So bring immigrants in, give them the opportunity to get the lowest paid jobs and that is how you are going to save Americans from rising prices. I dont think it is fair.
Dear @Vlatko, My point was that immigration has many causes and many consequences and NOT just those few that opportunist politicians point to in order to advance their agendas. I don't advocate for immigrants to have low-paying jobs, nor have I ever said that they could or do "save America from" inflation. My analyses of inflation repeat ad infinitum that inflations have many diverse causes such that printing money and cutting immigration may or may not be among them depending on each specific circumstance. Immigration can be BOTH an opportunity for the immigrant AND an opportunity for the immigrant's employer to exploit the immigrant. It is important to remember contradiction: immigration has complex, contradictory consequences that in some ways lessen and in other ways increase inflation depending in each situation how immigration interacts with other economic conditions. The point of analysis is to see how, in each particular situation, the two phenomena interact. My goal was to pinpoint the irony that excluding immigrants now can and likely will interact with economic conditions to yield effects US politicians cannot see or admit, but that a critical perspective can and should make known.
The so-called border crisis is a RW and MSM fraud. The US does not even rank in the top 30 countries for immigration. See my video called Immigration Debunked
If you're only elect him as president and you do not change the rest of the political system all the people elected to congress all the judges appointed to the Supreme Court all the people working in local and state governments, then there's very little he can do.
My grocery store is seriously understaffed because so many workers got sick and quit or were sick for a long time and were fired. Now that there are so many breakthrough infections they don't want to come back. But the people who do staff the grocery now, which is one of the largest chain stores in the country, are all immigrants who must take chances with their health to survive.
It gets worse. Most of the people in the grocery stores don't get paid enough to put themselves at high risk for infection and therefore death. For example my grocery store for example pays about 5.50 an hour lower than what is considered to be a livable wage in this area. I wouldn't put my neck on the line for far less than what it takes to maintain even the most basic standard of living, would you?
You nailed it....I've said this for a long time the very ppl who complain about immigrants need them they will do jobs alotta natives wont do and accept the lower pay....also this probably ties into higher priced food since many immigrants work farms, dairy, picking fruit , meat processing, chicken farms etc etc
A large amount of people in the business community and private sector take advantage of immigrants. They pay them FAR less than what is considered to be a livable wage in most cases. This is an awful practice. For one, paying workers less than what they need to maintain even a minimally decent standard of living is creating a lot of social upheaval. For two, it gives employers the opportunity to hire the immigrant for less than what they need to survive, instead of hiring a worker who isn't willing to work for less than a livable wage at an appropriate rate or salary.
I have worked many places that have had what I'd call suspect employees. They have documentation, but it's likely not valid. In every single instance, those have been the worst paid employees doing the jobs that others really don't want to do. It gives control to the employers because while they might not just pay minimum wage, they know that they can ask those people to work long hours, change up their schedules last minute, etc. One of the problems is that it keeps wages low and invites employers to treat all their employees this way. Unfortunately, too many people have just dealt with this. The pandemic really opened the eyes of many Americans that they were accepting the unacceptable. It's a good thing, but it also seems a bit chaotic while it's happening. I also have no doubt that any place that is raising their rates because they are now paying employees more is more than offsetting that cost in order to make more profit.
It is harder to explain crisis by historical dynamics within the operations of a social system based on the exchange of equivalents and easier to use concepts, impulse to propagate crisis and problems. This we get all the time; the former we never get from mainstream media or from America's intellectuals, if any? Employers do it to Americans as well. Changing schedules here and there meets a specific goal of a manager of an employer on how to double the length of the working day without a single worker suspecting it? They double the amount of hands if the labor-power is cheap enough or they raise the productiveness of the workers they manage, they accomplish a 16 hours work day in 8 hrs days makes a successful manager. The manager then has the problem of double output, a higher volume of product than before, and what to do with it? How to price it? Sell it? Because the workday was doubled from 8 to 16 hrs each unit was made in half the time, each unit has half the value, enables a selling above the unit's cost and below the social average. Works well if there is only one industry producing everything like Robinson Crusoe doubled his time and produced more for himself and Friday, a favorite fable economists use to explain economics. Bu that is not reality, when one does it the entire class of employers double the workday. The crisis they engender are gluts. To raise the price of the goods they destroy the goods to shorten the supply are ways to raise the exchange-value of the product...everyone gets stunned and shocked at the news of tons of milk poured out on a highway while there are millions of milk-less children in society. A farmer pointing a gun to the head of his cattle because there is too much beef on the market. The contradiction is that capital is driven to lengthen the workday in order to compensate for the loss of 'hands', of those laid off began with the changing schedules overall to make an additional eight hours from 8 workers paid a dollar more but combined produce a value of one total working day free of charge to the employer. Now the manager has to cope with external coercive laws of competition, once he does it they all do it, is what I said. Too much on the market that they are not profiting as much because it is harder to sell the volume when the number of buyers is shrinking,---wages are too low. People don't buy or they are spending their money elsewhere, or they don't even need or want the product. How does a manager know what his competitors are doing or what is going on in society that he can control production without generating a crisis is impossible within the framework of the system the manager and the labor operate!
Then there is another aspect! I am retired from a U.S. Immigration Court. If I had a dime for every forged document and frivolous application, I would be the richest man on earth! Then also, while hearing immigration cases, and waiting a year or more for The Veterans Administration to process my service-connected disability claim. Undocumented individuals were already receiving federal and State aid, while as a service-connected disabled veteran, I waited and waited!
While it's probably true that you did have to wait a very long time to get any benefits from being disabled. It likely wasn't the VA, but the SSA that made it take so long and there are many onerous hoops to jump through to qualify. I don't think it's right and it certainly needs to be changed. However, I'm definitely calling you out on the federal and state aid. If they are refugee/asylum seekers, then there is a need to provide resources for people, but in general, people who cross 'illegally' do not get any benefits. They definitely don't get EIC (earned income credit)and they would qualify for social security benefits when they get older if they've been using a forged SSN. And yes, the federal government knows because they do a simple check of SSN to last name. Because of the pandemic, I have applied for benefits that I normally wouldn't have done in the past and every single one of them require that I prove my citizenship. Now it is possible that some states have separate funds to help immigrants and I do believe that SNAP has slightly different requirements for migrant workers, but getting a paltry amount to buy food is not the same as what you were implying with the word 'aid'.
Why is it there's something about a person who calls himself a military man then the next thing that is going to come out of his mouth is usually a lie?
Va is prob similar to SSA since both are government agencies....it does take forever ....I can only speak on the SSA front a friend had a stroke and applied in jan didnt get approved until july (close to aug 1) and some sort of payment schedule hard to explain she wont get all the back pay from jan to now until sept (this month)... it is awful and I suspect the va isnt any better /faster I just dont get it and sorry you had that experience the government slowfulness is a sore spot for me !
I’m a GenX-er in California, and for many years I worked in home health care, and no longer buy your argument. I stopped doing it mainly because it isn’t *health* care, and the pay was so low. My last employer was *so* happy to hire me because I speak excellent English and know the difference between dry and prepared mustard, etc. The other providers had come here from Figi on a visitor’s visa and just decided to stay. One of them had purchased a brand new SUV with the cash she’d saved up from years of working here illegally. *Many people illegally immigrate here for purely materialistic reasons.* I could *barely* afford to maintain, register, and insure my own used vehicle. The answer is to arrest the employers who hire them, but no one’s going to do that when Boomers are now old and decrepit and want cheap labor in their homes. I’m glad I won’t be changing their diapers. The presence of *so many* without legal permission to work here *drives down the wages citizens can demand.*
Unionizing ALL workers (legal and illegal) would demotivate employers from choosing illegal workers. If there's no financial upside why risk the consequences?
I would love to see Wolff discuss the research into the economics of global open borders, how much we can decrease world poverty rates, and comparisons of life in major cosmopolitan areas before and after such an alteration. No one is discussing it. I've put up a few measley videos on the subject, but i'm certainly no expert, just a concerned citizen with an econ degree.
Mr. Wolf I'm down with you and I believe mostly in Marxism but I got to say I got two jobs both of these jobs mainly dominated by immigrants and sir I can tell you they're not the only ones working for low pay one job pays $17 an hour another job pays 14 this is in the state of Tennessee but everywhere I look around I see Americans working these low-paying jobs that you are referring to it's Americans and immigrants on average working for low paying jobs and both Americans and immigrants are demanding higher pay for decent living
Did you hear his premise that the labour supply of illegal immigrants is now tied so that they also have to be paid better? I don't know what it is but people just seem to want to hear what they want to hear and ignore the rest
I would almost agree with Prof. Wolf here except that low end jobs have very little to do with the price of products and inflation. (Owners will say wage increases affect pricing but it is not necessarily true from the workers or accountants perspective) If we look at the overhead of a retail business the low end, low education, low skill, temporarily and part time jobs are a very small piece of the business overhead. It is different industry by industry but let's be generous and say that low end payroll is 20% of business overhead - the other 80% is rent, utilities, insurance, maintenance, middle management and upper management salaries, executive compensation, capital finance payment, interest, and a little bit of profitability. So that is overhead, and if we say raise the low end salaries by 20% that is only a 4% raise in total overhead costs. Now retail margins ((price - cost of goods)/price = margin%) sold are vastly different in different sectors, like grocery only averages about 2%, fast food around 8%, electronics around 10% and clothing around 12%. The margin is what pays all the overhead, but it is a small piece of the product price. Let's say the margin on goods is 10%. If giving your low end staff a 20% pay raise means a 4% raise in overhead, then it would only mean a 0.4% rise in the price of goods to compensate. And I believe my above math is generous, from what I have seen the low end wages for most industries are much lower than 20% of overhead and also margins are generally lower than 10%. Also consider that most low end products are in a supply surplus (prior to COVID-19 and global shipping crisis). This supply surplus is largely due to the global adoption of automation and underpaid labor. With a supply surplus the price-demand relationship can invert where higher demand actually lowers prices because it uses more of the existing over supply. So for low end products, increasing low end wages would increase demand and thus lower product pricing (for low end goods). So I do not think that raising minimum wage jobs (as said the type of job more typically taken by temporary immigrants) is going to significantly increase inflation. It is way more likely that inflation is due to other factors such as printing more money, increased housing costs, increased auto costs, increased luxury item costs, increased transportation costs and such which have a large impact on consumer price inflation index, but are not utilizing very much low end minimum wage labor in their production and sales. Also COVID-19 is greatly affecting product costs due to the unusual global supply disruption (taking that inverted price-demand relationship mentioned above due to over supply and flipping it back right side around because there is no longer over supply). So now that demand is greater than supply, increased demand for low end products due to higher low end wages is what will drive prices up, more than actually paying the wage costs.
No one is against immigration. It’s illegal immigration that is a problem. The free market will take care of the labor shortage if we leave it alone. If an employer pays too little, go to another employer. If you can’t find anyone to pay you more, than you are getting market value for your talent and that is de facto fair.
I think this is oversimplified to the point of not being representative of reality or having any practical sense. The rising costs of inputs is not mentioned at all, and a large chunk of the inputs are imports. Even if it would be fair to let immigrants work at low wages, which is not, that still reduces the income of regular USA citizens to the point of not being able to buy the resultant products that came from manufacturing with those expensive inputs.
So what's the solution to this broken system, Comrade, Proffesor? If you bring in immigrants the corporations/owners will bring worker wages down but yet the cost of living will "still" be high. If you close the borders, wages will go up but now, the cost of living will be even "more" higher than when the borders were, open. By the way, I just ordered two of your books today.
I think the argument that points out that higer wages are automatically traduced as higer prices has to be used carefully or -at least- expanded with other considerations. Otherwise it is usefull as a conservative argument against raising the minimun wage.
If higher minimum wages force employers to raise prices, then yeah, we shouldn't raise the minimum wage. Although I don't see why that has to be true anywhere but in industries that barely turn a profit.
But, but, but ... I thought there was a "Labor Shortage?" (Of course, that's ridiculous. The US doesn't go from having one of the most precarious and highly redundant workforces on Earth to a state of vast "Labor Shortage" within the span of 18 months ... just because of COVID and lockdowns.)
Actually it's the other way around. Humans are the cause of debt, obviously, so when we are balancing ourselves using synchronized coordinated debt measuring, debt creation in it's entirety become balanced, thus driving inflation downward... actually flattening it permanently. The problem is that there is no coordination between all nations to balance debt creation, and so this is what we have. A very big debt problem.
Dr. Wolff, your analysis is correct, like most of the time, but you really should not refer to US citizen and permanent resident workers as "Native American workers". Regardless of whether that is common practice in the economic field or not, that is not correct terminology and is truly insulting to actual Native Americans. You almost never insult marginalized groups so I am pretty sure you did not mean to do this and were just struggling for the correct terminology here. I gotta say though, you should probably take this video down and redo it using different terminology. Yes, it is that bad.
Prof Wolff would you please make a video explaining the poreto distribution 80/20. rule. Often when I debate capitalist they bring it up as a reason why the inequality is not the system fault and people suttch as Jordan Peterson often brig it up as a reason why capitalisam is moral...
Garbage, it hurts the people who are working. Compete for jobs and housing and social programs. What's wrong with that ??? Too crazy there isn't any housing now !!! People are working just not as many. Many working now until they qualify for unemployment benefits. Its the money printing that's doing it not the working poor!!!! No thanks to more immagration.
5:00 omg you literally just told my 2020 timeline. Was still at min. Wage and bam covid hit and the fired around 50% of the company. None of the office workers mind you. Then came the 10+hrs 6 days a week. I quit. I go back at a higher wage. Then they got multiple government contracts witch I can't talk about but it came out to be over 100 million and is growing. I quit and I will not go there.
@@RichardDWolff In the video, I thought you were using the term simply to describe non-immigrant American citizens. Native Americans and indigenous Americans are both acceptable terms and roughly interchangeable, but they refer specifically to First Nations peoples, a very small percentage of the modern American population. Immigrants taking low wage jobs affects all Americans, not just Native Americans. That's why I found the use of the term confusing. Not because of political correctness.
But mr. Wolf I'm seeing 95% of the people homeless and being evicted and out of work are Americans I'm sure in a few places here in there maybe immigrants but the people suffering the most during this pandemic hyperinflation economy is Americans
What America does create's similar problems in other countries, especially if America has occupied and robbed them and destroyed their economy for decades. To make things work we should alway's remember that the world it's people and resources are connected, through trade as well. We'll have to make a system that doesn't cater to the few instead it should be an economic model that can sustain a certain level of growth that delivers to all the people of the world without destroying the planet. That mean's throw useless luxeries and stuff out the window, believe that less is more, stop greed.
I'm Sorry Richard but We're Going to Have to Agree to Disagree on This One...We Need No More of the Buffer Class Take Care of Home First Before Most. I'm Not Going Out and Baring More Children Knowing I Can't Take Care of the Ones I Already Have. #ADOS/NYC
Okay so at the beginning he says that we are taking advantage of immigrants by paying them low salaries. Later, he says that the immigrants being forced out causes inflation by causing the raising of wages to attract legal citizens, which will cause inflation. Then at 7:40 he says and i quote "fighting against the immigrant by closing their "opportunity". Closing their "opportunity"? He said earlier in so many words that the immigrants were being exploited by working for very low wages.....????????? that is an opportunity now? So if we force out the immigrants and businesses have to raise wages to attract American citizens into those jobs, is that not a good thing? Does that not get people closer to making a "living wage" which Wolff often rages about? I thought rising wages was good right?
Mr. Wolff, where do you live? What about American's with no jobs. Here is a fact, close to 70% of so-called baclk American youth cannot find jobs. That statistic has stood for over 30 years. How about this, if you enter a country breaking the law, they will never respect the laws in our countrt moving forward. Your opinion on this issue is way off, and I find it hard to understand how you came to your conclusion. Sorry, but the lawbis the law, and no one should break the law of our country ever.
MY first time I do not agree with you. So basics are the rich get richer and the poor make less or lose out to others that have no problem in having 4 to 6 families living in one home or apartment. You need to check the tube here and check the. Immigration World Poverty and Gumballs 2010. You might just change your mind and keep the USA on a better shift. I normally agree with you. Be that as it may here I can not. Or maybe you can explain why the gumball effect is incorrect.
Mr. Wolff has an interesting use of “native American” which seems sort of non-PC, but it is very clear what he means. I’m curious if we will be referring to Mexican Americans (in the U.S.) as native Americans in two or three generations. (Note that I’m aware Mexicans in Mexico can legitimately be called native or Mexican Americans; I’m using the colloquial “Americans” to refer to USians.)
So bring immigrants in, give them the opportunity to get the lowest paid jobs and that is how you are going to save Americans from rising prices. I dont think it is fair.
Dear @Vlatko,
My point was that immigration has many causes and many consequences and NOT just those few that opportunist politicians point to in order to advance their agendas. I don't advocate for immigrants to have low-paying jobs, nor have I ever said that they could or do "save America from" inflation. My analyses of inflation repeat ad infinitum that inflations have many diverse causes such that printing money and cutting immigration may or may not be among them depending on each specific circumstance. Immigration can be BOTH an opportunity for the immigrant AND an opportunity for the immigrant's employer to exploit the immigrant. It is important to remember contradiction: immigration has complex, contradictory consequences that in some ways lessen and in other ways increase inflation depending in each situation how immigration interacts with other economic conditions. The point of analysis is to see how, in each particular situation, the two phenomena interact. My goal was to pinpoint the irony that excluding immigrants now can and likely will interact with economic conditions to yield effects US politicians cannot see or admit, but that a critical perspective can and should make known.
@@RichardDWolff Thank you for your answer, professor Wolff.
The so-called border crisis is a RW and MSM fraud. The US does not even rank in the top 30 countries for immigration. See my video called Immigration Debunked
@@PoliticalEconomy101 I will subscribe to your channel, thanks for your time and effort
No, pay them less because they are undocumented. It's been a lawncare scheme for decades.
Thank you for your work professor Wolff 🙏
This country would prosper so much more if you were president
you can't elect socialism
If you're only elect him as president and you do not change the rest of the political system all the people elected to congress all the judges appointed to the Supreme Court all the people working in local and state governments, then there's very little he can do.
@@maryhiromitsu984 You can't elect socialism through bourgeois democracy. Read "State and Revolution" by V. Lenin.
@@thereallegend4lyfe ok
@@thereallegend4lyfe thanks for the reference btw I appreciate that
Yeah its nots a labor shortage, it's a wage shortage
Perhaps if we paid a fair wage always, respected each other instead of seeing workers as ants in the mound, we'd ALL live better. Thank you Dr. Wolff!
We need to change the system. It's the system itself that is causing the problems.
Great analysis Prof R. Wolff
Glad you liked it!
My grocery store is seriously understaffed because so many workers got sick and quit or were sick for a long time and were fired. Now that there are so many breakthrough infections they don't want to come back. But the people who do staff the grocery now, which is one of the largest chain stores in the country, are all immigrants who must take chances with their health to survive.
It gets worse. Most of the people in the grocery stores don't get paid enough to put themselves at high risk for infection and therefore death. For example my grocery store for example pays about 5.50 an hour lower than what is considered to be a livable wage in this area.
I wouldn't put my neck on the line for far less than what it takes to maintain even the most basic standard of living, would you?
Thanks for this, Richard. :)
You nailed it....I've said this for a long time the very ppl who complain about immigrants need them they will do jobs alotta natives wont do and accept the lower pay....also this probably ties into higher priced food since many immigrants work farms, dairy, picking fruit , meat processing, chicken farms etc etc
Thanks for in-depth analysis.
A large amount of people in the business community and private sector take advantage of immigrants. They pay them FAR less than what is considered to be a livable wage in most cases. This is an awful practice.
For one, paying workers less than what they need to maintain even a minimally decent standard of living is creating a lot of social upheaval.
For two, it gives employers the opportunity to hire the immigrant for less than what they need to survive, instead of hiring a worker who isn't willing to work for less than a livable wage at an appropriate rate or salary.
I have worked many places that have had what I'd call suspect employees. They have documentation, but it's likely not valid. In every single instance, those have been the worst paid employees doing the jobs that others really don't want to do. It gives control to the employers because while they might not just pay minimum wage, they know that they can ask those people to work long hours, change up their schedules last minute, etc. One of the problems is that it keeps wages low and invites employers to treat all their employees this way. Unfortunately, too many people have just dealt with this. The pandemic really opened the eyes of many Americans that they were accepting the unacceptable. It's a good thing, but it also seems a bit chaotic while it's happening. I also have no doubt that any place that is raising their rates because they are now paying employees more is more than offsetting that cost in order to make more profit.
It is harder to explain crisis by historical dynamics within the operations of a social system based on the exchange of equivalents and easier to use concepts, impulse to propagate crisis and problems. This we get all the time; the former we never get from mainstream media or from America's intellectuals, if any?
Employers do it to Americans as well. Changing schedules here and there meets a specific goal of a manager of an employer on how to double the length of the working day without a single worker suspecting it? They double the amount of hands if the labor-power is cheap enough or they raise the productiveness of the workers they manage, they accomplish a 16 hours work day in 8 hrs days makes a successful manager. The manager then has the problem of double output, a higher volume of product than before, and what to do with it? How to price it? Sell it? Because the workday was doubled from 8 to 16 hrs each unit was made in half the time, each unit has half the value, enables a selling above the unit's cost and below the social average. Works well if there is only one industry producing everything like Robinson Crusoe doubled his time and produced more for himself and Friday, a favorite fable economists use to explain economics. Bu that is not reality, when one does it the entire class of employers double the workday. The crisis they engender are gluts. To raise the price of the goods they destroy the goods to shorten the supply are ways to raise the exchange-value of the product...everyone gets stunned and shocked at the news of tons of milk poured out on a highway while there are millions of milk-less children in society. A farmer pointing a gun to the head of his cattle because there is too much beef on the market. The contradiction is that capital is driven to lengthen the workday in order to compensate for the loss of 'hands', of those laid off began with the changing schedules overall to make an additional eight hours from 8 workers paid a dollar more but combined produce a value of one total working day free of charge to the employer.
Now the manager has to cope with external coercive laws of competition, once he does it they all do it, is what I said. Too much on the market that they are not profiting as much because it is harder to sell the volume when the number of buyers is shrinking,---wages are too low. People don't buy or they are spending their money elsewhere, or they don't even need or want the product. How does a manager know what his competitors are doing or what is going on in society that he can control production without generating a crisis is impossible within the framework of the system the manager and the labor operate!
My man dropping bombs as usual
Thank you Proff Wolff. I always learn some new in your videos.
Genius! Facts!
I love you
Such forward points, it is hard to believe more folks aren't behind these ideas. It makes more sense than anything else
Feed the algorithm
Nom nom nom
I am so grateful to have Dr. Wolff to use bare facts and numbers to refute sloppy, angry thinking.
So my post was deleted twice, good job Mr.Wolff, glad to see your support of freedom of speech and a different view is welcome on your channel.
Same in Canada, it is just same occult in power
Then there is another aspect! I am retired from a U.S. Immigration Court. If I had a dime for every forged document and frivolous application, I would be the richest man on earth!
Then also, while hearing immigration cases, and waiting a year or more for The Veterans Administration to process my service-connected disability claim. Undocumented individuals were already receiving federal and State aid, while as a service-connected disabled veteran, I waited and waited!
While it's probably true that you did have to wait a very long time to get any benefits from being disabled. It likely wasn't the VA, but the SSA that made it take so long and there are many onerous hoops to jump through to qualify. I don't think it's right and it certainly needs to be changed.
However, I'm definitely calling you out on the federal and state aid. If they are refugee/asylum seekers, then there is a need to provide resources for people, but in general, people who cross 'illegally' do not get any benefits. They definitely don't get EIC (earned income credit)and they would qualify for social security benefits when they get older if they've been using a forged SSN. And yes, the federal government knows because they do a simple check of SSN to last name.
Because of the pandemic, I have applied for benefits that I normally wouldn't have done in the past and every single one of them require that I prove my citizenship. Now it is possible that some states have separate funds to help immigrants and I do believe that SNAP has slightly different requirements for migrant workers, but getting a paltry amount to buy food is not the same as what you were implying with the word 'aid'.
Why is it there's something about a person who calls himself a military man then the next thing that is going to come out of his mouth is usually a lie?
@@akavienne Social Security had nothing to do with it. I stated the VA!
@@rcmrcm3370 Obviously, you are intellectually challenged, you even had to edit your post!
Va is prob similar to SSA since both are government agencies....it does take forever ....I can only speak on the SSA front a friend had a stroke and applied in jan didnt get approved until july (close to aug 1) and some sort of payment schedule hard to explain she wont get all the back pay from jan to now until sept (this month)... it is awful and I suspect the va isnt any better /faster I just dont get it and sorry you had that experience the government slowfulness is a sore spot for me !
Racism is tawdry, but it ain't cheap.
I’m a GenX-er in California, and for many years I worked in home health care, and no longer buy your argument. I stopped doing it mainly because it isn’t *health* care, and the pay was so low. My last employer was *so* happy to hire me because I speak excellent English and know the difference between dry and prepared mustard, etc. The other providers had come here from Figi on a visitor’s visa and just decided to stay. One of them had purchased a brand new SUV with the cash she’d saved up from years of working here illegally. *Many people illegally immigrate here for purely materialistic reasons.* I could *barely* afford to maintain, register, and insure my own used vehicle. The answer is to arrest the employers who hire them, but no one’s going to do that when Boomers are now old and decrepit and want cheap labor in their homes. I’m glad I won’t be changing their diapers. The presence of *so many* without legal permission to work here *drives down the wages citizens can demand.*
Thank you ✊🌹🗽🇺🇲
Unionizing ALL workers (legal and illegal) would demotivate employers from choosing illegal workers.
If there's no financial upside why risk the consequences?
I would love to see Wolff discuss the research into the economics of global open borders, how much we can decrease world poverty rates, and comparisons of life in major cosmopolitan areas before and after such an alteration. No one is discussing it. I've put up a few measley videos on the subject, but i'm certainly no expert, just a concerned citizen with an econ degree.
Mr. Wolf I'm down with you and I believe mostly in Marxism but I got to say I got two jobs both of these jobs mainly dominated by immigrants and sir I can tell you they're not the only ones working for low pay one job pays $17 an hour another job pays 14 this is in the state of Tennessee but everywhere I look around I see Americans working these low-paying jobs that you are referring to it's Americans and immigrants on average working for low paying jobs and both Americans and immigrants are demanding higher pay for decent living
Did you hear his premise that the labour supply of illegal immigrants is now tied so that they also have to be paid better? I don't know what it is but people just seem to want to hear what they want to hear and ignore the rest
Excellent analysis as usual professor!
I would almost agree with Prof. Wolf here except that low end jobs have very little to do with the price of products and inflation. (Owners will say wage increases affect pricing but it is not necessarily true from the workers or accountants perspective)
If we look at the overhead of a retail business the low end, low education, low skill, temporarily and part time jobs are a very small piece of the business overhead. It is different industry by industry but let's be generous and say that low end payroll is 20% of business overhead - the other 80% is rent, utilities, insurance, maintenance, middle management and upper management salaries, executive compensation, capital finance payment, interest, and a little bit of profitability.
So that is overhead, and if we say raise the low end salaries by 20% that is only a 4% raise in total overhead costs.
Now retail margins ((price - cost of goods)/price = margin%) sold are vastly different in different sectors, like grocery only averages about 2%, fast food around 8%, electronics around 10% and clothing around 12%. The margin is what pays all the overhead, but it is a small piece of the product price.
Let's say the margin on goods is 10%. If giving your low end staff a 20% pay raise means a 4% raise in overhead, then it would only mean a 0.4% rise in the price of goods to compensate.
And I believe my above math is generous, from what I have seen the low end wages for most industries are much lower than 20% of overhead and also margins are generally lower than 10%.
Also consider that most low end products are in a supply surplus (prior to COVID-19 and global shipping crisis). This supply surplus is largely due to the global adoption of automation and underpaid labor. With a supply surplus the price-demand relationship can invert where higher demand actually lowers prices because it uses more of the existing over supply. So for low end products, increasing low end wages would increase demand and thus lower product pricing (for low end goods).
So I do not think that raising minimum wage jobs (as said the type of job more typically taken by temporary immigrants) is going to significantly increase inflation. It is way more likely that inflation is due to other factors such as printing more money, increased housing costs, increased auto costs, increased luxury item costs, increased transportation costs and such which have a large impact on consumer price inflation index, but are not utilizing very much low end minimum wage labor in their production and sales.
Also COVID-19 is greatly affecting product costs due to the unusual global supply disruption (taking that inverted price-demand relationship mentioned above due to over supply and flipping it back right side around because there is no longer over supply). So now that demand is greater than supply, increased demand for low end products due to higher low end wages is what will drive prices up, more than actually paying the wage costs.
No one is against immigration. It’s illegal immigration that is a problem.
The free market will take care of the labor shortage if we leave it alone.
If an employer pays too little, go to another employer. If you can’t find anyone to pay you more, than you are getting market value for your talent and that is de facto fair.
Sounds like a net gain to me: more Americans get better jobs/working conditions, and overconsumption also gets a hit.
So a living wage is just too expensive. lol
Would you give up your megayacht and space ship company?
I think this is oversimplified to the point of not being representative of reality or having any practical sense. The rising costs of inputs is not mentioned at all, and a large chunk of the inputs are imports. Even if it would be fair to let immigrants work at low wages, which is not, that still reduces the income of regular USA citizens to the point of not being able to buy the resultant products that came from manufacturing with those expensive inputs.
Yes "helter-skelter", but also "willie nillie". With enuf gov't money, maybe the Capitalists can raise their game up 2 "ad hoc"
So what's the solution to this broken system, Comrade, Proffesor? If you bring in immigrants the corporations/owners will bring worker wages down but yet the cost of living will "still" be high. If you close the borders, wages will go up but now, the cost of living will be even "more" higher than when the borders were, open. By the way, I just ordered two of your books today.
Can Prof.Wolff just run for public office already?
Pretty please? 🍒
I think the argument that points out that higer wages are automatically traduced as higer prices has to be used carefully or -at least- expanded with other considerations. Otherwise it is usefull as a conservative argument against raising the minimun wage.
If higher minimum wages force employers to raise prices, then yeah, we shouldn't raise the minimum wage. Although I don't see why that has to be true anywhere but in industries that barely turn a profit.
But, but, but ... I thought there was a "Labor Shortage?"
(Of course, that's ridiculous. The US doesn't go from having one of the most precarious and highly redundant workforces on Earth to a state of vast "Labor Shortage" within the span of 18 months ... just because of COVID and lockdowns.)
Actually it's the other way around. Humans are the cause of debt, obviously, so when we are balancing ourselves using synchronized coordinated debt measuring, debt creation in it's entirety become balanced, thus driving inflation downward... actually flattening it permanently. The problem is that there is no coordination between all nations to balance debt creation, and so this is what we have. A very big debt problem.
Dr. Wolff, your analysis is correct, like most of the time, but you really should not refer to US citizen and permanent resident workers as "Native American workers". Regardless of whether that is common practice in the economic field or not, that is not correct terminology and is truly insulting to actual Native Americans. You almost never insult marginalized groups so I am pretty sure you did not mean to do this and were just struggling for the correct terminology here. I gotta say though, you should probably take this video down and redo it using different terminology.
Yes, it is that bad.
This guy gives me sharp increases in blood pressure
Breathe.
So they Only Make a Million Instead of a Million and a half . Are They not making a good Profit ?
Prof Wolff would you please make a video explaining the poreto distribution 80/20. rule. Often when I debate capitalist they bring it up as a reason why the inequality is not the system fault
and people suttch as Jordan Peterson often brig it up as a reason why capitalisam is moral...
Garbage, it hurts the people who are working. Compete for jobs and housing and social programs. What's wrong with that ??? Too crazy there isn't any housing now !!! People are working just not as many. Many working now until they qualify for unemployment benefits. Its the money printing that's doing it not the working poor!!!! No thanks to more immagration.
Cattles they need them....
5:00 omg you literally just told my 2020 timeline. Was still at min. Wage and bam covid hit and the fired around 50% of the company. None of the office workers mind you. Then came the 10+hrs 6 days a week. I quit. I go back at a higher wage. Then they got multiple government contracts witch I can't talk about but it came out to be over 100 million and is growing. I quit and I will not go there.
Maybe reconsider your usage of the term "native Americans" it seems a bit out of place in this context.
Dear Carson C, I stand corrected and will use "indigenous" henceforth instead of "native Americans.
@@RichardDWolff In the video, I thought you were using the term simply to describe non-immigrant American citizens. Native Americans and indigenous Americans are both acceptable terms and roughly interchangeable, but they refer specifically to First Nations peoples, a very small percentage of the modern American population. Immigrants taking low wage jobs affects all Americans, not just Native Americans. That's why I found the use of the term confusing. Not because of political correctness.
But mr. Wolf I'm seeing 95% of the people homeless and being evicted and out of work are Americans I'm sure in a few places here in there maybe immigrants but the people suffering the most during this pandemic hyperinflation economy is Americans
What America does create's similar problems in other countries, especially if America has occupied and robbed them and destroyed their economy for decades. To make things work we should alway's remember that the world it's people and resources are connected, through trade as well. We'll have to make a system that doesn't cater to the few instead it should be an economic model that can sustain a certain level of growth that delivers to all the people of the world without destroying the planet. That mean's throw useless luxeries and stuff out the window, believe that less is more, stop greed.
I'm Sorry Richard but We're Going to Have to Agree to Disagree on This One...We Need No More of the Buffer Class Take Care of Home First Before Most. I'm Not Going Out and Baring More Children Knowing I Can't Take Care of the Ones I Already Have. #ADOS/NYC
Okay so at the beginning he says that we are taking advantage of immigrants by paying them low salaries. Later, he says that the immigrants being forced out causes inflation by causing the raising of wages to attract legal citizens, which will cause inflation.
Then at 7:40 he says and i quote "fighting against the immigrant by closing their "opportunity". Closing their "opportunity"? He said earlier in so many words that the immigrants were being exploited by working for very low wages.....????????? that is an opportunity now?
So if we force out the immigrants and businesses have to raise wages to attract American citizens into those jobs, is that not a good thing? Does that not get people closer to making a "living wage" which Wolff often rages about? I thought rising wages was good right?
What happened to your, 'immigration is welfare for employers'.
Mr. Wolff, where do you live? What about American's with no jobs. Here is a fact, close to 70% of so-called baclk American youth cannot find jobs. That statistic has stood for over 30 years. How about this, if you enter a country breaking the law, they will never respect the laws in our countrt moving forward. Your opinion on this issue is way off, and I find it hard to understand how you came to your conclusion. Sorry, but the lawbis the law, and no one should break the law of our country ever.
Mỹ Lai massacre.
MY first time I do not agree with you. So basics are the rich get richer and the poor make less or lose out to others that have no problem in having 4 to 6 families living in one home or apartment. You need to check the tube here and check the. Immigration World Poverty and Gumballs 2010. You might just change your mind and keep the USA on a better shift. I normally agree with you. Be that as it may here I can not. Or maybe you can explain why the gumball effect is incorrect.
Mr. Wolff has an interesting use of “native American” which seems sort of non-PC, but it is very clear what he means. I’m curious if we will be referring to Mexican Americans (in the U.S.) as native Americans in two or three generations.
(Note that I’m aware Mexicans in Mexico can legitimately be called native or Mexican Americans; I’m using the colloquial “Americans” to refer to USians.)
your right most are native Americans, and most white people are European