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Comment by zozbot234 | Hacker News Reader

Ah, the old "dey took err jerbs!" fallacy has hit HN too.

I don’t think anyone is saying “they took our jobs”. I think it’s not so black and white.

1. There’s a race to the bottom to show infinite growth. This is the way of American capital markets. And this leads to cost cutting, bringing down wages and perverse incentives.

2. H1B and other programs that were intended for people with exceptional skills are handed out in mass to immigrants - particularly Indians - and we can be okay with that.

But the reality is, there are often times no exceptional skills here. The test taking and interviewing has been designed to cater to Indian nationals. They’re great test takers, which doesn’t necessarily translate into productivity or being a top worker or producer of value.

This is a corporation importing foreign workers as a cost cutting measure. An engineer from India will be happy earning 75% of the wage since they also get to move their family to the US, with healthcare and all the benefits.

The tragedy is that existing top talent doesn’t necessarily want to work at a company like Amazon. And so Amazon will import Indian nationals, because they’re willing to put in longer hours. They have little choice. They’re risk averse, and the last thing they want is to get managed out and have to return to India.

Amazon does this at scale. It reflects in the quality of their products and services.

Nice stereotype man. Again, I am Swedish and I consider myself a leftist. Can you argument and not resort to ad hominem?

How is it a fallacy when it is real?

Here is an example from the building sector here: The Vaxholm Conflict https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2006/06/swed-j27.html TL:DR Building company wanted to employ Latvian workers at a lower rate of pay than Swedish workers.

I, personally, was also affected when Polish workers where just plain cheaper in IT so they fired all of us.

Now, I of course blame the companies, the capitalist systems, but I also blame the people. It is only human.

How is it a fallacy when it is real?

Workers and companies will move toward the money. That's a constant. Here's the fallacy: we have only ourselves to blame. We are the voters in these republics. We can set the rules of who gets to come, who gets to work and how they should be treated. The citizens are the only check on this capitalist, free-market system.

And high skilled workers should get to come and work, no strings attached. The fact that some people complain of facing legit competition in such high-wage jobs and even call themselves "leftist" is quite sad. I suppose that when you're that privileged, actual equality feels like oppression.

> facing legit competition

What they are "competing" in is a lower salary. That's it.

Its what they bring to the table and companies love it of course.

I will not comment on the rest of whatever you think of me and how I live.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31235911 explains it better for you :)

It is mentioned in the article actually!

We voted Sweden into EU thinking that the Swedish model would persist within. That was false and we had to let the flood of cheap labor in.

The union hostile organization "Svenskt Näringsliv" and companies wanted this of course and lobbied for it. Including calling people in the union racists for not wanting to wage dump.

> I, personally, was also affected when Polish workers where just plain cheaper in IT so they fired all of us.

How did that go, for the company? Transferring knowledge about a large software project can be hard ... Almost impossible if everyone gets replaced at the same time?

(I wonder if you were building software or doing more sysadmin things)

What's the fallacy about pitting your own citizens against foreign workers who must work for low wages and crap wages or face deportation? Jobs are a zero sum game. Don't forget - once you bring in a firehose of foreign workers, the ability for workers to collectively bargain is harmed. I have seen firsthand the drop in quality of life in enterprise software companies over the past decade due to the H1B system producing scores of yes-men, incapable of saying no to their superiors over fears of losing their job.

Not a fallacy at all. USD has extremely favorable exchange rates to the vast majority of currencies. In my country, it's currently 1 USD = 5 BRL. A 40kUSD/year salary will make someone quite rich here. This obviously devalues the work of people operating in the developed nation. They won't pay the normal salaries if they can get away with it.

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