2022-05-02

Living Wages Impossible With Mass Immigration and Without Tariffs

The difference between a socialist and myself is that I want to live in a civilized country with functional systems. In order to achieve this, we must look at what works and what doesn't. Why systems exist, why they were implemented, what was the goal. Socialism is a road to Hell because it's a failure at first principles, because ultimately socialism is the political form of envy. If one does not envy others, one would not opt for socialism because harming others is wrong. Socialism is based on the moral assumption that wealth is ill-gotten, that economics is zero sum, that employers exploit workers. Some do, but those are crimes in any civilized country. Socialists assume everyone is being exploited (which morphed into thinking all white people are racist, it's the same exact template).

Taking money from one person and giving it to another is theft. It is not charity. If you really live in a society that won't voluntarily help the poor, that won't donate to charity or volunteer, then why would you give this type of people authoritarian power over the people? If a society is moral, it will have Christian charity. If it is not a charitable society, then the state will be uncharitable.

When problems emerge from socialism (and globalism), the socialist thinks the problem isn't enough socialism. Some countries that make socialism "work" are highly homogenous Northern European nations that have zero taxes on capital. They are indeed quite socialist, but have capitalist carve outs because without them, their economies would collapse rather quickly. These countries are actually more pro-billionaire than the USA if you can believe it. China is another example of this, of communists realizing their economic policies are junk.

In the U.S., we constantly hear about expensive and low quality education, expensive or difficult to obtain healthcare and expensive housing. Education and healthcare have the largest share of government spending and regulation of any major industry. Housing is explicitly supported with subsidies in the tax code and via government created mortgage companies. Any solution to these problems that doesn't involve slashing spending and removing government is doomed to failure.

We see the same stupidity in American conservatives. Their solution for every economic problem is tax cuts. That isn't to say tax cuts aren't always good. Lowering the cost of government is a laudable goal, but conservatives don't lower the cost of government. They mainly borrow money to finance tax cuts. Ironically, one can use MMT to justify exactly this policy. Even if they reduced spending to meet revenues, at some point tax cuts stop creating behavioral changes. Lowering the income tax from 80 percent to 20 percent creates a huge positive impact, but lowering it another 75 percent to 5 percent doesn't create as large a behavioral change. At some point, you have to declare victory and focus on other areas.

Tired of waiting for solutions, the American people have started taking steps to better their lives. One emergent trend is unionization. Workers do need some balance against corporations. Will it work though? Where does corporate power lie? How do they crush the rights of workers? Via immigration and tax policy. Mass immigration crushes wages via supply and demand. Anyone who is pro-labor and pro-mass immigration is caught in a paradox. Some will trot out the lie that immigrants benefit the economy. Except, workers are not "the economy." The only immigrants who benefit workers are those who increase labor demand. Which immigrants increase labor demand? The ones who build businesses. Entrepreneurial immigrants exist, but they are very tiny slice of overall immigration. The majority of immigrants to the U.S. go on welfare and they use welfare at higher rates than Americans. Go back 40 years or more and all unions were anti-immigration. Why? They weren't infected by the "dats racist" mind virus. They understood supply and demand.

By restricting immigration, many goals of unionization will be achieved by the marketplace because domestic workers will become more valuable. I can only go by anecdotal data because mass immigration is all over the country, but when immigration crackdowns have occurred, wages have jumped close to $15 per hour in cities, ironic because the socialists call their minimum wage demand the "Fight for $15." That can be achieved by banning immigration alone, and its' sustainable because higher wages will drive automation. Automation is another name for capital investment. When businesses invest capital in labor saving, it drives wages up. One man driving construction equipment in the USA makes as much money as 50 ditch diggers in a poor country. As wages rise, fewer workers will find jobs. Those with the least skills and lowest ability will suffer most of the losses if the country is not helping them by restricting the supply of low skill, low ability immigrants. If you want high wages, and don't want high unemployment and increased poverty, immigration restriction is the free lunch.

There's a global economy though. If wages in the U.S. rise too quickly or if unions become too powerful and drive labor costs up, corporations will shift more work overseas. Some companies are now outsourcing cashier jobs overseas, so the service industry is the next to get hit. How does one fight against outsourcing pressures? With tariffs. Here come the screams of the globalists! Taxes are bad. Sure taxes are bad, they cause people to avoid doing things. Sort of like...income taxes and capital gains taxes. The tariffs should be set at a level that raises revenue for the government and offset with tax cuts that support labor. Maybe use the tariffs to fund Social Security and Medicare and cut payroll taxes. That would support employers and employees both. The country will need some positive regulatory and tax shifts in favor of employers, if it also has a goal of raising wages, because wages are a cost for business. We want taxes and regulations working together to support workers, and the people who hire and pay workers are private businesses.

Today, taxes and regulations support multinational corporations (and farmers, sorry guys) crushing workers. Wages are low and stay low. The American left is thoroughly cucked on this topic. Their solutions will only make things worse and they've been ideologically wrecked by "dats racist." Most will not consider even modest restrictions on immigrations. They are the main supporters of the system that crushes wages. Conservatives aren't any better. They support corporations and mass immigration, and are biased against unions. Thus, the ruling class completely defeats its enemies and guarantees workers will never get anywhere. If instead the left woke up to the damage caused by immigration, they'd have a very powerful issue that would carry them to wins. This would in turn energize the already growing populist wing of the GOP that is anti-immigration and anti-corporate.

3 comments:

  1. "socialist" - We disagree over what that term means or "should" mean. Your "tariffs" suggestion -- which I've long been a fan of -- sounds a little "socialist" to me. IMO the D's are "fascists and/or retards" who thereby give a bad name to anything left-wing. The D's and R's take turns fucking over the nation, causing the idiot voters to shift from one side of the boat to the other. (I'm also sympathetic to "libertarian" objections to calling our present system "capitalism" or, at least, "free market".) Nevertheless, great writing, as usual, LZ. You're one of my daily reads.

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    1. Coming from a libertarian position, statist/socialist/collectivist overlap. They would call me collectivist because I think the govt should have policies that benefit the average citizen and that there should be some collective action otherwise, why even have a govt? If we did things like limit immigration, the benefits would be so overwhelming that there's no reason to talk about anything else. We are throwing hundreds of billions of dollars into welfare, police and education for people who don't even belong here. Home prices are soaring, wages stagnant. Stopping mass immigration and deporting those here illegally by itself would achieve more positive benefits for the average citizen than anything being proposed by the left or right. There would be money leftover to increase Medicaid spending, and then support for Medicaid-for-all would collapse. Same if defense spending is cut and so on. The American middle class is being looted by left and right. We'd even crush the most aggressive CO2 emissions targets. Everything the left and right populists want is doomed because the current ruling class, along with mass immigration, will bankrupt the country or have it destroyed in war.

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    2. My guess is you're probably right about uncontrolled immigration's detrimental impact along multiple dimensions. ... Also saw your Jimmy Dore post. Do you read Caitlin Johnstone and MoonOfAlabama as well?

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