So the jobs being “stolen” were only here because immigrants were willing to work them. Without the cheap labor in social services, healthcare and elder care, people have to leave the workforce to care for their parents and grandparents. Cue lowering jobs and unemployment figures.
400,000 Venezuelan healthcare workers are losing their temporary status in October so buckle up.
Employers are going to have to start paying more to get these jobs filled. Two or 3 times the minimum wage. There is no option. The days is going to come where cheap labor is unsustainable.
Nah. These companies are built on cheap labor, it's a part of their business model. Some of them can survive raising it but a lot will fail and get bailed one way or another.
Child care is another example. Families will be forced to pay more for daycare or nannie’s given fewer options available. As a result, more parents will be forced to drop out of the workforce to be a stay at home wife/husband.
As the commenter below stated, they're doing that shady shit at staffed nursing homes that mainly employ citizens too. Nursing homes have major issues and market dynamics around wages are not the major issue.
Lmao pay better wages? What fantasy land are you living in? No they will hire even less staff now, they will drug your parents so when they aren’t getting care they need they won’t complain.
They will clean them up when you occasionally come for a visit and just basically rush them to an earlier grave than needed. All while charging us even more for the privilege of their services and funneling as much money as possible to one person to make another billionaire.
Just google it, here is a story from May this year but this has already been happening for years and as more people age this isn’t going to get any better especially when regulations aren’t even being enforced.
see the Ontario, Canada, COVID-19 fiasco where the military had to be called in to clean up the private old folks homes due to the atrocious conditions people were living/dying in.
As someone who used to do home healthcare and had to temp a few times in short staffed AL and nursing homes.... I've seen suites with shit caked on the wall, patients falling and being permanently disabled, etc because there just aren't enough workers to attend to them. It's pretty horrifying. These places would rather let their residents die in squalor and filth than pay for proper care/staffing coverage or livable wages. And they get away with it, so why bother changing?
I work in a completely different field now because of how damn depressing it is. I felt myself losing my soul by having to play a part in it, even when I put my job on the line and advocated to resident's family to get them out of there for their own well-being. And those places are expensive, you'll pay a ridiculous amount just to be medically neglected and die miserably.
This world never acclimated to the longevities of humans. We didn’t design public finance, public healthcare, infrastructure, nothing, to accommodate the aged and infirm.
We wanted longer lifespans, and it’s a credit to humanity’s brilliance that we have achieved much longer lifespans in a short term period. We made medicine, therapy, and disease prevention a profit center, and we got longer lifespans as the result.
Seems like a regulation issue. So they do have the money to pay higher wages as you state they make the owners billions on nursing home profits.
Staffing levels are set by the states, seems like that could be enforced. As could monitoring the care.
Nothing in your post justifies keeping wages low by exploiting immigrants. Maybe higher paid workers with better job prospects would more vigorously advocate for patients.
Even if implemented perfect regulations today, it would still shock the system having a suddenly huge jump in labor costs. It needs to be a gradual change over time.
Those costs passed down to regular Americans, who will no longer be able to afford a nursing home. So one of the kids might have to quit their job to take care of the parents, and suffer financially themselves to do so.
I know you want to simplify it and make the answer easy, but it just isn’t
SB 525 Health Care Wage: Licensed home health agencies, or home care workers dispatched directly by a covered hospital system, follow accelerated schedules targeting a $25.00/hour maximum tier (with intermediate local minimums scaling up depending on the size and type of the parent health system). [1, 2, 3] In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS): State-funded IHSS program rates vary by county, with many local jurisdictions pushing base pay toward a $20.00-per-hour floor. [1]
Facilities, medications, administration, food/prep, security, insurance… labor is just one piece. Most facilities can handle the increase without much cost passed on.
Why does it need to be gradual? While it would be a shock economies have survived worse. The free market can handle it.
Government programs currently pay for 77% of all long term care patients, so some small minority might see an increase in costs. Of the 23% private pay some are rich enough to afford it, others would deplete their savings faster and go onto those government programs.
The same time labor costs increase other things like rent and auto insurance could decrease. Many secondary impacts I am probably missing.
Bottom line is your understanding of how this might play out is not accounting for who currently pays for the majority of long term care or the secondary impacts of a change like this
Sounds like a structural issue with the economy then …
Workforce and employers will eventually come to a nee equilibrium , and elderly care should predominantly fall upon family members , not an outsourced service . If one can afford it, great, but just like many of life’s other luxuries not everyone can .
When COVID landed and caused every nation to properly shut down their borders, it forcibly repriced the value of labor by cutting off the unlimited supply of expendable bodies with no alternatives except to work for whatever is offered.
Many American workers saw more progress in wages in benefits in those 18 months than all of the previous fifty years combined. The fact that this progress fizzled out the moment the last admin blew the gates wide open was not lost on a lot of people.
>elderly care should predominantly fall upon family members , not an outsourced service
People should abandon their careers to perform a service 24/7, for free, for which they have no experience or training? No, that is definitely not the answer. And I hate to break the news to you that relative-caregivers are not above financial, emotional, and physical abuse, up to and including murder.
Well I’m not sure the seniors and their families can afford to pay much more. So this may result in more seniors evicted from nursing facilities for wealthier seniors who can pay for it.
If you believe most nursing home owners are going to raise wages you need to look into the industry. It is heavily run by consolidators and individuals who make their money by running as cheaply as possible while charging the most. Many operators would rather run a clinic into the ground then take a profit hit. As has happened many times.
Much like the restaurant, hotel and agriculture Americans aren’t willing to do the hard work for the basic wage. And people aren’t going to put up with the wage driven inflation for the basic prices as well. Our economy was built on low wage jobs supported by immigrants. Heck the head of the TX Restaurant Association just wrote an oped this week on how Congress should pass an immigrant work pass system for restaurants just like did for Ag because restaurants need cheap labor.
This is an “economic “ subreddit. Staffing levels are fixed by law in many places. Somehow the business owners have convinced everyone supply and demand doesn’t work for the industries they happen to own. Strange.
Apparently it’s just fine exploiting immigrants so you can save $10 on a hotel stay or $5 on a meal.
We already subsidize low wage workers via social programs and medical care. Claiming Americans won’t do restaurant work is of course totally false ( I see them working every day) even more would do it for better pay.
Except they cut social programs as well. Minimum wage is not a living wage in most states. They couldn't even rent an apartment because you need to earn 3 times the rental cost.
Wow you magically took the opposite lesson there considering most of our housing is built by immigrant labor and they tend to live in multifamily households.
Most of the housing is not built by immigrant workers. Plenty of citizens work the trades.
Immigrants work all kinds of jobs, it’s not like every single one is building housing. Unless they cross the border with a house, they compete for housing.
Americans did low wage jobs for a long time, in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s, and 2010s. Illegal immigration become more prominent in the late 90s and early 2000s and into the 2010s.
Millennials, in their 20s, were working for cheap in the restaurant and hotel industries for a long time, until they upgraded to higher earning careers/roles. Gen Z/Gen Y doesn't want to do these jobs. The restaurant and hotel industries are just awful on this regard.
Agricultural is still heavy in immigration and I think that is where the culprit is.
The restaurant business model is dying and the head of the TX Restaurant Association knows this. He needs/wants injection of cheap labor for better margins. I say, let him die on his hill screaming alone.
Elder care industry, hospitality conglomerates, manufacturing concerns, logistics firms, big ag, every C-Suite loves to see an endless supply of desperate humans that can undercut US citizen and legal immigrant workers. After all they all use sub contractors that provide plausible deniability.
Of course. Then in this economic subreddit people are claiming the laws of supply and demand don’t apply to industries that exploit immigrant workers. Its very confusing
That's why as the kid of a midwest and Appalachian region union coal and steel worker family it is very confusing to me how the DSA and progressives can claim to simultaneously be pro-labor and pro open border.
Because the DSA and progressive left don’t understand economics. The working classes are the ones dealing with competition in the labor and housing markets. Apparently the DSA doesn’t care
That is NOT how privatized health care works. At all.
They do not raise wages. They cut staff. They don't raise wages. They cut equipment. These are private companies, and the only thing they care about is profit. They are more than happy to let grandma rot in a bed covered in her own excrement if it means they can get an extra 10 cents on the dollar.
From care services to medicine to insurance, the for-profit health industry is an engine of cruelty and callousness. It is a giant amoral profit extraction machine fueled by the pain, suffering, and death of the people.
They are businesses, where there's limited competition and customers are basically captives. You can almost smell the quality of service they deliver on average.
There is something like 18,000 nursing homes in the USA. Certainly we could come up with ways to reward those who have the best care since 77% of the people use government funds to pay
There are actually less beds and capacity compared to before covid: https://www.mcknights.com/news/us-nursing-home-capacity-declines-twice-as-steep-as-estimated-jama-study/. Demand of course grows as population ages and life expectancy rises.
Think about it, the government of course wants to pay as little as possible per patient since tax revenue isn't limitless, and the businesses operating nursing homes want to maximize profit.
Analysis has shown that not-for-profit nursing homes, about a quarter of the total, tend to have better staffing levels and care because there's no investor waiting to be paid. We need a lot more of them.
I am not surprised. Covid went through the local nursing homes like a buzz saw, they lost a bunch of patients and continue to lose them every time the facilities have an outbreak.
It used to be some patients would pass away from the flu or pneumonia every year, now we have covid taking a few on top of that. The facility I visit has 1/4 shut down for lack of patients and staff, it seems the medically weaker are just smaller in number right now.
Reimbursement rates for home caregivers under Medicaid has increased quite a bit in the past 10 years, and especially post covid, which is going to account for some of this as well.
They won’t be paying better wages, people’s desperation will have them take those jobs for Pennie’s on the dollar AND as they start arresting people for crimes they may have thought of committing, will be fortunate enough to be enslaved in “the system” for free labor. Buckle up! They do not have good plans for us.
Spot on. This highlights the hidden second-order effect on overall labor force participation rates When essential caregiving services (elderly care, childcare) suffer severe labor shortages, it forces high-productivity primary earners out of the active workforce to fill those care gaps at home. Mass deportations end up shrinking total economic output rather than freeing up jobs for domestic workers
>So the jobs being “stolen” were only here because immigrants were willing to work them by being exploited via substandard wages and inhospitable working conditions.
FTFY. If these employers were willing to pay a living wage, not understaff, and provide better working conditions then native citizens would be willing to work these jobs.
It's not like a healthcare job is like working on a farm or in a field, so that excuse doesn't apply here.
Did you read the article. These are not typical healthcare jobs. Elderly services is a nice way of saying taking care of confused incontinent people. So getting attacked by a confused grandpa with a shitty diaper. So yeah, a lot of people don’t want that healthcare jobs.
I work in HR Operations for a healthcare company, and we just had to let close to 20 Haitian RNs go. They were all great employees and it killed us to have to do it.
If it's more cost effective for people to quit their jobs to care for their parents or partners than to pay someone else to do it, then what's the issue? Those employers will need to raise wages or just deal with it.
When family members quit jobs to provide unpaid care, it saves money on formal care costs, but it triggers major systemic issues. Workers lose wages, retirement savings, and career growth, while the economy faces labor shortages and strained public health systems that cannot simply absorb the lost productivity.
Also, let’s be real: retirement homes “just dealing with it” will affect the care their patients receive most of all.
If someone never has kids because their child-bearing years are taken up by nursing their elderly parents, congratulations, you just pushed the problem into the future 30 years.
How can wages be lost when the opportunity cost is well below the savings gained by providing care vs paying a facility?
Why would someone work when it costs them $2 in care bills for every dollar they earn? An example ratio, not actual figures. It's a net win for someone to quit such a job and provide care until a better paying opportunity comes up.
If a worker earns $30,000 but care costs $50,000, quitting feels like a $20,000 win today. However, if that choice costs them $300,000 in lifetime retirement savings and prevents them from ever getting a promotion, the long-term net math becomes deeply negative.
It also has downstream effects because when people earn, they spend which employs other people. Undocumented workers also disproportionately pay tax toward services they do not use.
Leaving society, homeschooling and “living off the land” are all similar in that they a very romantic ideas, but it overall creates large systemic inefficiencies.
Our society, culture and technology tend toward interdependence and multiculturalism; this drive to nativistic autarky is antiamerican
Uhh, how exactly is someone going to save for retirement when their expenses already grossly exceed the income? Assuming 10% savings rate plus interest, you're still looking at well over fifty years to save $300k off a job paying 30k a year. And 10% savings is already a horribly unrealistic assumption unless that person makes decent money off the books.
Because you’re assuming things like (a) that they’re unmarried and thus have no other household income and that (b) they’re earning $30,000 that whole ten years (or that its only ten years). This still gets at your shorter-term perspective rather than seeing the compounding long-term workforce benefits.
Seems like if what you’re saying holds water, high schoolers should just drop out to take care of their grandparents at home since the high schoolers aren’t going to be earning meaningful wages during that time anyways, right? Or does the long-term perspective favor keeping them in school so their ability to contribute is greater over time?
With the AI doing AI stuff to the entry level jobs that require formal education, this is an ugly but very relevant question. The jury is going to be out on this one for a few years at least. Though anyone who's got five or six digits of student debt should expect and prepare for the worst.
As for the other sources of income, I'm only going based off of what you presented in your previous reply. A dollar is still a dollar, and in that case one scenario is a net $20k negative, whereas reallocating labor by quitting an outside job is a net zero expense.
The fact that some industries will have to try a bit harder to get and retain workers is irrelevant to the individual in your scenario.
According to the article it is 400,000 Venezuelan workers, not necessarily working in healthcare. Read the article before you come and preach to us.
Further, it isn't clear how many of them are actually workers, it is an assumption that they all have jobs. 400,000 Venezuelans may indeed be losing TPS, that doesn't mean they are all in the workforce tho
Most may in fact have jobs. But as to those that don't, maybe they live with a relative? Or maybe they engage in criminal activity? Who tf knows.
The fact is you don't need to work to have TPS, it isn't a status that is contingent on having a job. You can work but it is not a requirement. So to say or imply that x number of people that are on TPS are also all working is flat out wrong.
At best the article is being lazy with wording, at worst it is being deliberately misleading
Gee! If only someone had seen this coming. Like, where were all the policy experts and economists? Oh yeah, they were there pointing out this wold fail the whole time! This is the problem when expertise is vilified and people who know nothing about these issues pontificate and get elected. It's almost like they shouldn't have done this with simultaneous expectations derived from stories that Americans were just waiting in the wings for these jobs.
Of course it is. Those companies weren't willing to pay actual wages sto survive so they just closed up shop or stopped hiring. Now we have tons to do and prices are through the roof because good wages aren't affordable by most small businesses or normal person until the corporate profiteering and monopolies stops which at this pace is never going to happen.
As long as every small business is squeezed out of existence and costs of basic materials and foods are skyrocketing theres no extra money to create jobs or increase pay. Its easier to just markup doritoes to 7$ a bag.
Its not raising quality of life or opportunity for anyone. Its just making us all as poor as the immigrants were the day they arrived.
NGL, this does sound like eventually it creates a situation where businesses will have to raise wages to hire staff or go under.
If wages are artificially lowered due to undocumented labor supply then Americans will benefit in wages when that supply leaves. To some extent this is the equivalent (at the macro) of a union worked on strike (legal American worker who wont work due to too low of wages) whose scab just got deported so the business has to decide to pay better wages to the union worker or go out of business.
Really, the same concept where almost all businesses will opt for mass firings rather than across the board wage cuts when the business is slow and payroll has to come down.
It definitely can, but it will raise prices for everyone else. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but we’ll have to wait and see how this all shakes out.
We have plenty of domestic and legal labor to meet demand without illegal immigration. What we have is an unwillingness of employers to pay appropriate wages.
There are 7 million people on the unemployment roles, if you deport 10 million illegals and push out another 20 million legal immigrants where does the other 23 million come from?
Their countries of origins can't attract immigrants like America can, which is why they have higher unemployment and lower wages.
Since its founding America has imported workers to build it's economy and every level, creating economic growth, higher wages and more employment for Americans who were born here.
No one said America was built ethically. That would be an asinine statement. The richest man in the US was its first president and made his money on stolen land speculation and slave labor. America is built by and for the rich and has been since day one.
Did I say that? I don’t believe in American Exceptionalism. But like I replied in a different comment, some prices have a ceiling at which they can no longer be sustained. If it costs $30 to pick a pint of strawberries, then that job just goes away so you have to be ok with fewer jobs overall.
Maybe you meant in general, but the healthcare workers the article is talking about are not here illegally. It's just that the government has suddenly decided to remove their legal status.
Fact is US taxpayers cannot afford to fund enough nursing facilities on the wage Americans expect for these demanding and thankless jobs. On average each US citizen (including children) already owes foreign debt holders $27k, not even counting the debt we owe other Americans.
The problem is the jobs the illegal immigrants are doing are VERY hard. Consider working outside in Texas heat, which most US citizens and legal immigrants will not do. There are other examples like restaurants.
The first imported workers were slaves but once outlawed it just became immigrants. America was built by slaves/immigrants and cheap labor and funded by the rich for the rich. Whether it was the Chinese building the economic driver of the 19th century, or the Hispanics farming the southwest, African Americans in the south and good old fashioned European refugees for the northeast in various waves, the US was built by immigration whether forced, legal, or illegal.
Something no one mentions is most of those immigrants flourish and build a beautiful life in America called the American dream while being able to support their family back home. They trying so hard to kill the American dream
I’m living it so I’d say otherwise. Immigrant from Mexico who has a good career in USA and just baught my 5 bedroom home in SoCal in February. It’s still alive just harder to reach
Also, I hope I did not send a message of anti immigration. I know many foreign born people doing well. I am saying the dream is bait to induce immigration.
cool. so where is that spirit of american entrepreneurial innovation to make these jobs less shit, compensated adequately and using technology to make them easier.
any idiot can rely on cheap/slave labor from immigrants. time to get innovating
A lot of these innovations come from immigrant Americans. Humans should not be property of any state rather the state is the property of humans. Where you are born should not be more important than what you can contribute and provide and create for the society you live in.
As long as we can all agree that some businesses will just not be able to exist if they are paying a livable wage and healthcare costs. There will be fewer but better paying jobs overall but we could easily end up with fewer overall jobs and less economic growth. I am not arguing those are good or bad, I’m just saying that is a likely possibility. You can see it happening to fast food now. McDonald’s would be twice its current already inflated costs. When that McDonalds closes it is a franchise, so likely a local owner and all the low and medium wage workers are out of a job. I don’t care if McDonald’s ceases to exist but it is just one example of a business that probably is not sustainable with livable wage costs.
No, labor markets will crumble. The “economics” of certain sectors will change.
Let me rephrase this, let’s say you are just able to meet the wage demands of elder care. Now the costs of these services increase dramatically. If you can’t afford it, there is no “just pay someone more to do it” scenario.
That’s something people don’t consider.
Like fruit picking. No one is going to pay much buyer prices for fruit. They’ll cut back and the industry as a whole will suffer.
At the end of the day, even if you argue “people should be paid more, if you don’t have a plan that address all sides of the economic issues, you end up with a lose-lose.
Exactly, some prices have a ceiling. No one is happy with $30 per pint strawberries. Strawberries just disappear or become another product exclusively for the rich.
Has anyone ever died from an acute strawberry deficiency? If a handful of luxury items and luxury services get repriced, that's just acceptable losses.
If the outcome is worse for everyone, even the low-wage immigrant workers, what is the argument here? You basically chopped the legs out of someone that chose to come here and work in this system for the chance at a better life for their family in the next generation, raised prices on essential goods and services, people can afford less of them, and those industries suffer, all without seeing a meaningful increase in wages or job growth.
It’s simple when you make it simple. But it’s not simple. There is a reason why no reputable economist ever supported that kind of policy. Everyone suffers. No one wins.
My friend, you must learn class consciousness and think bigger and better, not just for yourself but for all of us. The rich are never, ever going to magically change their hearts. They have way more legislative and legal loopholes than you do, and they are wealth hoarders. They have a sickness.
Check out America’s Labor Rights Movement and the push into the Progressive Era. It’s been a century now. We’re overdue.
Nobody expects the folks on the better end of the income distribution to budge out of goodness of heart. Which is why a good number of Americans feel that a much more feasible way to fix the issue is by forcibly reducing the labor supply through additional immigration enforcement.
We don’t need no experts. Fearless leader is a genius who knows all and has bestowed wisdom of all the ages into his amazing orange noggin that is festooned with a golden mane of silken splendor
I’m ok with the Rich and UMC paying more for local labor. Maybe their quality of life goes down, but the working class employees should see an overall improvement. Less income inequality is a good thing!
Importing immigrant workers as "cheap labor" not only hurts the American worker but also exploits immigrants. Companies need to cut their profit margins and pay American workers livable wages. It's that simple.
I don’t know how some people can think the only people willing to work for dirt cheap in our country is stealing their jobs and driving up prices. It can only be racism idk
This is just a puzzle piece of the culling of the herd of humans for a small corporatocracy. It’s the Las Vegas syndrome. Get more revenue from very rich few than little revenue from many. Humans are yesterday’s news. You don’t need workers to take care of elderly when it’s good that people lose jobs to take care of their elderly. Then eventually the jobless people will lose income, fall further into poverty and they can catalyze the deaths of those human lives. Then we can have the Epstein class, AI infrastructure doing what humans used to and there won’t be any pesky humans. Now we just need Gen Z to become electricians and get it done so. Get in the trades!
Lots of people have been laid off, I hope everyone that currently has not had much luck getting stable employment do get those jobs so they can get back on their feet.
Cha-ching my guy. Don't threaten me with a good time.
This is why the jobs that are here, which cannot be shipped overseas nor offloaded to ai & automatons, will be forced to pay an appropriate wage. I also suspect this is a gross overestimation of the human labor inputs that will be required by 2035.
This is a big misconception that right wingers and I guess now left wingers think will happen if we have a worker shortage by cutting off immigration.
Now I’m not advocating for mass immigration but having an appropriate method for bringing talented workers for industries in demand doesn’t hurt wages or the economy. But let’s say you’re right, let’s say since the 1980s we go with the no immigrants plan.
That means overnight about 8 trillion dollars in economic activity (housing, consumption, taxes, etc..) is gone. Another 800,000 kids leave the school districts with those property taxes disappearing. And the cost of labor (what you want) skyrockets. But is that a good thing?
We can look at countries where this already happened at, such as Switzerland (which has immigration but by western standards basically zero).
A Big Mac (Big Mac index) in Switzerland costs almost 10 US dollars in the country. A liter of milk around 5 US Dollars (sorry actually 5). If you want anything done to your house for contracting, the costs will be anywhere between 80-120 US Dollars an hour. Meaning if you want a patio, instead of paying 12,000 dollars like you might in America. It will cost you nearly 45,000 dollars.
Everything, and I mean everything will be expensive. This means that consumers have to literally LEAVE the country to buy groceries and sometimes even basic goods for a good deal.
They’re currently German and French towns by the border that are filled with Swiss consumers due to the market discrepancy between the borders.
And that’s just price. We haven’t even talked about the gdp, and towns disappearing. If we had little to no immigrants since the 1980s, literal towns and cities would be wiped off the map.
Almost half of Texas, California, New Mexico, and Arizona cities are majority foreign born or 1st generation immigrants.
You’ve just managed to depopulate 60% of the cities and towns in the southwest. Things would not get cheaper, not at all, industries would disappear and as such the tax base. On top of that, the average American would go from being 39 years of age to about 47.5.
You keep making my point. Retirees and rich people just want to prop up an economy that increasingly only benefits them at any cost. The American worker needs payroll inflation to outpace asset inflation so that their spending power becomes more meaningful against the assets of the investor class.
>A Big Mac (Big Mac index) in Switzerland costs almost 10 US dollars in the country.
In big part due to being made 100% from locally sourced beef, mostly small farms, best burger McDonalds makes.
>A liter of milk around 8 US Dollars.
From local mostly small farms.
>If you want anything done to your house for contracting, the costs will be anywhere between 80-120 US Dollars an hour. Meaning if you want a patio, instead of paying 12,000 dollars like you might in America. It will cost you nearly 45,000 dollars.
This will be a problem from white collars.
If blue collars want a patio, they build one for themselves.
Left populists live under the delusion that businesses secretly have the ability pay workers an arbitrarily large sum of money instead of their marginal revenue product of labor. The reality is immigrants don't depress wages, their losses won't be replaced, and the economy will just shrink.
kptknuckles | 7 hours ago
So the jobs being “stolen” were only here because immigrants were willing to work them. Without the cheap labor in social services, healthcare and elder care, people have to leave the workforce to care for their parents and grandparents. Cue lowering jobs and unemployment figures.
400,000 Venezuelan healthcare workers are losing their temporary status in October so buckle up.
Jkid | 5 hours ago
Employers are going to have to start paying more to get these jobs filled. Two or 3 times the minimum wage. There is no option. The days is going to come where cheap labor is unsustainable.
Strange-Maize9536 | 3 hours ago
That would be awesome when it happens. Less public assistance needed
NivianDeDanu | 2 hours ago
I think companies that dont pay enough in 40 hours to get off welfare should pay a tax that goes to support welfare... like Walmart.
Acceptable-Peace-69 | 2 hours ago
No, more public assistance needed to pay for all the things that used to be cheap.
Defiant_Freedom_249 | 52 minutes ago
Ummmm... Try to see the full circle.
sycamotree | 12 minutes ago
Nah. These companies are built on cheap labor, it's a part of their business model. Some of them can survive raising it but a lot will fail and get bailed one way or another.
Agile-View-8330 | 5 hours ago
Child care is another example. Families will be forced to pay more for daycare or nannie’s given fewer options available. As a result, more parents will be forced to drop out of the workforce to be a stay at home wife/husband.
judgejuddhirsch | 4 hours ago
Or God forbid pay state taxes into public school
VicisZan | 3 hours ago
Kids don’t go to school as soon as they are born.
PunctualDromedary | 3 hours ago
School ends at like 3:30. My job doesn't end until six.
imnewhere-gsh | 46 minutes ago
You know kids come home from school before normal jobs are close to ending right?
curiousengineer601 | 7 hours ago
Imagine the nursing homes have to pay better wages because they can’t exploit immigrant workers anymore.
Sounds like a win
AddanDeith | 6 hours ago
As the commenter below stated, they're doing that shady shit at staffed nursing homes that mainly employ citizens too. Nursing homes have major issues and market dynamics around wages are not the major issue.
CommentAccount001 | 7 hours ago
Lmao pay better wages? What fantasy land are you living in? No they will hire even less staff now, they will drug your parents so when they aren’t getting care they need they won’t complain.
They will clean them up when you occasionally come for a visit and just basically rush them to an earlier grave than needed. All while charging us even more for the privilege of their services and funneling as much money as possible to one person to make another billionaire.
Just google it, here is a story from May this year but this has already been happening for years and as more people age this isn’t going to get any better especially when regulations aren’t even being enforced.
https://www.statnews.com/2026/03/19/antipsychotic-drug-misuse-nursing-homes-hhs-oig-reports/
Hussar223 | 4 hours ago
this person gets it.
see the Ontario, Canada, COVID-19 fiasco where the military had to be called in to clean up the private old folks homes due to the atrocious conditions people were living/dying in.
goddamn_slutmuffin | 3 hours ago
As someone who used to do home healthcare and had to temp a few times in short staffed AL and nursing homes.... I've seen suites with shit caked on the wall, patients falling and being permanently disabled, etc because there just aren't enough workers to attend to them. It's pretty horrifying. These places would rather let their residents die in squalor and filth than pay for proper care/staffing coverage or livable wages. And they get away with it, so why bother changing?
I work in a completely different field now because of how damn depressing it is. I felt myself losing my soul by having to play a part in it, even when I put my job on the line and advocated to resident's family to get them out of there for their own well-being. And those places are expensive, you'll pay a ridiculous amount just to be medically neglected and die miserably.
061826heart | 2 hours ago
This world never acclimated to the longevities of humans. We didn’t design public finance, public healthcare, infrastructure, nothing, to accommodate the aged and infirm.
We wanted longer lifespans, and it’s a credit to humanity’s brilliance that we have achieved much longer lifespans in a short term period. We made medicine, therapy, and disease prevention a profit center, and we got longer lifespans as the result.
Now what?
krastem91 | 16 minutes ago
Most sensible comment in this thread …
curiousengineer601 | 6 hours ago
Seems like a regulation issue. So they do have the money to pay higher wages as you state they make the owners billions on nursing home profits.
Staffing levels are set by the states, seems like that could be enforced. As could monitoring the care.
Nothing in your post justifies keeping wages low by exploiting immigrants. Maybe higher paid workers with better job prospects would more vigorously advocate for patients.
Lower labor supply, higher wages. Pretty basic
SelectKangaroo | 5 hours ago
>seems like a regulation issue
idk what to tell you but Trump's pedo regime isn't going to improve this either
curiousengineer601 | 5 hours ago
I guess we should throw our hands in the air and give up. That’s how children handle difficult problems
SelectKangaroo | 5 hours ago
Pedocon rolls a 1 on the persuasion check, asked to log off the internet
Gswag6969 | 5 hours ago
Regulations? We don't need no stinking regulation. Just cuts into dividends
Strange-Maize9536 | 3 hours ago
💯
Foreign_Telephone349 | 5 hours ago
Or we just let peoples’ old parents die destitute because they can’t afford care. This is America.
curiousengineer601 | 5 hours ago
So much room for improvement in nursing homes.
Dying destitute means nothing if you are in a nursing facility. What exactly do you need the money for?
Honestly the future will have many more people opting for right to die instead of living out their last months demented and in diapers.
Apart-Badger9394 | 4 hours ago
Even if implemented perfect regulations today, it would still shock the system having a suddenly huge jump in labor costs. It needs to be a gradual change over time.
Those costs passed down to regular Americans, who will no longer be able to afford a nursing home. So one of the kids might have to quit their job to take care of the parents, and suffer financially themselves to do so.
I know you want to simplify it and make the answer easy, but it just isn’t
Acceptable-Peace-69 | an hour ago
California:
SB 525 Health Care Wage: Licensed home health agencies, or home care workers dispatched directly by a covered hospital system, follow accelerated schedules targeting a $25.00/hour maximum tier (with intermediate local minimums scaling up depending on the size and type of the parent health system). [1, 2, 3]
In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS): State-funded IHSS program rates vary by county, with many local jurisdictions pushing base pay toward a $20.00-per-hour floor. [1]
Facilities, medications, administration, food/prep, security, insurance… labor is just one piece. Most facilities can handle the increase without much cost passed on.
curiousengineer601 | 3 hours ago
Why does it need to be gradual? While it would be a shock economies have survived worse. The free market can handle it.
Government programs currently pay for 77% of all long term care patients, so some small minority might see an increase in costs. Of the 23% private pay some are rich enough to afford it, others would deplete their savings faster and go onto those government programs.
The same time labor costs increase other things like rent and auto insurance could decrease. Many secondary impacts I am probably missing.
Bottom line is your understanding of how this might play out is not accounting for who currently pays for the majority of long term care or the secondary impacts of a change like this
AlexandbroTheGreat | 5 hours ago
Probably simultaneously crying about how AI is taking all the jobs, too.
krastem91 | 7 hours ago
Sounds like a structural issue with the economy then …
Workforce and employers will eventually come to a nee equilibrium , and elderly care should predominantly fall upon family members , not an outsourced service . If one can afford it, great, but just like many of life’s other luxuries not everyone can .
Infinite_Dress_3312 | 6 hours ago
>elderly care should predominantly fall upon family members , not an outsourced service
Tell me youve never actually had to care for an elderly family member that requires around the clock skilled nursing attention without telling me
PatchyWhiskers | 6 hours ago
Im sure it’s a guy who thinks it’s “woman’s work”
krastem91 | 5 hours ago
Two actually … for about 2 and a half years each …
Tall-Control8992 | 6 hours ago
Sounds like?!! It is.
When COVID landed and caused every nation to properly shut down their borders, it forcibly repriced the value of labor by cutting off the unlimited supply of expendable bodies with no alternatives except to work for whatever is offered.
Many American workers saw more progress in wages in benefits in those 18 months than all of the previous fifty years combined. The fact that this progress fizzled out the moment the last admin blew the gates wide open was not lost on a lot of people.
INTPretty | 6 hours ago
So true
floridorito | 6 hours ago
>elderly care should predominantly fall upon family members , not an outsourced service
People should abandon their careers to perform a service 24/7, for free, for which they have no experience or training? No, that is definitely not the answer. And I hate to break the news to you that relative-caregivers are not above financial, emotional, and physical abuse, up to and including murder.
krastem91 | 5 hours ago
Okay, so what do you propose ?
We subsidise elderly care on a national or state level ? To what degree and at the expense of what other program …
The things you stated are all true; and are facts of life , some people are shitty, others are dealt a shitty hand …
Dazzling-Rub-8550 | 7 hours ago
Well I’m not sure the seniors and their families can afford to pay much more. So this may result in more seniors evicted from nursing facilities for wealthier seniors who can pay for it.
curiousengineer601 | 6 hours ago
Nursing homes charge 10k or more a month per patient. Are you sure management couldn’t find something in the budget to give a raise?
Nope, it’s better for ownership to bring in low cost labor. Then stick the public with the medical and infrastructure costs for their employees
Wurm42 | 5 hours ago
For-profit nursing homes should be illegal!
curiousengineer601 | 5 hours ago
Non profit corporations can still overpay senior executives. The issue is proper regulation
JitteryJoes1986 | 4 hours ago
Either way, this just means we need a more simplified, humane system.
We'll never get it.
joepez | 7 hours ago
If you believe most nursing home owners are going to raise wages you need to look into the industry. It is heavily run by consolidators and individuals who make their money by running as cheaply as possible while charging the most. Many operators would rather run a clinic into the ground then take a profit hit. As has happened many times.
Much like the restaurant, hotel and agriculture Americans aren’t willing to do the hard work for the basic wage. And people aren’t going to put up with the wage driven inflation for the basic prices as well. Our economy was built on low wage jobs supported by immigrants. Heck the head of the TX Restaurant Association just wrote an oped this week on how Congress should pass an immigrant work pass system for restaurants just like did for Ag because restaurants need cheap labor.
curiousengineer601 | 6 hours ago
This is an “economic “ subreddit. Staffing levels are fixed by law in many places. Somehow the business owners have convinced everyone supply and demand doesn’t work for the industries they happen to own. Strange.
Apparently it’s just fine exploiting immigrants so you can save $10 on a hotel stay or $5 on a meal.
We already subsidize low wage workers via social programs and medical care. Claiming Americans won’t do restaurant work is of course totally false ( I see them working every day) even more would do it for better pay.
Aloysiusakamud | 5 hours ago
Except they cut social programs as well. Minimum wage is not a living wage in most states. They couldn't even rent an apartment because you need to earn 3 times the rental cost.
curiousengineer601 | 5 hours ago
There is another impact of low skill immigration. Competition for housing, which hits our least paid the hardest
Petrichordates | 4 hours ago
Wow you magically took the opposite lesson there considering most of our housing is built by immigrant labor and they tend to live in multifamily households.
curiousengineer601 | 4 hours ago
Most of the housing is not built by immigrant workers. Plenty of citizens work the trades.
Immigrants work all kinds of jobs, it’s not like every single one is building housing. Unless they cross the border with a house, they compete for housing.
Plenty of citizens live in shared housing
iamjakub | 3 hours ago
Immigrants can be citizens bro.
JitteryJoes1986 | 4 hours ago
That's not necessarily 100% true.
Americans did low wage jobs for a long time, in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s, and 2010s. Illegal immigration become more prominent in the late 90s and early 2000s and into the 2010s.
Millennials, in their 20s, were working for cheap in the restaurant and hotel industries for a long time, until they upgraded to higher earning careers/roles. Gen Z/Gen Y doesn't want to do these jobs. The restaurant and hotel industries are just awful on this regard.
Agricultural is still heavy in immigration and I think that is where the culprit is.
The restaurant business model is dying and the head of the TX Restaurant Association knows this. He needs/wants injection of cheap labor for better margins. I say, let him die on his hill screaming alone.
PatchyWhiskers | 6 hours ago
Unlike elder nursing care we can all go without so many trips to a restaurant
Alone_Hunt1621 | 6 hours ago
Tell that to the medical bills.
anewbys83 | 7 hours ago
Ah, but they won't. They'll just cut service quality, like they already do. Grandma will have to wait all day to get her incontinence brief changed.
br_k_nt_eth | 6 hours ago
Ah so you’ve never actually dealt with this industry, huh. These places are all owned by venture capitalist creeps and monopolies now.
Sure though, the Epstein class and their boy in the White House will hop right on that lmao
Calm_Cockroach_5284 | 5 hours ago
People need to figure out if they want jobs with living wages or cheap exploitable labor.
curiousengineer601 | 5 hours ago
Well apparently the nursing home ownership wants cheap labor and no regulation on staffing levels.
And they absolutely will close if profits are only 700 million instead of a billion this year. Who would bother to work for 700 million?
Calm_Cockroach_5284 | 5 hours ago
Elder care industry, hospitality conglomerates, manufacturing concerns, logistics firms, big ag, every C-Suite loves to see an endless supply of desperate humans that can undercut US citizen and legal immigrant workers. After all they all use sub contractors that provide plausible deniability.
curiousengineer601 | 5 hours ago
Of course. Then in this economic subreddit people are claiming the laws of supply and demand don’t apply to industries that exploit immigrant workers. Its very confusing
Calm_Cockroach_5284 | 5 hours ago
That's why as the kid of a midwest and Appalachian region union coal and steel worker family it is very confusing to me how the DSA and progressives can claim to simultaneously be pro-labor and pro open border.
curiousengineer601 | 5 hours ago
Because the DSA and progressive left don’t understand economics. The working classes are the ones dealing with competition in the labor and housing markets. Apparently the DSA doesn’t care
Super_Mario_Luigi | 2 hours ago
It's crazy that the narrative around here is either "pay a living wage" or "pay illegal labor"
Stompnutz | 6 hours ago
Wait until you find out how the world actually works. But oh, you're an engineer-- seems like you may have the disease.
Xyrus2000 | 6 hours ago
That is NOT how privatized health care works. At all.
They do not raise wages. They cut staff. They don't raise wages. They cut equipment. These are private companies, and the only thing they care about is profit. They are more than happy to let grandma rot in a bed covered in her own excrement if it means they can get an extra 10 cents on the dollar.
From care services to medicine to insurance, the for-profit health industry is an engine of cruelty and callousness. It is a giant amoral profit extraction machine fueled by the pain, suffering, and death of the people.
Better wages? What a joke.
alilhillbilly | 6 hours ago
Yeah, it's basically the inheritance tax and nursing homes get 60% and the government gets nothing.
FrequentBox2148 | 5 hours ago
Oh sweet summer child.
buythedipnow | 6 hours ago
Not for the seniors draining their savings to just exist
Grimke42 | an hour ago
Yea that is not what is going to happen.
Petrichordates | 4 hours ago
Win for whom?
curiousengineer601 | 4 hours ago
American low wage health care workers
Moral-Relativity | an hour ago
They are businesses, where there's limited competition and customers are basically captives. You can almost smell the quality of service they deliver on average.
curiousengineer601 | an hour ago
There is something like 18,000 nursing homes in the USA. Certainly we could come up with ways to reward those who have the best care since 77% of the people use government funds to pay
Moral-Relativity | an hour ago
There are actually less beds and capacity compared to before covid: https://www.mcknights.com/news/us-nursing-home-capacity-declines-twice-as-steep-as-estimated-jama-study/. Demand of course grows as population ages and life expectancy rises.
Think about it, the government of course wants to pay as little as possible per patient since tax revenue isn't limitless, and the businesses operating nursing homes want to maximize profit.
Analysis has shown that not-for-profit nursing homes, about a quarter of the total, tend to have better staffing levels and care because there's no investor waiting to be paid. We need a lot more of them.
curiousengineer601 | an hour ago
I am not surprised. Covid went through the local nursing homes like a buzz saw, they lost a bunch of patients and continue to lose them every time the facilities have an outbreak.
It used to be some patients would pass away from the flu or pneumonia every year, now we have covid taking a few on top of that. The facility I visit has 1/4 shut down for lack of patients and staff, it seems the medically weaker are just smaller in number right now.
curiousengineer601 | an hour ago
The number in nursing homes has dropped since 2015
2015: 15,648 facilities; ~1.37 million residents.
2020: ~15,300 facilities; 1.32 million residents.
2021–2022: Sharp drop to 14,700 facilities; resident numbers bottomed near 1.10 million. (Covid deaths)
2025: 14,742 certified facilities; recovering slightly to 1.24 million residents.
I think there are more assisted living facilities taking some people who used to be in nursing homes. Along with memory care
thewimsey | 57 minutes ago
Reimbursement rates for home caregivers under Medicaid has increased quite a bit in the past 10 years, and especially post covid, which is going to account for some of this as well.
No-Permit-9331 | 5 hours ago
They won’t be paying better wages, people’s desperation will have them take those jobs for Pennie’s on the dollar AND as they start arresting people for crimes they may have thought of committing, will be fortunate enough to be enslaved in “the system” for free labor. Buckle up! They do not have good plans for us.
VacanyeraYT | 3 hours ago
Spot on. This highlights the hidden second-order effect on overall labor force participation rates When essential caregiving services (elderly care, childcare) suffer severe labor shortages, it forces high-productivity primary earners out of the active workforce to fill those care gaps at home. Mass deportations end up shrinking total economic output rather than freeing up jobs for domestic workers
SleepyHobo | 6 hours ago
>So the jobs being “stolen” were only here because immigrants were willing to work them by being exploited via substandard wages and inhospitable working conditions.
FTFY. If these employers were willing to pay a living wage, not understaff, and provide better working conditions then native citizens would be willing to work these jobs.
It's not like a healthcare job is like working on a farm or in a field, so that excuse doesn't apply here.
Calm_Cockroach_5284 | 5 hours ago
The horror, wealthy people with "In This House..." signs might have to start paying local living wage to their servants that are not afraid of ICE.
Oh no!
iamjakub | 2 hours ago
Did you read the article. These are not typical healthcare jobs. Elderly services is a nice way of saying taking care of confused incontinent people. So getting attacked by a confused grandpa with a shitty diaper. So yeah, a lot of people don’t want that healthcare jobs.
Magnolia05 | 4 hours ago
I work in HR Operations for a healthcare company, and we just had to let close to 20 Haitian RNs go. They were all great employees and it killed us to have to do it.
mattjf22 | an hour ago
>400,000 Venezuelan healthcare workers are losing their temporary status in October so buckle up
Fuck we can definitely expect another disease or virus a couple months later.
Tall-Control8992 | 6 hours ago
If it's more cost effective for people to quit their jobs to care for their parents or partners than to pay someone else to do it, then what's the issue? Those employers will need to raise wages or just deal with it.
theStaircaseProject | 6 hours ago
When family members quit jobs to provide unpaid care, it saves money on formal care costs, but it triggers major systemic issues. Workers lose wages, retirement savings, and career growth, while the economy faces labor shortages and strained public health systems that cannot simply absorb the lost productivity.
Also, let’s be real: retirement homes “just dealing with it” will affect the care their patients receive most of all.
PatchyWhiskers | 6 hours ago
If someone never has kids because their child-bearing years are taken up by nursing their elderly parents, congratulations, you just pushed the problem into the future 30 years.
Tall-Control8992 | 6 hours ago
How can wages be lost when the opportunity cost is well below the savings gained by providing care vs paying a facility?
Why would someone work when it costs them $2 in care bills for every dollar they earn? An example ratio, not actual figures. It's a net win for someone to quit such a job and provide care until a better paying opportunity comes up.
theStaircaseProject | 6 hours ago
If a worker earns $30,000 but care costs $50,000, quitting feels like a $20,000 win today. However, if that choice costs them $300,000 in lifetime retirement savings and prevents them from ever getting a promotion, the long-term net math becomes deeply negative.
DeathFlameStroke | 6 hours ago
It also has downstream effects because when people earn, they spend which employs other people. Undocumented workers also disproportionately pay tax toward services they do not use.
Leaving society, homeschooling and “living off the land” are all similar in that they a very romantic ideas, but it overall creates large systemic inefficiencies.
Our society, culture and technology tend toward interdependence and multiculturalism; this drive to nativistic autarky is antiamerican
Tall-Control8992 | 6 hours ago
Uhh, how exactly is someone going to save for retirement when their expenses already grossly exceed the income? Assuming 10% savings rate plus interest, you're still looking at well over fifty years to save $300k off a job paying 30k a year. And 10% savings is already a horribly unrealistic assumption unless that person makes decent money off the books.
theStaircaseProject | 5 hours ago
Because you’re assuming things like (a) that they’re unmarried and thus have no other household income and that (b) they’re earning $30,000 that whole ten years (or that its only ten years). This still gets at your shorter-term perspective rather than seeing the compounding long-term workforce benefits.
Seems like if what you’re saying holds water, high schoolers should just drop out to take care of their grandparents at home since the high schoolers aren’t going to be earning meaningful wages during that time anyways, right? Or does the long-term perspective favor keeping them in school so their ability to contribute is greater over time?
Tall-Control8992 | 4 hours ago
With the AI doing AI stuff to the entry level jobs that require formal education, this is an ugly but very relevant question. The jury is going to be out on this one for a few years at least. Though anyone who's got five or six digits of student debt should expect and prepare for the worst.
As for the other sources of income, I'm only going based off of what you presented in your previous reply. A dollar is still a dollar, and in that case one scenario is a net $20k negative, whereas reallocating labor by quitting an outside job is a net zero expense.
The fact that some industries will have to try a bit harder to get and retain workers is irrelevant to the individual in your scenario.
morbie5 | 7 hours ago
> 400,000 Venezuelan healthcare workers
According to the article it is 400,000 Venezuelan workers, not necessarily working in healthcare. Read the article before you come and preach to us.
Further, it isn't clear how many of them are actually workers, it is an assumption that they all have jobs. 400,000 Venezuelans may indeed be losing TPS, that doesn't mean they are all in the workforce tho
br_k_nt_eth | 6 hours ago
Yeah for sure that won’t hurt anything. Look at how well farms are doing after all!
God, the cope from y’all. Your vote fucked us. Congrats. Please do wear your hats in public so everyone can identify you moving forward.
morbie5 | 6 hours ago
Giving facts and correcting someone that was too lazy to even report what the article said correctly is now 'cope'? lolz
Alone_Hunt1621 | 6 hours ago
How do they eat, clothe, and shelter themselves if they aren’t working?
morbie5 | 6 hours ago
Most may in fact have jobs. But as to those that don't, maybe they live with a relative? Or maybe they engage in criminal activity? Who tf knows.
The fact is you don't need to work to have TPS, it isn't a status that is contingent on having a job. You can work but it is not a requirement. So to say or imply that x number of people that are on TPS are also all working is flat out wrong.
At best the article is being lazy with wording, at worst it is being deliberately misleading
Alone_Hunt1621 | 4 hours ago
So some of these people could be children?
morbie5 | 4 hours ago
Some of them almost certainly are children
anewbys83 | 7 hours ago
Gee! If only someone had seen this coming. Like, where were all the policy experts and economists? Oh yeah, they were there pointing out this wold fail the whole time! This is the problem when expertise is vilified and people who know nothing about these issues pontificate and get elected. It's almost like they shouldn't have done this with simultaneous expectations derived from stories that Americans were just waiting in the wings for these jobs.
Turbulent_Target_784 | 7 hours ago
Oh we don’t listen to experts in American anymore. We just listen to “influencers”.
throwaway43234235234 | 4 hours ago
Of course it is. Those companies weren't willing to pay actual wages sto survive so they just closed up shop or stopped hiring. Now we have tons to do and prices are through the roof because good wages aren't affordable by most small businesses or normal person until the corporate profiteering and monopolies stops which at this pace is never going to happen.
As long as every small business is squeezed out of existence and costs of basic materials and foods are skyrocketing theres no extra money to create jobs or increase pay. Its easier to just markup doritoes to 7$ a bag.
Its not raising quality of life or opportunity for anyone. Its just making us all as poor as the immigrants were the day they arrived.
whiskey_priest_fell | 4 hours ago
NGL, this does sound like eventually it creates a situation where businesses will have to raise wages to hire staff or go under.
If wages are artificially lowered due to undocumented labor supply then Americans will benefit in wages when that supply leaves. To some extent this is the equivalent (at the macro) of a union worked on strike (legal American worker who wont work due to too low of wages) whose scab just got deported so the business has to decide to pay better wages to the union worker or go out of business.
Tall-Control8992 | 3 hours ago
Really, the same concept where almost all businesses will opt for mass firings rather than across the board wage cuts when the business is slow and payroll has to come down.
So_HauserAspen | an hour ago
Homeless people will work for a lower wage and businesses don't care about quality
CombinationSilent877 | 2 hours ago
It definitely can, but it will raise prices for everyone else. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but we’ll have to wait and see how this all shakes out.
-mudflaps- | an hour ago
Sure but they McDonald's pays $23ph in other countries and the prices are the same, labor costs are about 20% of their total operating costs
chalkrow | 40 minutes ago
And then those wages (costs) get passed on to the consumer directly which makes a lot of services unaffordable/pricier.
Fieos | 6 hours ago
We have plenty of domestic and legal labor to meet demand without illegal immigration. What we have is an unwillingness of employers to pay appropriate wages.
Calm_Cockroach_5284 | 5 hours ago
Just see Bernie Sanders' speeches from before 2025.
tentwelveeight | 4 hours ago
Just going to leave this here. https://www.americanprogress.org/article/alabamas-immigration-disaster
ContributionBig5976 | 6 hours ago
There are 7 million people on the unemployment roles, if you deport 10 million illegals and push out another 20 million legal immigrants where does the other 23 million come from?
Fieos | 6 hours ago
Reformed legal immigration, seasonal worker immigration, etc. Why aren't those people adding value to their country of origin?
ContributionBig5976 | 5 hours ago
Because America can pay more for that value.
Their countries of origins can't attract immigrants like America can, which is why they have higher unemployment and lower wages.
Since its founding America has imported workers to build it's economy and every level, creating economic growth, higher wages and more employment for Americans who were born here.
Fieos | 5 hours ago
Nice way to lower the floor of labor costs and maximize profits. Unethical as hell too
iamjakub | 2 hours ago
No one said America was built ethically. That would be an asinine statement. The richest man in the US was its first president and made his money on stolen land speculation and slave labor. America is built by and for the rich and has been since day one.
Fieos | 2 hours ago
So you are good with perpetuating it?
iamjakub | 2 hours ago
Did I say that? I don’t believe in American Exceptionalism. But like I replied in a different comment, some prices have a ceiling at which they can no longer be sustained. If it costs $30 to pick a pint of strawberries, then that job just goes away so you have to be ok with fewer jobs overall.
Fieos | an hour ago
So you are good with slave labor or a lower caste for strawberries?
No-Ad8127 | 2 hours ago
Got any ideas that people will actually go with?
ContributionBig5976 | 10 minutes ago
Are there any countries with less immigration and higher wages?
Moral-Relativity | an hour ago
Maybe you meant in general, but the healthcare workers the article is talking about are not here illegally. It's just that the government has suddenly decided to remove their legal status.
Fact is US taxpayers cannot afford to fund enough nursing facilities on the wage Americans expect for these demanding and thankless jobs. On average each US citizen (including children) already owes foreign debt holders $27k, not even counting the debt we owe other Americans.
Tintoverde | 5 hours ago
The problem is the jobs the illegal immigrants are doing are VERY hard. Consider working outside in Texas heat, which most US citizens and legal immigrants will not do. There are other examples like restaurants.
Fieos | 5 hours ago
So they should do hard jobs at slave wages so you can have cheaper stuff or some company can have higher profits?
Yoboicharly97 | 5 hours ago
That’s USA to you
iamjakub | 2 hours ago
The first imported workers were slaves but once outlawed it just became immigrants. America was built by slaves/immigrants and cheap labor and funded by the rich for the rich. Whether it was the Chinese building the economic driver of the 19th century, or the Hispanics farming the southwest, African Americans in the south and good old fashioned European refugees for the northeast in various waves, the US was built by immigration whether forced, legal, or illegal.
Yoboicharly97 | 2 hours ago
Something no one mentions is most of those immigrants flourish and build a beautiful life in America called the American dream while being able to support their family back home. They trying so hard to kill the American dream
iamjakub | 2 hours ago
The American dream is a carrot on a stick.
Yoboicharly97 | 2 hours ago
I’m living it so I’d say otherwise. Immigrant from Mexico who has a good career in USA and just baught my 5 bedroom home in SoCal in February. It’s still alive just harder to reach
iamjakub | an hour ago
If one in a million hit the lottery it doesn’t make it the norm.
iamjakub | an hour ago
Also, I hope I did not send a message of anti immigration. I know many foreign born people doing well. I am saying the dream is bait to induce immigration.
Fieos | an hour ago
Genuinely happy for you
Tintoverde | 2 hours ago
No. I am trying to point to us keyboard warriors there is no easy fix.
shiningdickhalloran | 4 hours ago
Restaurants are a very different ballgame from Texas summer heat in the fields, roofing and the like. It's tiny margins killing restaurant wages.
DingbattheGreat | 5 hours ago
No, that isn’t the problem.
Hussar223 | 4 hours ago
cool. so where is that spirit of american entrepreneurial innovation to make these jobs less shit, compensated adequately and using technology to make them easier.
any idiot can rely on cheap/slave labor from immigrants. time to get innovating
Tintoverde | 3 hours ago
Sigh
iamjakub | 2 hours ago
A lot of these innovations come from immigrant Americans. Humans should not be property of any state rather the state is the property of humans. Where you are born should not be more important than what you can contribute and provide and create for the society you live in.
Tall-Control8992 | 6 hours ago
Shh, livable wages are cryptonite for service economies.
daylily | 7 hours ago
“Even as some employers lose those workers, we’re not going to be able to afford to replace them at the wages necessary,” Swonk warned.
So wages for new employees, legal workers, should go up.
303Carpenter | 7 hours ago
The absolute horror that people might be able to make more money
tetrisoutlet | 6 hours ago
The absolute horror that we dont have 2nd class citizens with no legal protections for their employment
Calm_Cockroach_5284 | 5 hours ago
Truly the end of the world. Damn that Bernie Sanders with his xenophonic talk about illegals depressing wages and stuff.
iamjakub | 2 hours ago
As long as we can all agree that some businesses will just not be able to exist if they are paying a livable wage and healthcare costs. There will be fewer but better paying jobs overall but we could easily end up with fewer overall jobs and less economic growth. I am not arguing those are good or bad, I’m just saying that is a likely possibility. You can see it happening to fast food now. McDonald’s would be twice its current already inflated costs. When that McDonalds closes it is a franchise, so likely a local owner and all the low and medium wage workers are out of a job. I don’t care if McDonald’s ceases to exist but it is just one example of a business that probably is not sustainable with livable wage costs.
303Carpenter | an hour ago
That's a lot of words to say working class and blue collar people need to sacrifice their livelyhoods, health and futures for everyone else
iamjakub | an hour ago
Nope. A lot of words to say some business models are built on low wages so an increase will get rid of some. I did not make any suggestions.
303Carpenter | an hour ago
I wasn't calling for any living wage legislation I just don't think American workers should have to compete against third world labor rates
Calm_Cockroach_5284 | 5 hours ago
Right? Everyone likes to protest and argue for living wage. Now they want illegal alien labor that's easy to exploit? Okay.
Z0idberg_MD | 6 hours ago
No, labor markets will crumble. The “economics” of certain sectors will change.
Let me rephrase this, let’s say you are just able to meet the wage demands of elder care. Now the costs of these services increase dramatically. If you can’t afford it, there is no “just pay someone more to do it” scenario.
That’s something people don’t consider.
Like fruit picking. No one is going to pay much buyer prices for fruit. They’ll cut back and the industry as a whole will suffer.
At the end of the day, even if you argue “people should be paid more, if you don’t have a plan that address all sides of the economic issues, you end up with a lose-lose.
iamjakub | 2 hours ago
Exactly, some prices have a ceiling. No one is happy with $30 per pint strawberries. Strawberries just disappear or become another product exclusively for the rich.
Tall-Control8992 | 6 minutes ago
Has anyone ever died from an acute strawberry deficiency? If a handful of luxury items and luxury services get repriced, that's just acceptable losses.
grimtree | 4 minutes ago
Or they'll just import instead of distributing pricier local produce. Something that can't be done for healthcare services.
br_k_nt_eth | 6 hours ago
Yeah for sure. Venture capitalists are absolutely known for increasing wages and not passing on costs to the customers they bleed dry.
Fieos | 6 hours ago
Your solution to the problem is illegal/slave labor? Are you the venture capitalist?
Z0idberg_MD | 6 hours ago
If the outcome is worse for everyone, even the low-wage immigrant workers, what is the argument here? You basically chopped the legs out of someone that chose to come here and work in this system for the chance at a better life for their family in the next generation, raised prices on essential goods and services, people can afford less of them, and those industries suffer, all without seeing a meaningful increase in wages or job growth.
It’s simple when you make it simple. But it’s not simple. There is a reason why no reputable economist ever supported that kind of policy. Everyone suffers. No one wins.
Fieos | 5 hours ago
[ Removed by Reddit ]
br_k_nt_eth | 6 hours ago
My friend, you must learn class consciousness and think bigger and better, not just for yourself but for all of us. The rich are never, ever going to magically change their hearts. They have way more legislative and legal loopholes than you do, and they are wealth hoarders. They have a sickness.
Check out America’s Labor Rights Movement and the push into the Progressive Era. It’s been a century now. We’re overdue.
Tall-Control8992 | 3 hours ago
Nobody expects the folks on the better end of the income distribution to budge out of goodness of heart. Which is why a good number of Americans feel that a much more feasible way to fix the issue is by forcibly reducing the labor supply through additional immigration enforcement.
Fieos | 6 hours ago
I'll take my economic background and education over yours, but thanks.
br_k_nt_eth | 6 hours ago
If all it’s done is lead you to “the only other possibility for fixing depressed ages and exploitation is slavery,” you’re doing yourself no favors.
Fieos | 6 hours ago
Run for office and get this all sorted out for us then. Thanks in advance.
br_k_nt_eth | 6 hours ago
Working on it. You volunteering during the midterms? Now’s the time to link up to someone. You need help finding a candidate or cause in your state?
Lazar76 | 5 hours ago
good shit for taking action
Fieos | 6 hours ago
Let us know when you're done.
br_k_nt_eth | 6 hours ago
You didn’t answer my question. You are getting active and involved in your community for the midterms so we can unfuck this, right?
Right?
Retired-Yam8988 | 5 hours ago
We don’t need no experts. Fearless leader is a genius who knows all and has bestowed wisdom of all the ages into his amazing orange noggin that is festooned with a golden mane of silken splendor
Platos-ghosts | 6 hours ago
I’m ok with the Rich and UMC paying more for local labor. Maybe their quality of life goes down, but the working class employees should see an overall improvement. Less income inequality is a good thing!
Tintoverde | 5 hours ago
Well it costs higher for every one.
Calm_Cockroach_5284 | 5 hours ago
Limousine liberals hate paying more for their working class neighbors to have good paying jobs.
tmbgisrealcool | an hour ago
Importing immigrant workers as "cheap labor" not only hurts the American worker but also exploits immigrants. Companies need to cut their profit margins and pay American workers livable wages. It's that simple.
Sufficient-Silver938 | 2 hours ago
I don’t know how some people can think the only people willing to work for dirt cheap in our country is stealing their jobs and driving up prices. It can only be racism idk
whogotthekeys2mybima | 3 hours ago
This is just a puzzle piece of the culling of the herd of humans for a small corporatocracy. It’s the Las Vegas syndrome. Get more revenue from very rich few than little revenue from many. Humans are yesterday’s news. You don’t need workers to take care of elderly when it’s good that people lose jobs to take care of their elderly. Then eventually the jobless people will lose income, fall further into poverty and they can catalyze the deaths of those human lives. Then we can have the Epstein class, AI infrastructure doing what humans used to and there won’t be any pesky humans. Now we just need Gen Z to become electricians and get it done so. Get in the trades!
No-Distribution-6841 | 3 hours ago
Lots of people have been laid off, I hope everyone that currently has not had much luck getting stable employment do get those jobs so they can get back on their feet.
MichaelHawk008 | 4 hours ago
Wages will go up in the affected industries, then wages will go up in the industries that lose workers to these fields, and so on.
Having an unlimited supply of cheap workers isn’t good for the average American.
ProfessorSmoker | 7 hours ago
Nice try Billionaires.
Deporting workers shrinks the economy? You don't say.
Oh well, the economy can shrink for awhile. The USA has 350 Million people, which is plenty of people.
Thanks though top economist.
JustTaxLandbro | 7 hours ago
40% of Americans don’t work.
About 40 million Americans will enter retirement by 2035. Only to be replaced by about 25 million Americans. Leaving a 15 million gap.
Estimates by the us government
4.5 million retirements every year
3.1 million high school graduates every year (or turning 18).
morbie5 | 7 hours ago
> Leaving a 15 million gap.
AI says 'hi'
JustTaxLandbro | 7 hours ago
It’s a pretty big gamble to risk your entire economy on AI backfilling roles.
morbie5 | 7 hours ago
I didn't say I'm happy about it. It is just what is going to happen imo
ProfessorSmoker | 7 hours ago
Cha-ching my guy. Don't threaten me with a good time.
This is why the jobs that are here, which cannot be shipped overseas nor offloaded to ai & automatons, will be forced to pay an appropriate wage. I also suspect this is a gross overestimation of the human labor inputs that will be required by 2035.
JustTaxLandbro | 7 hours ago
This is a big misconception that right wingers and I guess now left wingers think will happen if we have a worker shortage by cutting off immigration.
Now I’m not advocating for mass immigration but having an appropriate method for bringing talented workers for industries in demand doesn’t hurt wages or the economy. But let’s say you’re right, let’s say since the 1980s we go with the no immigrants plan.
That means overnight about 8 trillion dollars in economic activity (housing, consumption, taxes, etc..) is gone. Another 800,000 kids leave the school districts with those property taxes disappearing. And the cost of labor (what you want) skyrockets. But is that a good thing?
We can look at countries where this already happened at, such as Switzerland (which has immigration but by western standards basically zero).
A Big Mac (Big Mac index) in Switzerland costs almost 10 US dollars in the country. A liter of milk around 5 US Dollars (sorry actually 5). If you want anything done to your house for contracting, the costs will be anywhere between 80-120 US Dollars an hour. Meaning if you want a patio, instead of paying 12,000 dollars like you might in America. It will cost you nearly 45,000 dollars.
Everything, and I mean everything will be expensive. This means that consumers have to literally LEAVE the country to buy groceries and sometimes even basic goods for a good deal.
They’re currently German and French towns by the border that are filled with Swiss consumers due to the market discrepancy between the borders.
And that’s just price. We haven’t even talked about the gdp, and towns disappearing. If we had little to no immigrants since the 1980s, literal towns and cities would be wiped off the map.
Almost half of Texas, California, New Mexico, and Arizona cities are majority foreign born or 1st generation immigrants.
You’ve just managed to depopulate 60% of the cities and towns in the southwest. Things would not get cheaper, not at all, industries would disappear and as such the tax base. On top of that, the average American would go from being 39 years of age to about 47.5.
ProfessorSmoker | 6 hours ago
Yeah. You guys gotta pay huh?
You keep making my point. Retirees and rich people just want to prop up an economy that increasingly only benefits them at any cost. The American worker needs payroll inflation to outpace asset inflation so that their spending power becomes more meaningful against the assets of the investor class.
PunkPirate56364 | 6 hours ago
>A Big Mac (Big Mac index) in Switzerland costs almost 10 US dollars in the country.
In big part due to being made 100% from locally sourced beef, mostly small farms, best burger McDonalds makes.
>A liter of milk around 8 US Dollars.
From local mostly small farms.
>If you want anything done to your house for contracting, the costs will be anywhere between 80-120 US Dollars an hour. Meaning if you want a patio, instead of paying 12,000 dollars like you might in America. It will cost you nearly 45,000 dollars.
This will be a problem from white collars.
If blue collars want a patio, they build one for themselves.
Sorryallthetime | 7 hours ago
A shrinking economy translates into lower economic activity which translates into a lower standard of living.
If you're willing to bear that - fantastic. The entire planet can't enjoy a profligate western lifestyle so let's lower the bar. It's good for planet.
Stay green baby.
ProfessorSmoker | 7 hours ago
Exactly, which is also why we also have to take control of the worlds oil supply, to save everybody. This guy gets it.
N7day | 7 hours ago
Lunacy
feral401k9 | 5 hours ago
Left populists live under the delusion that businesses secretly have the ability pay workers an arbitrarily large sum of money instead of their marginal revenue product of labor. The reality is immigrants don't depress wages, their losses won't be replaced, and the economy will just shrink.