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Comment by throwaway13337 | Hacker News Reader

I guess they'll have to start paying them more. Maybe it will approach a decent living wage?

What a tragedy.

They won't pay them more because they're losing their jobs and leaving the country. They're going to earn less in Mexico. Just because they're outside the country doesn't mean they're not human beings anymore.

By the same token, you could say "let's fire all curly haired people". Then we'll see wages rise for the remaining workers as demand meets supply and straight haired people get a good high wage. Sure, that'll happen, but that doesn't make it right or good.

It's good for those in the US obtaining those jobs and right for the country from a nationalist perspective.

As a humanist you may not like that. As an American, I believe that's right. Stop dragging the wage base down because it's "humanitarian" for immigrants. It's not. It's just enabling abusive labor practices.

Mexico's wages will rise just the same as China's as they industrialize.

What makes Americans more deserving than Mexicans? Do Americans contribute something during their childhood which is repayed as wages in adulthood? Or is it the same factor that makes whites more deserving than blacks - i.e. membership of the same in-group?

Citizenship is membership. If you don't like it, start your own country. But that's how the current system works.

I don't care the color of your skin, I expect you to follow the same rules everyone does to apply for citizenship.

The question is which rules should those be.

The rules created by a democratic process of course. As voted on by the citizens of a country.

That's how sovereignty works. Or are you advocating for removal of sovereignty for the economic benefit of citizens of other countries because "that's more moral"? Hardly.

Yes. And as citizens (of various countries), that's what we're arguing. Just because citizens set the rules doesn't mean whatever they decide is necessarily just.

EDIT: In reply to your edit, I have no idea why you'd bring up "removal of sovereignty". I don't see anyone here even hinting at that.

I don't know precisely what "removal of sovereignty" means, but I suspect it means that undocumented immigrants undermine USA laws, by routinely breaking them. Even from the outside that seems different than debating (and voting) what the laws should be... One suspects you'd be more sensitive to this difference if the laws in question were those that you strongly support.

The questioning of my support of sovereignty came in reply to my post saying the question is what the laws/rules should be. If the sovereignty worry is about illegal immigration, then the reply makes no sense in the context of my post.

Citizens in the US voted for Jim Crow and it was only overturned via non-democratic means. Were these laws moral at the time?

To take a modern example, will Maharashtra's proposed law against Biharis driving autos be moral if it has popular support? (Background: Marathi nationalists have - this year - proposed Jim Crow type laws against non Marathis driving taxis/auto rickshaws.)

The Jim Crow laws were most certainly overturned through democratic means, namely the 1964 Civil Rights Act (an act of the elected legislature) invoking the Commerce Clause (part of the Constitution) and 1965 Voting Rights Act. If you mean they were not repealed through by referendum or plebiscite, that is true, but neither were they enacted through direct voting. This is the case with most laws in the US.

I'm guessing by 'non-democratic' means, he was referring to Brown v. Board of Education (1954).

I actually misremembered which was ended by law and which by judicial fiat. Regardless, the moral question of whether they were justified when democratically popular remains.

You can debate what the rules "should be" but in the mean time it would be nice if people obey the rules that are currently in place.

If you're waiting for people to stop breaking the law altogether to make reforms, you'll never reform a law in your life. Sounds like an excuse to do nothing.

That sounds like you're advocating civil disobedience. But what exactly are illegal immigrants willing to work in shitty conditions, below minimum wage, without paying taxes fighting for?

No, please re-read my post, I meant what I wrote and nothing else.

Whatever the law, some people will always be breaking it. Should we wait for murders to stop happening before we reform the laws regarding it? We'd still have crucifixions and stonings! That doesn't mean one supports murders, just that it's not a justification for inaction.

I'm not waiting for anyone to stop breaking the law, I'm waiting for someone to start enforcing the law. I'm not sure if I'm arguing or agreeing ;-)

Which rules did you follow in order to attain membership?

Life is not fair, nor a meritocracy. I'd love U.K. Or Canadian citizenship. Even as a US citizen, I need to get in line like everyone else.

Mexico's wages will rise just the same as China's as they industrialize.

Mexico is already industrialized. Also, the same nationalist position that opposes immigration also supports erecting trade barriers that prevent goods manufactured abroad from being competitive.

I support erecting trade barriers to prioritize local industry over consumer excess. Lower prices don't help if you have large swaths of the rust belt in poverty.

Edit: you industrialize with domestic demand. That's not a sham. That's economic stability.

Therefore your argument that they'll just industrialize like China is revealed to be a sham, because that was reliant on a fairly open market.

The goods manufactured abroad are extremely competitive because the rules are different in other countries. Lax environmental standards, lower wages, inferior working conditions and benefits. So people fought for better conditions in the US and business simply decide it's cheaper to move outside the country than comply. When all other conditions are essentially equal then we can talk about "free trade" until then there is no such thing and trade barriers are not a bad thing. Taking care of others is a noble thing, but a nation needs to take care of its own first.

You should have posted that reply to toomuchtodo, who was the one saying that Mexico should be emulating China, who's dependent on the lack of those trade barriers.

"As they industrialize"? Mexico's already a major industrial economy. It's not in the top tier of nations but at about US$16500 its per capital GDP is still above China's, although probably not for much longer. Unfortunately its growth rate has been sluggish like a mature economy which is part of the reason Mexicans keep looking northward for better employment. There's nothing on the horizon that would make them suddenly enter a rapid growth rate. To the contrary, returning expats will no longer be sending remittances from the US, hurting Mexico's national income, and may flood the labor market, sending wages spiraling.

Plus, some of the Americans who take over Mexican jobs may not have them for long. If businesses can no longer obtain low cost labor within the country, then where possible, producers will relocate south of the border, or elsewhere, or increase mechanization efforts to decrease their costs. And where not possible, they may be priced out of the international market as the production cost of their goods shoots up.

Dragging the wages down benefits everybody who doesn't work at that company.

And by paying US workers the wages won't be leaving the US either.

The same argument could be made to refuse hiring people from other states, cities, or even neighborhoods.

It could, yes, and has been.

See Walmart vs local economies.

The problem with small business is that the way the economy is set up most of the money is available at the medium to big business side of things. Small business does not have the capital to pay employees properly. So really it should not exist in the way the economy is structured. So it won't exist if you take cheap labour out of the picture. It's not as if small business robber barons are making bank on the back of poor workers. They are not. They are barely surviving.

Yes small businesses employ a lot of low skill labor and therefore are hit in the short term the hardest with a lack of labor surplus.

In the long term, this is necessary for wages to rise. When all restaurants have to compete for a diminishing labor pool, they'll have have to raise their prices to pay people decently.

This is a good thing.

Beyond this specific case, the problem is the unfair competition for human resources between small and big companies. For example, how can you compete with Google for a software engineer? The unfair part is that Google can establish a company in Ireland to avoid taxes while you can barely organize your taxes.

I am not saying there are no ways to compete (e.g. give more equity, sell a startup dream) but that the inequalities are not only between the rich and poor gap, they are present in companies too.

It's not just that. It's that big business can have economies of scale which allows it to push out each unit at a cheaper price point. This then trains consumers to want things at certain price points which then makes it difficult or impossible to compete with larger companies. Further it is much easier for larger business to get investor money and debt financing, so if they want to expand it's much easier for them to do so than for small business. Also for B2B it's again much easier for big business because most of the spending done in the economy is by big business, and they don't care that much about price as consumers and can afford a lot more because they have lots saved up. So there are many factors that favor big business and shut out the little guy who is doing it because he wants more autonomy in his life.

a building contractor who "turned down 20 mil" is not a mom and pop store

So how about letting the signalling that money and pricing is supposed to do actually take place instead of suppressing it?

If there is such a problem - and I agree with you that there is - then something should be done about the cause instead of the symptom. Which won't happen if the symptom is successfully suppressed.

So to me the question is, let their be the pain that is meant to be there (signal!) so that something can change, or try to avoid the long-overdue correction. What I see in the real world is different in what I learned in economics 101 in that the signal function of prices is suppressed instead of used as far as the labor market is concerned - but only in one direction ("wages are getting too high!").

I think trying to avoid pain at all cost is similar to when people have a condition that lets them feel no pain. It sounds great but actually leads to self-destruction. Let the prices (wages) rise! Yes it will lead to small businesses having to give up. Either they are not actually needed, or society as a whole undervalues (and underpays) the role of those businesses. Or a mix of the two. Time to find out?

If that sounds like I'm for restricting immigration, I'm actually for much more legal(!) immigration. The problem with illegal immigration is that people are forced to subsist in the shadows. I think this distorts the (low end but similarly for H1 jobs) labor market far more (towards slave conditions and low wages) than the same amount of legal immigration would do, which would give immigrants a perspective and a lot more choices while having to endure a lot less anxiety.

> Small business does not have the capital to pay employees properly. So really it should not exist in the way the economy is structured. So it won't exist if you take cheap labour out of the picture.

If the result is people renovating their houses left often or building smaller houses in general, then maybe it's a fair price to pay for more social cohesion?

and GASP maybe start training more apprentices

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