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Sorry, this is not true.
Please review Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, Denmark and other Nordic Regional Countries. Not only is their standard of living higher, their life expectancy is longer and their earning and saving rates are astronomical compared to ours in the average US household.
Their employment standards are different and their employment is protected in ways that ours is not.
You are compering wrong things. It would be like compare California with Norway or compare whole EU vs whole USA. For life expectancy try Hawaii or California vs any state in Europe. Europe is just big mess.
Sure it might not effect the economy but lets ignore all those American middle class jobs that disappeared to illegals now living here. Not to mention the stagnate wages for the last 20 yrs., due to these same illegals flooding the work force. Keep those eyes closed to the dwindling middle class.
That's another economic fallacy. Your point is implicitly that there is a fixed number of jobs in a given economy, and if an immigrant comes then one of those jobs is "taken" from a higher wage-earner and given to a lower wage earner. That is absolutely not why wages have "stagnated" whatsoever.
Moreover, they haven't really stagnated. This article explains it well:
That's another economic fallacy. Your point is implicitly that there is a fixed number of jobs in a given economy, and if an immigrant comes then one of those jobs is "taken" from a higher wage-earner and given to a lower wage earner. That is absolutely not why wages have "stagnated" whatsoever.
Moreover, they haven't really stagnated. This article explains it well:
I'm not buying it. This economy is not creating enough jobs. Those that do have jobs have no bargaining power and thus have no purchasing power. The basic law of supply and demand illustrates that increasing the number of workers creates an oversupply, thus the downward pressure on wages.
I'm not buying it. This economy is not creating enough jobs. Those that do have jobs have no bargaining power and thus have no purchasing power. The basic law of supply and demand illustrates that increasing the number of workers creates an oversupply, thus the downward pressure on wages.
Oh, that's why. I thought it was a little fishy that my mortgage broker doesn't speak English and his business card's address is in Mexico City.
Any time there is talk of income inequality, wage gaps etc. you will have countless posts about Wall Street, Reaganomics, CEOs etc. People will talk about how in the 1980's greed took over in America and we have been in decline ever since.
The irony is that it is because of the massive leaps in technology and standard of living that took place in the 80s, 90s and 2000s that all of these people say "a family of four NEEDS $xx,000 or even $xxx,000 just to SURVIVE."
People have this romanticized image of the 1950s when dad went to the plant for 8 hours a day five days a week and came home to his solidly middle class family. While there was a fleeting period of time that this was possible, the definition of "solidly middle class" has changed since then.
The average home built in the 1950's was 983 square feet. In 2013, the average new home size hit a record of 2598 square feet. Meanwhile the average family size has decreased. (Note: they've decreased in number, not in clothing size.) The "solidly middle class" people that lived in these 983 sq ft homes didn't have designer clothes, luxury SUVs, IPADS, PODS and the like, Hawaiian vacations, private lessons and tutors and the list goes on and on.
Yes, its true. Some people make a whole lot of money and have a whole lot of stuff. Most of those people worked hard, innovated or did something that you and I didn't to get all that stuff. Most of the rest of us that work reasonably hard still live reasonably well by anyone's standards.
Winston Churchill said it best: "The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries."
I don't know how romanticized it is but memories of the 60s are the same to me. Dad was in the military, went to work and came home at the same time everyday unless he was overseas. Mom didn't go to work until my youngest sister was in HS. Solidly middle class can never exist again as people's values have changed. The middle class had a definite set of values which helped to define it.
Designer clothes, luxury SUVs, IPADS, PODS and the like, Hawaiian vacations, private lessons and tutors wouldn't be a topic of conversation around the dinner table and basically everything was back then as that was how the day was summed up by my father. He asked us all what we did and we talked about it. Clothes were very basic. Shoes were generally real leather shoes unless you played sports. Google 60s station wagons and there you go as far as cars. Vacations? Amusement parks? When we lived near immediate family we would drive to see them for a couple of weeks in the summer. Air conditioning was a luxury back then and most didn't have it. Fans were your best friend.
We ate better food back then than most do now. It was usually fresh and not full of chemicals. I never had fast food until I could drive in the mid 70s.
Aluminum Christmas trees were in some people's houses, usually your friends with wilder parents.
My house was built in 1952 and around 1500 sf including the basement. It is a typical house of that era with no marble countertop or any other modern conveniences. I am the dishwasher. I wouldn't want a near 3K sf house as it costs an arm and a leg to heat/cool this one as is. The property taxes in this area would kill me. Good thing it's paid for.
That's another economic fallacy. Your point is implicitly that there is a fixed number of jobs in a given economy, and if an immigrant comes then one of those jobs is "taken" from a higher wage-earner and given to a lower wage earner. That is absolutely not why wages have "stagnated" whatsoever.
Moreover, they haven't really stagnated. This article explains it well:
The supply of housing is nearly fixed in the short term (supply is inelastic in short term), and an influx of illegal immigrants causes rents to necessarily skyrocket. Which has more or less the same effect as stagnant wages.
I'm not buying it. This economy is not creating enough jobs. Those that do have jobs have no bargaining power and thus have no purchasing power. The basic law of supply and demand illustrates that increasing the number of workers creates an oversupply, thus the downward pressure on wages.
Your premise rests on the ideas that there are a fixed amount of jobs that do not expand, and the labor pool can be too large. These are both false. Labor is an inherently scarce resource because each laborer is also a consumer, and his own desires will ALWAYS exceed the marginal value product for which is compensated by whoever purchases his labor. In easier terms, every worker works so he himself can be a consumer. He will need groceries, transportation, a place to live, and to engage in his own leisure activities. Every time a worker is employed in ANY profession, the general consumer demand ALWAYS rises as a fundamental, inescapable law of economics. You would be right if there were only a fixed number of jobs in the country and all laborers desired to consume less than they were paid. But savings across the country are at an all time low (thanks to the Keynesians who encourage spending) and so even if it were somehow possible in a bizarre theoretical construction, you couldn't be more wrong in reality.
Read Man, Economy, and State or Human Action if you want a real in-depth understanding of the way these things work.
The supply of housing is nearly fixed in the short term (supply is inelastic in short term), and an influx of illegal immigrants causes rents to necessarily skyrocket. Which has more or less the same effect as stagnant wages.
Yeah, housing prices are ridiculously inflated because of illegals. Do you understand how many of them there would have to be, buying how many houses at how high of value in order for that to be true?
And if we assume that you're right, just for the sake of argument, then that's not even an anti-immigrant argument, that's just an anti-people argument. If there was a particularly huge generation coming of age at the same time, or a huge group of people who decided to buy instead of rent, or just even an influx of legal immigrants, it would have the same theoretical effect you propose.
Not to mention the housing market is absolutely not inelastic at all. Inelastic is like, say, the supply of vital organs for transplant. Housing is absolutely not that way at all.
If it was, 2008 never would have happened.
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