Why are we relegating locals to menial restaurant jobs? Why not have programs to get them trained and into higher earning jobs?

A local working a restaurant will often need to take advantage of welfare. If instead we funneled the locals to higher paying jobs, we would be better off. We're supposed to look after our own citizens, afterall --that's the whole point of electing a government.

> Me buying food from restaurant would make the owner richer, but would also employ more people at the restaurant

What of one of the employees at the restaurant had your job, and they bought food there? Or are you declaring only you can do your job?

Absolutely anecdotal, but in the Silicon Valley I know, I rarely see coworkers participating in skiing/surfing/hiking/US travel. Hell, even dining out outside of free-food campus is a tough sell.

As for buying multiple houses, I'm sure the wider population is happy with foreigners buying rental properties.

Sure. Any other body hired in their place would still pay taxes PLUS more likely spend more money locally thus boosting local economy.

Irrelevant

The government exists for the general welfare and and economic system that subsidizes idleness because the disingenuous say "look over there, its a net positive" while ignoring the externalized cost borne by the taxpayer is just theft from the taxpayer.

For starters, compensation is almost entirely location-based now. Situations where a person lives in cheap city / country but paid close to US rates were never common, but in last 5 years or so they disappeared almost entirely. Moreover, every company seems to know about local rates, they all source this data from the same sources, so if you're job hunting they all give you the same offer. And, since there are so much competition for positions companies are very reluctant to bid on candidates, and most offers do not allow negotiations. Even if paying you slightly above market would still save the company quite a lot of money they don't do it. So, situations where you receive the same offer from multiple companies, and all of them are "take it or leave it", became pretty common.

I haven't been on a job market for a long time, but this is what I hear from people around me.

What about Central America?

Real example: my company is US based, top and middle management is in US, some middle management and lower in Europe, managing workers in India and Manila. Same scheme with Costa Rica, but managed directly from US.

If managed correctly though it means you can have effectively a 24 hour work day. US workers/management goes to sleep as the Asian workers are starting up

> People in the U.S. used to complain that we drain the rest of the world's brains.

Ok? Are we all supposed to maintain a consistent view with this group of people? I don't understand your point.

Well then why do the people who do earn that much there need it?

Sure, but I don't think I claimed that economic factors are the only thing that can be considered when evaluating policy. Maybe it came off that way because my comment was focused on the jobs issue being discussed.

I guess I did not express it well, but I wanted to highlight that "the economy" and "the people" are not in opposition. "The economy" is a vague term that usually approximates something like "the material well being of everyone in aggregate." There are lots of other things one might value besides material well being, but "the people" and the "the economy" and not opposed forces.

This is why it's not productive to discuss issues using vague, undefined terms like "the economy."

Wealth inequality is a well defined economic measure and I see no reason why one couldn't use it as a yardstick when evaluating an economy, same as we use the unemployment, inflation, GDP, median household income, and so on. And indeed many economists do use it, and there are many well regarded books and papers that examine wealth distribution.