Immigration and capitalism go hand in hand

[dfens]

They are part of the same movement, and dependent on each other.

Capital depends on an ever increasing supply of low wage, willing labor. Immigrants fit this bill nicely, since they come from poor countries and are willing to accept any work.

Without this, the supply of labor would dry up, population would stop growing, and costs would increase, which would diminish profit and make business fail. Production and consumption would decline, asset prices would fall, and the economy would enter permanent recession.


You can't have it both ways, America. If you want to remain capitalist, you must accept immigrants.

 

[miketx]

We are full. Close the door. Seating capacity has been reached.

 

[TNHarley]

Labor mobility is key to an actual free market. If not, we get bureaucrats making trade deals ignoring environmental and labor laws and killing our chance at competition.
Butt fuck labor mobility. I believe in Nations.

 

[JakeStarkey]

Lt Gov Patrick of Tx acknowledged the issue that party (Dems want future voters and Pubs want cheap labor) is the problem.

 

[MaryL]

Labor mobility is key to an actual free market. If not, we get bureaucrats making trade deals ignoring environmental and labor laws and killing our chance at competition.
Butt fuck labor mobility. I believe in Nations.

They are part of the same movement, and dependent on each other.

Capital depends on an ever increasing supply of low wage, willing labor. Immigrants fit this bill nicely, since they come from poor countries and are willing to accept any work.

Without this, the supply of labor would dry up, population would stop growing, and costs would increase, which would diminish profit and make business fail. Production and consumption would decline, asset prices would fall, and the economy would enter permanent recession.


You can't have it both ways, America. If you want to remain capitalist, you must accept immigrants.

OK, we accept immigrants. Illegal aliens, no. They aren't immigrants and can't be abused for capitalism like neo slaves for the sake of profit. Do you understand America at all?

 

[rhodescholar]

They are part of the same movement, and dependent on each other.

Capital depends on an ever increasing supply of low wage, willing labor. Immigrants fit this bill nicely, since they come from poor countries and are willing to accept any work.

Without this, the supply of labor would dry up, population would stop growing, and costs would increase, which would diminish profit and make business fail. Production and consumption would decline, asset prices would fall, and the economy would enter permanent recession.

You can't have it both ways, America. If you want to remain capitalist, you must accept immigrants.

From 1925 to 1965, there was almost ZERO immigration into the US, and from the late 1940s to the mid 1960s - before the democratic scum passed the 1965 Immigration act allowing a flood of illegals into the US, was considered the heyday of the american worker. Learn your history, boy.

 

[anotherlife]

Labor mobility is key to an actual free market. If not, we get bureaucrats making trade deals ignoring environmental and labor laws and killing our chance at competition.
Butt fuck labor mobility. I believe in Nations.

Nations or feudal bondage? Feudal bondage to your count whose land borders you shall never utter to cross. But even if you do, the neighboring count will return you to your original village for not buying his visa.

 

[MikeK]

[...]

You can't have it both ways, America. If you want to remain capitalist, you must accept immigrants.

True. But what kind of immigrants and how many? I suggest that accepting an unlimited number of un-vetted Muslims to live among us is not only unwise -- it is virtually suicidal.

America is a fundamentally Christian nation. Over time we have learned that Jews are a compatible and beneficial addition to the evolving American culture. But we recently have seen that with few exceptions Muslims are demonstratedly incompatible with the American Judeo/Christian culture and their presence must be held to an absolute minimum -- and closely observed.

 

[sealybobo]

They are part of the same movement, and dependent on each other.

Capital depends on an ever increasing supply of low wage, willing labor. Immigrants fit this bill nicely, since they come from poor countries and are willing to accept any work.

Without this, the supply of labor would dry up, population would stop growing, and costs would increase, which would diminish profit and make business fail. Production and consumption would decline, asset prices would fall, and the economy would enter permanent recession.


You can't have it both ways, America. If you want to remain capitalist, you must accept immigrants.

Today's Immigration Battle Corporatists vs. Racists (and Labor is Left Behind)

This is what us liberals were saying back in 2006. Were we lying?

The corporatist Republicans ("amnesty!") are fighting with the racist Republicans ("fence!"), and it provides an opportunity for progressives to step forward with a clear solution to the immigration problem facing America. Both the corporatists and the racists are fond of the mantra, "There are some jobs Americans won't do." It's a lie.

Funny, back then it was a fence and now with Trump it's a wall. LOL

 

[sealybobo]

Americans will do virtually any job if they're paid a decent wage. This isn't about immigration - it's about economics. Industry and agriculture won't collapse without illegal labor, but the middle class is being crushed by it.

Working Americans have always known this simple equation: More workers, lower wages. Fewer workers, higher wages.

Unions created the middle class many ways but one was by supporting laws that would regulate immigration into the United States to a small enough flow that it wouldn't dilute the labor pool.

As Wikipedia notes: "The first laws creating a quota for immigrants were passed in the 1920s, in response to a sense that the country could no longer absorb large numbers of unskilled workers, despite pleas by big business that it wanted the new workers."

 

[sealybobo]

Doesn't Trump sound just like us liberals back in 2006?

Do a little math. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says there are 7.6 million unemployed Americans right now. Another 1.5 million Americans are no longer counted because they've become "long term" or "discouraged" unemployed workers. And although various groups have different ways of measuring it, most agree that at least another five to ten million Americans are either working part-time when they want to work full-time, or are "underemployed," doing jobs below their level of training, education, or experience. That's between eight and twenty million un- and under-employed Americans, many unable to find above-poverty-level work.

At the same time, there are between seven and fifteen million working illegal immigrants diluting our labor pool.

If illegal immigrants could no longer work, unions would flourish, the minimum wage would rise, and oligarchic nations to our south would have to confront and fix their corrupt ways.

 

[sealybobo]

Much of this is the direct result of illegal immigrants competing directly with unionized and legal labor. Although it's most obvious in the construction trades over the past 30 years, it's hit all sectors of our economy. Democratic Party strategist Ann Lewis just sent out a mass email on behalf of former Wal-Mart Board of Directors member and now US Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. In it, Lewis noted that Clinton suggests we should have: "An earned path to citizenship for those already here working hard, paying taxes, respecting the law, and willing to meet a high bar for becoming a citizen." Sounds nice. The same day, on his radio program, Rush Limbaugh told a woman whose husband is an illegal immigrant that she had nothing to worry about with regard to deportation of him or their children because all he'd have to do - under the new law under consideration - is pay a small fine and learn English. The current Directors of Wal-Mart are smiling. Meanwhile, the millions of American citizens who came to this nation as legal immigrants, who waited in line for years, who did the hard work to become citizens, are feeling insulted, humiliated, and conned.

 

[sealybobo]

There is nothing compassionate about being the national enabler of a dysfunctional oligarchy like Mexico. An illegal workforce in the US sending an estimated $17 billion to Mexico every year - second only in national income to that country's oil revenues - supports an antidemocratic, anti-worker, hyperconservative administration there that gleefully ships out of that nation the "troublesome" Mexican citizens - those lowest on the economic food-chain and thus most likely to present "labor unrest" - to the USA. Mexico (and other "sending nations") need not deal with their own social and economic problems so long as we're willing to solve them for them - at the expense of our middle class. Democracy in Central and South America be damned - there are profits to be made for Wal-Mart

Similarly, there is nothing compassionate about handing higher profits (through a larger and thus cheaper work force) to the CEOs of America's largest corporations and our now-experiencing-record-profits construction and agriculture industries.

 

[sealybobo]

If I go to another country and get hurt, they will heal me. But if I'd applied for a monthly unemployment or retirement check, I would have been laughed out of the local government office. And if I'd been caught working there, I would have been deported within a week. Caring for people in crisis/need is very different from giving a job or a monthly welfare check to non-citizens. No nation - even those in Central and South America - will do that. And neither should the United States.

 

[PredFan]

They are part of the same movement, and dependent on each other.

Capital depends on an ever increasing supply of low wage, willing labor. Immigrants fit this bill nicely, since they come from poor countries and are willing to accept any work.

Without this, the supply of labor would dry up, population would stop growing, and costs would increase, which would diminish profit and make business fail. Production and consumption would decline, asset prices would fall, and the economy would enter permanent recession.


You can't have it both ways, America. If you want to remain capitalist, you must accept immigrants.

We still have immigration, dumbass.

 

[sealybobo]

Fifty years ago, when unions helped regulate entry into the workforce, 35 percent of American workers had a union job, and 70 percent of Americans could raise a family on a single, 40-hour-week paycheck. All working Americans would gladly pay a bit more for their food if their paychecks were both significantly higher and more secure.

 

[sealybobo]

Every nation has an obligation to limit immigration to a number that will not dilute its workforce, but will maintain a stable middle class - if it wants to have a stable democracy. This has nothing to do with race, national origin, or language and everything to do with economics.

 

[sealybobo]

Without a middle class, any democracy is doomed. And without labor having - through control of labor availability - power in relative balance to capital/management, no middle class can emerge. America's early labor leaders did not die to increase the labor pool for the Robber Barons or the Walton family - they died fighting to give control of it to the workers of their era and in the hopes that we would continue to hold it - and infect other nations with the same idea of democracy and a stable middle class.

The simple way to do this today is to require that all non-refugee immigrants go through the same process to become American citizens or legal workers in this country (no amnesties, no "guest workers," no "legalizations") regardless of how they got here; to confront employers who hire illegals with draconian financial and criminal penalties; and to affirm that while health care (and the right to provide humanitarian care to all humans) is an absolute right for all people within our boundaries regardless of status, a paycheck, education, or subsidy is not.

 

[sealybobo]

As long as employers are willing and able (without severe penalties) to hire illegal workers, people will risk life and limb to grab at the America Dream. When we stop hiring and paying them, most will leave of their own volition over a few years, and the remaining few who are committed to the US will obtain citizenship through normal channels. This is, after all, the middle-class "American Dream." And how much better this hemisphere would be if Central and South Americans were motivated to stay in their own nations (because no employer in the US would dare hire them) and fight there for a Mexican Dream and a Salvadoran Dream and a Guatemalan Dream (and so on). This is the historic Progressive vision for all of the Americas...

This was all written by my progressive hero Thom Hartmann. He used to have Bernie Sanders on his show a lot. Great man. You Republicans don't realize how liberally progressive you are being today.

 

[ding]

As long as employers are willing and able (without severe penalties) to hire illegal workers, people will risk life and limb to grab at the America Dream. When we stop hiring and paying them, most will leave of their own volition over a few years, and the remaining few who are committed to the US will obtain citizenship through normal channels. This is, after all, the middle-class "American Dream." And how much better this hemisphere would be if Central and South Americans were motivated to stay in their own nations (because no employer in the US would dare hire them) and fight there for a Mexican Dream and a Salvadoran Dream and a Guatemalan Dream (and so on). This is the historic Progressive vision for all of the Americas...

This was all written by my progressive hero Thom Hartmann. He used to have Bernie Sanders on his show a lot. Great man. You Republicans don't realize how liberally progressive you are being today.

Did you do any work today?