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Comment by tootie

8 days ago

The best option would be to close the gap with immigration but alas...

Why is that the best option instead of raising wages until those jobs are attractive to domestic workers? There's this weird back and forth where people bemoan stagnating wages for the working class but at the same time cheer on importing labor that is willing to work for those stagnant wages.

In any other market, the balance of supply and demand is reflected in the price. But for the labor market the perpetual solution put forward seems to be juicing the supply side so that the price does not move up to a new equilibrium.

  • Both would have to happen. There's very little slack in the labor market to absorb anything. Even if legal permanent residents take up manufacturing jobs, they'd have to give up whatever jobs they have now creating a shortage. And given then even most undocumented people are working, someone needs to fill those jobs.

  • Who is pushing to raise the wages and power of labor? It sure isn’t the party that is pushing tariffs and the return of factories.

    • The party that is NOT pushing tariffs is the one who said, between 2012 and 2016, that "they're NEVER coming back" (referring to return of factories and manufacturing jobs).

      That same party DID try to bring back manufacturing between 2020 and 2024. I think they would have been more successful if it hadn't been for COVID19, for which neither party is to blame.