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Comment by ericmay | Hacker News Reader

Eh I don’t think so. If it comes to that Americans will just stop letting people come here to work and dismantle these programs. It’s actually something that has been unifying the Sanders/AOC and Trump camps for some time. I don’t know if he has but if not I don’t see Biden really changing much in terms of opening up/increasing H1B visas or any others in the foreseeable future. Maybe more refugees or asylum seekers though.

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The current state of affairs is that we have a labor shortage. The country needs more and more service workers. Tech is the go to backup plan for any college graduate (from any major), so the white collar work is perfectly saturated at the moment due to tech (not just developers, pm’s, sales, designers, etc). The only need for h1b are for the truly ruthless cost cutters. Otherwise, you can continuously undercut just here locally with new college graduates or career-changers (bootcamps, etc).

Wages haven't kept pace with productivity since the 70's, and income and wealth inequality has reached astronomical proportions. IMO its time for a bit of inflation and improved employee leverage.

Inflation isn't a good thing. It is probably going to exasperate the wealth inequality and I don't see how it will improve employee leverage. It is an invisible tax caused by government artificially increasing the money supply.

Labor shortage plus inflation is the best thing possible for the people at the bottom of the economy.

Mild inflation can lead to higher employment. We had a super tight labour market before Covid, I remember reading about factory workers getting signing bonuses (!)

Here’s hoping we’ll just pick right up where we left off!

we do not have a labor shortage. We have a wage shortage

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