, 2007 2:43 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
It occurs to me that the problem is that we're discussing something in words that needs math. So, let's look at your proposition:

Profit= sale price - labor cost - material cost

Mathematically rearranging:

Labor cost = Sale price- Profit- Material cost

In other words, wages are always less than the amount it would take to buy the product, whether we're talking about a closed system (bowling ball workers trying to buy a shift's worth of bowling balls with a shift's worth of wages) or the entire world. While it is possible to have one group produce, and another consume, in the end when you total it all up workers cannot buy back what they've produced.

So the key question is: what happens with the Profit? (I could go into detail about material costs but they are, in the end, labor costs.)

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Always look upstream.

Still waiting to see those contradictions here. When you show them we may talk, otherwise we are done.

RAZZA

Thursday, June 21, 2007 3:23 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
...In other words, wages are always less than the amount it would take to buy the product, whether we're talking about a closed system (bowling ball workers trying to buy a shift's worth of bowling balls with a shift's worth of wages) or the entire world. While it is possible to have one group produce, and another consume, in the end when you total it all up workers cannot buy back what they've produced...

Signym:

Not to pile on here with Fletch, but you have a HUGE contradiction here in this statement. Why would a worker at the bowling ball plant want to buy a shift's worth of bowling balls? He wouldn't, obviously, and therefore your point is a little ridiculous. The bowling ball plant worker would only buy one bowling ball, and to make the giant assumptive leap from "he couldn't buy a shifts worth of bowlling balls at the wage he makes in a shifts worth of work" to "he would never be able to buy a bowling ball" is a bit ludicrous. Maybe that wasn't what you were trying to say, but that is how it came across.

Your statement that "workers cannot buy back what they produce" is so obviously flawed that it undercuts any point you are trying to make, though I'm not sure what that point is to tell you the truth. Workers buy the product they produce all the time! So let me get this straight, you believe the Ford Motor Company offers its employees a discount on Ford cars because they know they will never be able to afford them and thus will never have to honor the discount? There are so many flaws in that logic I don't know where to start.

While I agree with some of your earlier statments about immigration, which by the way this thread was originally about, I have to fall on Fletch's side in this whole economics debate you two have derailed the thread to.

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"There is not such a cradle of democracy upon the earth as the Free Public Library, this republic of letters, where neither rank, office, nor wealth receives the slightest consideration."
---Andrew Carnegie

"Doing research on the Web is like using a library assembled piecemeal by pack rats and vandalized nightly."
---Roger Ebert

RAZZA

Thursday, June 21, 2007 3:59 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Fletch2:
He's the thing. We live in a world where there is real slavery. Where a girl can be snatched off a farm in Romania and end up in a brothel in Nice. Someone who didn't decide to leave her home did not chose the work she does, gains nothing from it and will be killed or injured if she refuses. By contrast most US illegals came here of their own free will, made the journey under their own power, found their own employment and can leave it at any time. And we find that SigNY resents them for taking American jobs and you do it because they are being used by the man. Unless you are 100% native American your ancestors made the same choices these guys did. They probably had the same hardship getting here and may even have lived 15 to a room while they got a start. And yes that means they were probably exploited by those capitalists along the way. You know what? The illegals today and your ancestors back then shared one thing, they both thought themselves better off in America doing shitty jobs than being back where they came from.

Fletch:

No one blames immigrants for making the obvious choice for a better life in our country. You are right, we are all the result of immigrants who came to america seeking the same opportunities, and no one begrudges them that. I support immigration and think we should be raising our set quotas for the number of immigrants coming here and allowing more to enter legally. There is obviously a need for them or else they wouldn't be coming. I do have a problem, however, with people beginning their search for a better life in the United States by thumbing their nose at our laws. You can't blame them when they know our spineless politicians will eventually cave and give them amnesty anyway. Their decision to come here is a no brainer really, and if I were in their shoes I'd probably be doing the same thing. That doesn't make it right, just prudent. My anger is with useless and hypocritical politicians not people seeking a better life.

In another post you said:

Quote:
Originally posted by Fletch2:
In your world the choice is between hiring an illegal at $3/hr and paying an American $8/hr. That's actually a false choice. In truth the industry could not pay $8/hr and remain competative with imports at $3/hr. If the immigrants went the work would go abroad. In work that produces movable product the $8/hr American worker loses nothing to the $3/hr illegal because he would never be offered that job anyway, it would go abroad to a producer with a lower cost base. There are industries like construction and some services, work that has to be done at a fixed local or where the product isnt movable where you could easily replace illegals with better paid Americans but profits are unlikely to fall instead the costs would be passed to the end customer.

These are good points and I think you talked about the benefits of the economic activity of this cheap illegal labor force adding to the local economy as well. This is something I hadn't thought of in the past and bares some consideration. I have to wonder though if that economic benefit outweighs the ancillary costs incurred as a result of the illegal labor being present. We hear anectdotes of hospital emergency rooms closing, schools being overwhelmed with the children of illegals, insurance costs rising, and many others. Couple these costs with the fact that many illegals send a large part of their income back home to their native country and you have to ask, are these local economic boosts resulting from their presence worth it? I don't know the answer to tell you the truth and I think it would be very difficult to quantify either the benefits or the costs. Your thoughts?

-----------------
"There is not such a cradle of democracy upon the earth as the Free Public Library, this republic of letters, where neither rank, office, nor wealth receives the slightest consideration."
---Andrew Carnegie

"Doing research on the Web is like using a library assembled piecemeal by pack rats a

SIGNYM

Thursday, June 21, 2007 4:00 PM

Razza- I'm talking economic theory.

Lets' say that in one week, all wages paid in the world totalled $0.9 trillion dollars. That's the money in-hand available for purchasing goods. Lets' say capitalists want to sell those produced goods for a 10% profit, for a total of approximately $1 trillion dollars. WHO is going to buy all those products? Certainly not the people who made them, because they only have $0.9 trillion in-hand.

You're right, it IS a conundrum and that's what leads to nasty boom and bust cycles. It took economists a century to figure out what to do about it while still keeping capitalism alive. The first was to institute mandatory dedistribution through taxes. The second was to "inject" money into the economy by extending credit to wage-earners who would otherwise not be able to purchase the totality of what was poduced.

What precipitates depressions is a large and growing inequality in money distribution. That is why economists are looking at the wealth distribution today, the past seven decades, and immediately before and after the Great Depression.

---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

RUE

Thursday, June 21, 2007 4:01 PM

Not to try to answer for SignyM, but since I think it was I who came up with the argument: you have to extend the idea to it's ultimate end to see why workers can't buy what they produce.

Let me come at this a different way - it's been many decades since I went to school so I don't know - do they still teach about 'the company store' ? In effect the entire world is the company, and people have to buy from the company store.

***************************************************************
"Global warming - it's not just a fact, it's a choice."

RAZZA

Thursday, June 21, 2007 4:22 PM

Signym:

Okay, I see what you are getting at now, but there are a couple of problems with your hypothesis. It assumes that the only consumer of the goods are the people who produced them and completely discounts the existence of the concept of credit. Corporations also consume goods using the profits they garnered by selling the goods their workers produced. I think your statement is a gross oversimplification of a very complex subject.

-----------------
"There is not such a cradle of democracy upon the earth as the Free Public Library, this republic of letters, where neither rank, office, nor wealth receives the slightest consideration."
---Andrew Carnegie

"Doing research on the Web is like using a library assembled piecemeal by pack rats and vandalized nightly."
---Roger Ebert

SIGNYM

Thursday, June 21, 2007 4:32 PM

Umm... I specifically metioned credit as one solution to the problem. And yes, corporations are themselves "consumers". And I haven't even touched on the action of rent and interest, and what happens with "profit". It is a very complex topic which I deliberately simplified for the sake of discussion. But what it turns out is that no matter how many pathways you follow the money through... whether a corporation is a consumer or whether you are looking at retail goods or services... the equation is still the same each time you turn the production/ consumption crank, and the critical parameters are: What is the rate of profit? What happens to "profit"? What is the rate of the increase of money supply? What is the increase in productivity?

I don't want to get into mathematical modeling, but I imagine it can be modeled akin to an elctronic circuit with positive and negative feedback, because the economy oscillates under circumstances where positive feedback takes over.

---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

KANEMAN

Thursday, June 21, 2007 4:34 PM

siggy,
Your argument does not take into account that the owners and the companies that make the 10% profit also make purchases. It also does not take into consideration the service industry for one(There are many others). Nothing is 'made', however wages are paid. This whole thread shows what a full of shit tool you are.........See, economics isn't JUST manufacturing you fucking nutter.....

Edit.....So I guess, in a retarded way you are... correct, the 500 hundred factory workers couldn't buy all the cars they make, but the gardeners, supermarket worker, police officers, firemen , etc....could.

FLETCH2

Thursday, June 21, 2007 4:45 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Razza:
Quote:
I have to wonder though if that economic benefit outweighs the ancillary costs incurred as a result of the illegal labor being present. We hear anectdotes of hospital emergency rooms closing, schools being overwhelmed with the children of illegals, insurance costs rising, and many others. Couple these costs with the fact that many illegals send a large part of their income back home to their native country and you have to ask, are these local economic boosts resulting from their presence worth it? I don't know the answer to tell you the truth and I think it would be very difficult to quantify either the benefits or the costs. Your thoughts?

-----------------
"There is not such a cradle of democracy upon the earth as the Free Public Library, this republic of letters, where neither rank, office, nor wealth receives the slightest consideration."
---Andrew Carnegie

"Doing research on the Web is like using a library assembled piecemeal by pack rats and vandalized nightly."
---Roger Ebert

I think that's difficult to quantify in absolute terms. However bear in mind that the wealth created will always be more than the pay someone takes home. Even if the immigrant repatriated his whole check to Mexico muc of the wealth he created would stay in the US.

Depending on the industry there could also be multiplication effects. Let's say that Argentine beef costs $1.5/lb to produce and by the time it reaches US stores it retails at $3.20. US beef costs $2.50/lb to produce and retails for $3.00.

Argentine beef is so cheap because the cost base in that country is much less. Land is less expensive, so is labour and there are lower taxes. With the cost base that exists in the US it would be impossible to match Argentina head to head. I'm sure Sig would be the first to scream if the beef states started paying South American wages. The $3.00/lb US beef price includes the cost of employing cheap immigrant labour. One day the Sig/Rue ticket is elected and evicts all of the imigrants, replacing them with American at a decent wage. This adds an additional 50c/lb to the cost of US beef, which in turn means that fewer people buy it which in turn reduces economies of scale which it turn pushes up prices.

This impacts other folks, ranchers and the people that work for them, guys that sell to ranchers, guys that repair refrigeration equipment, lots of people because the economic benefit of some workers has knock on effects.

On the other hand deporting Juanita who works the late counter at Taco Hell is probably not got going to have a big economic effect.

I'm a legal immigrant. Which means I've waited in line for hours on multiple occasions paid about $1000 in assorted fees collected the mountain of supporting documentation and cant leave the country for more than 6 months without having to do the whole thing over. So yeah from the point of view of fairness I'm not thrilled that other folks can just sneak in. Of course I also make decent pay, I was never in any risk of dying in a desert or drowning to get here.

While I don't like how they got here I am willing to conceed that them being here has benefits to the economy.

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