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I guess you have never been hungry or without shelter. This post does demonstrate that those that are too good to do jobs many others do would need cheap illegal alien labor, thus the problem and all the crying over their impending deportations.
You would be correct. I never needed an immigrant or anyone for that matter to do work for me. I bought my first house when I was 20. It needed work. A lot of work. Did it all myself.
Roof-trusses to shingles.
Built a front porch to replace the half rotted one on it.
Installed my own septic system when tree roots killed the tank and drain pipe.(I'll do my own but not someone else's)
Repaired the bathroom floor from a botched "handy man" installing a shower for the previous owners, and never butted the drain to the basin, right to the plywood so all the water rotted the plywood around the shower and to the sink dummy.
Price of home heating oil sky rocketed I removed the boiler and radiators and got a propane furnace and ducts and built my own forced hot air system. Ran the ducts near the water pipes removing the need to run heat tapes in the winter.
Removed the old glass fuse panel, installed breaker box and upgraded all the electrical in the house.
Ditched the propane hot water heater for a brandy new programmable electric hot water heater.
So what exactly would I need cheap labor for? to use friends equipment such as the small backhoe and excavator for the septic system, the saw for granite and tile, I just used time after work to go to their shop and fix their equipment-1 hand washes the other.
Yeah, I always think its hilarious when everyone says "All the jobs are gone because of automation".
But isn't the entire Chinese economy built on manufacturing goods to be sold to places like the United States and Europe?
And not just China, but most developing countries(almost everything I own was made in another country).
Everyone who isn't a moron, realizes that our trade policies and immigration policies, are about exploiting cheap labor. And that the claims about manufacturing jobs all being lost to automation, is total BS.
All they have left to fall back on is that "immigrants are doing the jobs that Americans don't want to do". Or that "American workers can't compete with cheap Chinese labor".
Neither of these things are necessarily true, but they aren't lies either. They are true as things stand. But things can easily be changed.
Chinese labor is cheaper than automation.
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I will supplement Banjomike's excellent examples: replacing roofs. Even during the height of the recent "Great Recession" we had to have our roof replaced (twice). Each time the workers were Mexican, probably illegals. In prior decades of roof replacing we had the same type of folk doing the work. Yet, when I looked it up last year (and wrote about herein) the average roofer makes darn good money (if I recall, the national average can be some $45,000 per year).
Last summer, we had our foundation repaired: a vastly dirty job requiring men with shovels. All Mexican.
When I was a youth (early 1970s), I had a very, very short stint as a swimming pool building. I was one of the very few white men on the job. While a machine did the main digging, we did the final digging, and then installed those iron rods to prepare for the concrete. It was hot, dirty work.
One still sees Mexicans doing most yard work here in North Texas.
For a time I lived close to a chicken processing plant in East Texas (Pilgrim's Pride, named after the owner, Bo Pilgrim). I got to know him when we both appeared in a community play (in Pittsburg, Texas; Bo's family were one of the Founding Families), and he, strong Reagan Republican as he was (this in the early 1980s) nevertheless defended (not to me, but to others) the use of illegals, saying he would have to shut down otherwise.
I have written before that my mother's family, whom used to own and operate an iron and steel foundry (where I also worked for some six months), was heavily reliant on Mexican workers. Even in the 1950s, 60s and 70s (I did my stint in 1974) ICE would appear every couple of years and haul the workers away; the plant would shut down, and my grandfather (and after him his son, my uncle) would wait until enough Mexicans could be hired to restart the plant, despite newspaper ads advertising the work. I know for a fact that the workers were paid the same as any white man would have been.
It does seem, when one reads the history of past civilizations, that the 'ruling party' often relies upon 'cheap labor' for the dirty jobs. In Roman times, it was 'slaves' (note that a Roman slave had considerably more rights than the African-American slaves of or history); same for the ancient Greeks.
It is regrettable, but one cannot deny that many (not all, obviously; I am a shining example) Americans simply will not do such work.
What utter BS! Who do you think were doing all those jobs for a fair wage before millions of cheap illegals flooded our border?
Can you list the jobs Americans don't want? Do they include construction? Do they include housecleaning? My parents as Americans took these jobs happily for the first few years of their employment. My mom cleaned hotel room in her early 20s and my dad worked construction. But now Jose and Maria and Hector will take them with a fake SSN for a few dollars an hour less. You sir, are full of BS and I ain't buying it. So Eff off.
Ask Eric Trump, he has put in a request for field workers for his vineyard.
Multiple skills are always an asset. I've done everything from server admin to dig holes....yes there is proper way to operate a shovel. If everything went to hell in my life I still have my CDL and acquaintances/friends in the industry that would jump at the chance to hire me.
I had a relative hand his Grandson a broom, he didn't know how to use it.
I let mine expire I had an air brake endorsement wanted to get hazmat and haul OTR but the class B was fine for me. Tri axle dump trucks and heavy haulers were handy. Could have come in handy when I moved down here... Eventually I'll get a class A or B again.
I have been hearing about the idea that automation will eliminate the need for people to work, so we should have a universal income (I guess meaning a much larger welfare payment to everyone). Basically, robots will soon be able to do all the work people are doing now, so we need to give people some sort of income.
But at the same time, I keep hearing about how we need more and more immigrants to work in the US. I just wonder why we need more people to work, when we don't need people to work.
What utter BS! Who do you think were doing all those jobs for a fair wage before millions of cheap illegals flooded our border?
There is no way people PREFER hiring illegal immigrants and paying them the same wages as legal citizens unless they can pay them off the books (which means the net cost of employing them is lower).
Undocumented immigrants are less expensive. THAT is how they get jobs.
Get rid of them and you will see those jobs going to legal citizens, but you'll also see that prices will reflect the increase in wages.
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What utter BS! Who do you think were doing all those jobs for a fair wage before millions of cheap illegals flooded our border?
Roofing is very lucrative. So is foundation work. In NY expect to pay 200k for a house 30-50 years old with about an acre-2 needing roof and/or foundation work.
To increase profits, cheap skilled labor... I forget what the going rate per square of shingles goes for now a days back in NY.
If a roof is built right you only need 1 replacement every 30 years doing shingles with a high snow load, providing the homeowner maintains the valleys and gutters (pine needles and leaves are very detrimental to a roof). When I did my roof I used rough cut oak 2x6s for trusses and 3/4 CDX for plywood.
Could park a big rig on that roof
I'd love to have done a metal roof on my house. Very soothing when it rains. Plus that'd be a 1 and done ordeal.
Foundation repairs can be a nightmare. Ive helped rebuild an entire foundation once, where the company had this huge hydraulic pump and all these heavy duty rams to literally jack the house off it's foundation! Dig the perimeter out (some areas you couldn't get heavy equipment in so you had to hand dig it) usually was from bad drainage coming off of roofs with no gutters to subtle ground shifts from winter/summer... That was a nerve wracking ordeal, had to lift the house level with the rams placed every so feet to keep the floors and walls from buckling...
There was a recent opinion piece in the Washington Post about automation and job loss:
"Coming Technology Will Likely Destroy Millions of Jobs--Is Trump Ready?"
This is very true. They have an unsustainable population of 1.3 Billion. 100s of millions desperate there who will do anything for a bowl of food.
How can you easily tell if something was built by Chinese labor instead of automation?
Screws.
If the device is full of screws it was built by hand. Robots have a very hard time with them. Much cheaper to design with screws but if assembly costs are of no consequence, then the numbers work out.
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dummy.
to use friends equipment such as the small backhoe and excavator for the septic system, the saw for granite and tile, I just used time after work to go to their shop and fix their equipment-1 hand washes the other.
If everything went to hell in my life I still have my CDL and acquaintances/friends in the industry that would jump at the chance to hire me.
