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Comment by tossaccount123 | Hacker News Reader

labor doesn't exist in vacuum either, low skill immigration lowers wages up the chain. In the past people could earn a good living right out of high school. Now more people have to take out loans, go to college, and then there's more people competing for those "high-skill" jobs, plus a mountain of debt on their backs

I know older people who made $30/hr out of high school at local factories with full benefits thanks to unions in the 70s and 80s. Illegal immigration was used to break those unions and today those jobs pay $10-15/hr with no benefits

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Except that you don't need illegal immigration to reduce labour costs since you can just outsource work overseas or have legal immigrants do the work.

The biggest reason why wages have gone down has been the decline in union membership since it is only through collective bargaining that you can force wage rises.

>it is only through collective bargaining that you can force wage rises.

Or when demand for labor outstrips supply, as in tech (for the moment).

So what was it that made unions in these now low-paying jobs vanish? What enabled companies to say "we're going to drastically drop wages" and made unions unviable? How did America, seemingly within the span of years, end up with a tremendous number of jobs that "no American wanted to do"--jobs that Americans did and earned living wages for, for many, many years?

>decline in union membership since it is only through collective bargaining

because illegal immigration destroys any negotiating power of unions. You can't go on strike when there are millions of illegals that will take that job

You can’t force wage rises across an economy. There’s only so much productivity to go round, only 100% of the pie. Higher wages for unionised industries come at the price of higher prices for those who consume the products of those industries.

On a less theoretical point the US and Switzerland both have much lower unionisation than comparable countries and are much richer. Canada, France, Germany, Italy, none look good compared to their richer, more unionised neighbour.

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