What did we do right to create a great middle class and what did we do wrong to destroy it?

[ivwshane]

So are you implying that the income of illegal immigrants that never get reported to the government, via taxes or via the census, are enough to justify the known data (that shows we have a decrease in middle class) to the point where it shows we have a growing middle class full of illegal imigrants?

I'll take citations for all your claims please. You are making claims based on correlations I've never seen so I'd like to see where you are getting your info from.

 

[ivwshane]

I think I should adjust that minimum to $25K, and the fine should only apply to those of legal working age.

In reality, the fine is actually the theoretical amount the illegal imigrant would have payed in taxes to the federal government if, they had come into the United States legally. Just think about it, a person with a H1-B visa does have to pay taxes, but an illegal immigrant would not be paying taxes, but are having a job. It's almost like tax evasion.

What's tax evasion is the company who hired them. Not only are you going after people who probably couldn't even pay such a fine but you are making the assumption that you'll be able to find them and go after them in the first place. Not only is that a ridiculous assumption but the costs associated with enforcement would be way more than any money collected.

 

[SMOGZINN]

So are you implying that the income of illegal immigrants that never get reported to the government, via taxes or via the census, are enough to justify the known data (that shows we have a decrease in middle class) to the point where it shows we have a growing middle class full of illegal imigrants?

No, what I am saying is that illegal immigration has basically nothing to do with the decline of the middle class. The economy does not care what color a person's skin is, what country they came from, or how they got the job. Illegal immigrants do not take jobs that would keep someone in the middle class at any significant levels.

 

[pmv]

Where to you suppose they are taking them to? Because it does not really matter for an economy who works a job. The job still generates income, which is then spent to keep the economy moving.

I really shouldn't make this point, because it's colluding with the other side. But what you say here does depend to some degree on how much gets sent home in remittances, and whether a migrant is intending to stay or is merely looking to earn as much as possible and then take their saved earnings home with them. It might be that the migrant's labour is helping the economy of their country of origin. It also might be that the money is spent on imports or on inflating the prices of goods in finite supply, like housing, benefiting the landlord class and hence the distribution of wealth within a society (shifting wealth upwards).

I don't know, I don't believe immigration is a major cause of this income stagnation/regression, but I think how this all inter-relates is quite complicated and depends on a vast number of contingent factors. It's not necessarily always the case that new workers coming in automatically create just the right demand to create jobs to exactly cancel out the jobs they take. Remitances are one form of 'leakage'. If new workers automatically created new jobs to equal those they take, countries with high unemployment could sove it by having all the unemployed leave, and then come straight back again as 'immigrants'.

Of course, helping the country of origin's economy might also be good ultimately for everyone's economy (especially if you are in some sort of supra-national uniton like the EU, where in theory we are supposed to all feel that we are all in it together and will prosper or fail as a group). Or it might not, depending on how politics go in future. And if the country of origin is a very poor one, there's a strong moral case for it anyway.

And all this applies to all immigration, whether legal or not.

I don't think you can assume immigration has no effect, that it all necessarily cancels out, but what effect it _does_ have depends on all the other political and economic factors that are in play. And maybe it's those that need to be changed.

 

[pmv]

Illegal immigrants do not take jobs that would keep someone in the middle class at any significant levels.

Yeah, that's also true - 'illegal' migrants are going to be competing at the very bottom end of the job-market, and if that's where many of your locals are, job-wise, then you already have a problem with a collapsing middle-class.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Examine economic indicators and time series since the Great Depression. At a time when Hollywood had produced "The Best Years of our Lives", labor unions were in ascendancy and the distribution of wealth and income was more even than it has ever been since. After about 1970, wages began to stagnate and corporate wealth continued to advance, because less and less attention was given to Roosevelt-era reforms and a need to organize labor. Corporations learned to circumvent a status-quo put in place by Roosevelt.

And it was during the 1950s and 1960s when we had a solid, prosperous middle class.

Originally, the idea prevailed that we could avoid "socialism" and the less-palatable varieties of collectivism precisely because there was a strong middle class.

 

[SMOGZINN]

I really shouldn't make this point, because it's colluding with the other side.

I'm always happy to engage in honest debate. I try to always evaluate the arguments on their own merit.

But what you say here does depend to some degree on how much gets sent home in remittances, and whether a migrant is intending to stay or is merely looking to earn as much as possible and then take their saved earnings home with them.

Yes, this would make their contribution to an economy lesser than a full citizens, but I would argue that it is still a insignificant difference. Very little of the wealth being generated actually goes to the worker, and even less of it for the lowest level workers. Most of that wealth gets generated for the employer. The employers are the ones that the illegal immigrant's labor is enriching, and that is how illegal immigrants help the economy, no matter where they send or spend their wages. So, yes, illegal immigrant might be less valuable than a full citizen, but the difference is going to be insignificant. It certainly is not even worth mentioning when you consider the amount of 'remittance' that a company like Walmart does by sending the money it makes from the US to other countries. The drain on the economy from the money every illegal immigrant in the US sends back home pales in comparison to the drain of just one company like Walmart doing it.

I don't know, I don't believe immigration is a major cause of this income stagnation/regression, but I think how this all inter-relates is quite complicated and depends on a vast number of contingent factors.

This is absolutely true. An economy like ours is super complex and it is nearly impossible to foresee all the ripple effects.

Of course, helping the country of origin's economy might also be good ultimately for everyone's economy

In the end 'globalization' should have the effect of averaging the entire worlds economy, if we have the resources to be able to manage that. The danger is that the world is simply not able to support an entire world with an economy at a level somewhere near that of the West.

I don't think you can assume immigration has no effect, that it all necessarily cancels out, but what effect it _does_ have depends on all the other political and economic factors that are in play. And maybe it's those that need to be changed.

The effects of immigration are going to be relatively small compared to that of other factors, simply because the amount of money being moved around by immigration is relatively small.

 

[thraashman]

Simplest answer in the world to the "what did we do wrong to destroy it" is that we ever listend to Republicans. Supply-side, trickle-down, voodoo, whatever you want to call it economics. It literally has the quickest rate to failure of an economic system in world history. Unless you count success as it fucked up everyone's life but the richest.

 

[imported_tajmahal]

22 million undocumented or illegal aliens that drive down wages for middle class workers. Replacing trade workers and keeping the cost of labor artificially low.

Yale, MIT study: 22 million, not 11 million, undocumented immigrants in US

The undocumented population in the United States could be twice as large as the most commonly-used estimate, according to a research study published Friday in the

thehill.com

 

[SMOGZINN]

Unless you count success as it fucked up everyone's life but the richest.

I mean that is what it was designed to do, so success!

 

[Jhhnn]

22 million undocumented or illegal aliens that drive down wages for middle class workers. Replacing trade workers and keeping the cost of labor artificially low.

Yale, MIT study: 22 million, not 11 million, undocumented immigrants in US

The undocumented population in the United States could be twice as large as the most commonly-used estimate, according to a research study published Friday in the

thehill.com

Yawn.

"No matter how carefully a theoretical model may seem to be calibrated, it is not useful unless it is consistent with the real world," said Steven Camarota, the Center's Director of Research. "It is incumbent upon the authors to explain how their estimate can be reconciled with other data. It seems extremely unlikely that the Census Bureau, the Department of Education, and other records of vital statistics miss so many people year after year."

New Estimate of 22 Million Illegal Immigrants Is Not Plausible

No matter how carefully a theoretical model may seem to be calibrated, it is not useful unless it is consistent with the real world.

cis.org

What's really happened is that share of national income has shifted hugely to the top 1% at the expense of the lower 75%. Since 1980, the bottom 50% lost 1/3 of their share & those in the 50-75% lost 1/5 of theirs. The top 1% doubled their share & they were already rich in the first place. We failed to distribute the economic fruits of progress in an equitable way. We let the ownership class have nearly all of it.

 

[imported_tajmahal]

Only yawn if you think a scientific study by 2 Universities is the same as a white paper response by CSI.

Yawn.

New Estimate of 22 Million Illegal Immigrants Is Not Plausible

No matter how carefully a theoretical model may seem to be calibrated, it is not useful unless it is consistent with the real world.

cis.org

What's really happened is that share of national income has shifted hugely to the top 1% at the expense of the lower 75%. Since 1980, the bottom 50% lost 1/3 of their share & those in the 50-75% lost 1/5 of theirs. The top 1% doubled their share & they were already rich in the first place. We failed to distribute the economic fruits of progress in an equitable way. We let the ownership class have nearly all of it.

 

[Jhhnn]

Only yawn if you think a scientific study by 2 Universities is the same as a white paper response by CSI.

Well, there's that observable reality thing. Or maybe it's another deep state conspiracy thing by all the other people who've kept track of it for decades, because the Precious.

 

[ivwshane]

22 million undocumented or illegal aliens that drive down wages for middle class workers. Replacing trade workers and keeping the cost of labor artificially low.

Yale, MIT study: 22 million, not 11 million, undocumented immigrants in US

The undocumented population in the United States could be twice as large as the most commonly-used estimate, according to a research study published Friday in the

thehill.com

It’s probably best to demonize those looking for jobs who are illegal versus those that are looking to hire illegals. /eye roll

Do you ever defend the worker over the corporation