If there was ever an argument for a living wage, you just made it. Our economy is structured on unfettered consumption that is wasteful and promotes climate change. |
DP What's racist about a living wage? |
So why don’t you give us the answer if it is so clear? |
I'm not speaking for the PP but the answer is obvious. Those jobs can be filled by immigrants who are vetted and pre-authorrized to come to the US to work. This would be a safer and more appropriate 21st century way of utilizing an immigration process to maintain an adequate workforce. Immigration reform. |
OP here. The question was addressed to MAGA because MAGA is not interested in immigration reform. Or really anything that I can discern. That’s why I asked the question. It’s a genuine one. For example. Trump is not using ICE to bully states and employers to use e-verify. Why not? If the point is to make sure everyone working here is doing so legally, why not send ICE in to check paperwork? Trump cut minimum wage requirements for people working on federal contracts. How does that contribute to “living wages” for Americans? But MAGA is looking for a huge shift to the economy. So fine. How will it happen? What’s the plan? |
Trump and MAGA are a short term problem who will die out very soon. The need for Immigration reform has been an unaddressed issue for decades. If you want serious conversation, don't pose serious questions to MAGA idiots. Clinton, Bush and Obama all had similar visions for more appropriate immigration policies specific to economic immigrants crossing our southern border but Congress has never passed meaningful long term reform. Trump and Biden made a complete mess of the issue and here we are. |
Biden was a feather in the wind politician with no real thoughts of his own. Trump is a joke. Obama, Clinton, and Bush had similar immigration reform ideas. Congress sucks. |
First they will get the poor brown people out...eventually it will be the poor whites who voted for their dictator and they will be shocked that he turned on them. Spoiler alert he hates his base. He is here to help the wealthy become wealthier-the big beautiful grift I mean bill. |
Meatpacking used to be a stable, middle-class union job, with multiple generations of families working at the same plant. In 1960, the industry was 95% unionized, paying wages that were comparable to those in the auto and steel industries. Meatpacking was skilled labor. A meatpacker was trained like an old-fashioned butcher to take an animal from slaughter to final cuts. In the 1960s, a company called IBP (Iowa Beef Packers) figured out that you didn't need skilled labor if you didn't care about your workers. Instead of workers doing a variety of jobs, IBP had workers do one cut all day long, maybe separate the hind quarter from the carcass, or slice a single cut of steak. Meatpacking wages across the industry stayed high through the early 1980s, but then started to fall, as more companies adopted the IBP method. After all, anyone could be trained to do a single cut. By the mid-80s, wages had plunged and unions were disappearing. It was a race to the bottom and meatpacking was quickly becoming the worst job in America. One reason it was now so awful, was that the IBP method resulted in a huge rise in repetitive stress injuries and debilitating knife cuts caused by inattention and fatigue. Doing one cut all day long on a speeding factory line was good for corporate profits but disastrously bad for actual humans. Today, Places like Tyson Chicken and Smithfield Ham need an endless supply of 3rd world immigrants to keep wages low and unions busted, but also because it's a job that destroys the human body and spirit. Even if you're not injured, the work is so grueling that most immigrants can only do it for a couple of years before they move on. That's why you'll see that the ethnic composition of rural meatpacking towns goes through successive waves of foreigners-- Mexicans, Somalis, Sudanese, Guatemalans, Haitians-- as each group gets brought in and burned out, while management goes looking for another group of suckers. Shutting down the immigration pipeline and deporting the illegals will go a long way to restoring the balance between workers and corporations. Likewise, we need to go back to a system with lots of small-scale regional meat processors staffed by skilled workers, something that will require breaking up these abusive corporations and overhauling the USDA inspection program. Yes, prices of meat will certainly rise, but you already shouldn't be eating factory-farmed meat and you shouldn't be patronizing corporations that are actively wrecking America. |
its sarcasm Democrats always respond with RACIST whenever any limit on immigration is proposed. |
Is anyone going to answer this? Can you be passionate about a living wage but justify illegal immigration with the premise that we need them to take bad, low paying jobs with no benefits or protections? |
You answered the question. It's fairly plausible much of what is done with cheap labor will be automated. Even supermarkets today are run with far fewer staff than in the past. You may not like Vance but he had a point when he said the great American housing boom of the 60s was all with legal labor. Cheap labor creates need for cheap labor. When labor becomes much more expensive, the need suddenly changes. |
Automation. That is indeed plausible. We'll still need legal immigrants to fill some of the void. |
the silicon valley boom was created without H1Bs and cheap guest workers. |