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bhikkhu

(10,789 posts)
4. I'm pretty conflicted about the whole thing
Sun Feb 20, 2022, 03:39 PM
Feb 2022

For the first time in my 57 year life, employers have to raise wages and compete against each other for entry level employees. It's almost always been the opposite everywhere, as employers could offer crap wages, treat employees badly and fire them for anything. Now things are lined up a little better toward worker's rights. Still a long ways to go, but I never expected to see things happen the way they have.

I think it would be obvious that ramping up immigration would reverse things back to the norm, where workers have few rights and few expectations, and no real security.

More immigration means more housing needs as well. It's been decades since the US has put any real effort into building affordable housing; it's still illegal in practice to build affordable housing in most areas. In my own town you can't build anything under 1200 sf, even in a manufactured home, and there are standard requirements that all the utilities and features be the newest and most efficient tech. I can see the reasons for some of it, but in practice that simply makes it impossible to build housing for anyone who's not well established in a career.

Also, what happens if all open jobs are filled? You have 11 million new jobs and increased economic activity. One thing that has inexorably tracked economic activity is carbon emissions. Increase one and you increase the other, and we will just race a little faster to the abyss. I don't see any realistic or practical plan to do otherwise. Essentially, our economy is killing the planet, and what's good for the US economy is bad for life in general. That's hard to get past.

Yes, we could accommodate more workers, but they'd have few housing options, they'd drive down wages, and they'd speed up and amplify climate change.

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