this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2025
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Political Compass Memes

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Libright misunderstanding basic economics as usual (infosec.pub)
submitted 1 week ago by PugJesus@lemmy.world to c/politicalcompassmemes@lemmy.world
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[–] wise_pancake@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I'm in 3 of these quadrants, because I do believe multiple things can be true at once and that immigration in Canada has been abused.

  • Letting in people who are willing to accept low quality of living because they'll be sent back to difficult situations does lower wages. Look at things like Tim Hortons (a Canadian fast food and coffee chain) abusing the TFW system to keep wages low. That objectively happened only a couple of years ago.
  • Predicating VISA status on staying in a shitty job allows companies drive down wages for everyone. If you want more money to do a job that's a "labour shortage" and they'll bring in more TFWs/VISA workers.
  • People broadly should be able to live where they like. After centuries even the most hard core racists and eugenecists have failed to demonstrate any evidence of one race as inferior or superior, and systemic poverty drives most of the racial differences in aggregate. As long as people have an open cultural mind and accept egalitarianism and equality, I don't really give a fuck what they look like, where they're from, or what their sexual orientation are.
  • My only criticism of immigration is we need to make sure we can provide for ourselves and the immigrants before letting them in. That means making housing more affordable for everyone, establishing a good employment environment, making sure we have enough good schools for our kids and hospitals for our sick. All of that also means establishing clear standards of what that all means, otherwise it's a drum we can keep beating on forever.
[–] PugJesus@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Letting in people who are willing to accept low quality of living because they’ll be sent back to difficult situations does lower wages. Look at things like Tim Hortons (a Canadian fast food and coffee chain) abusing the TFW system to keep wages low. That objectively happened only a couple of years ago.

Unless there's an issue of subminimum wage standards being applied to a 'second-class' of labor, as with illegal immigration in the States, increase of labor supply does not, in the medium-long term, decrease wages in a market system, as laborers are also consumers. Not really sure that a fast food chain is really driving down wages by employing people at the wage it already normally employs people.

Predicating VISA status on staying in a shitty job allows companies drive down wages for everyone. If you want more money to do a job that’s a “labour shortage” and they’ll bring in more TFWs/VISA workers.

That's much more of a criticism of temporary work visas than immigration.

My only criticism of immigration is we need to make sure we can provide for ourselves and the immigrants before letting them in. That means making housing more affordable for everyone, establishing a good employment environment, making sure we have enough good schools for our kids and hospitals for our sick. All of that also means establishing clear standards of what that all means, otherwise it’s a drum we can keep beating on forever.

What this practically means is never allowing immigration, because there will always be another problem to solve and another increase in standards which occurs. Imagine if folk in the 1890s implemented what you're saying, for example - you would have no reason (in the present day) to complain about continued immigration, our standards having far surpassed what would have been considered a 'good standard' of living in the 1890s.

Not only that, but restricting immigration does nothing to enable any of those goals; the idea of 'overpopulation' straining the housing market is an utter myth, employment environments are worsened by permissive regulatory institutions, not the competition of people seeking crumbs, and schools and hospitals are funded to the bare minimum as a matter of policy, not material restrictions by the 'immense' population of modern societies.

[–] wise_pancake@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The TFW situation I mentioned actually was a case where minimum wage is below living wage and people were no longer applying to minimum wage fast food jobs in high cost areas.

The answer should be to pay more and attract workers, but the government allowed TFWs in a category historically without any TFW employees to keep wages at minimums. That’s the kind of misuse of immigration that is problematic.

And I hear your point about former keeping the standards too high. I don’t think I’m convinced we couldn’t manage this long term better than setting standards once and forgetting it.

At least in Canada we have below replacement birth rates and an aging population, we need to manage population growth and immigration somehow. Right now just living is too expensive for people to have kids, which is obviously a problem, putting new people in that place and exacerbating it right now is a bad idea for everyone.

[–] PugJesus@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I don’t think I’m convinced we couldn’t manage this long term better than setting standards once and forgetting it.

Then what's the difference between your proposed solution and the exact problem you pointed out in it (ie that it becomes a 'drum to beat' as standards change)?

At least in Canada we have below replacement birth rates and an aging population, we need to manage population growth and immigration somehow. Right now just living is too expensive for people to have kids, which is obviously a problem, putting new people in that place and exacerbating it right now is a bad idea for everyone.

"We have below replacement birth rates and an aging population; therefore, we need to restrict immigration"

Are you...

Are you sure about that.

Have you considered that living expenses are high not because of material realities wherein there's some vital shortage of goods or services in the country, but because of poor regulation of firms which have allowed grotesque-but-profitable extortion of the nation; and that thus restricting the labor supply or consumer base will not actually boost wages or reduce prices.

[–] wise_pancake@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

I think you misinterpreted my below birth rate part, I think we do need immigration to help address that.

We just also need to help make it more viable to raise a family here.

Then what's the difference between your proposed solution and the exact problem you pointed out in it (ie that it becomes a 'drum to beat' as standards change)?

Setting one standard forever doesn’t match the ebbs and flows of our society as you said, but things are incredibly tough right now. I don’t know the right answer here, but right now we need to address our critical issues and we aren’t ready for more immigration at the moment. If we got back to say 30% of spending being on housing on average the situation suddenly makes a lot more sense to take in immigrants.

But one target like that isn’t enough,so we need so e sort of targets that we can infrequently update.

(PS: I do enjoy your pushing me on my opinions)

[–] PugJesus@lemmy.world 0 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I think you misinterpreted my below birth rate part, I think we do need immigration to help address that.

We just also need to help make it more viable to raise a family here.

But how will restricting immigration make it more viable to raise a family? How is restricting immigration, then, anything but self-defeating by your own identification of the ongoing problems?

I don’t know the right answer here, but right now we need to address our critical issues and we aren’t ready for more immigration at the moment. If we got back to say 30% of spending being on housing on average the situation suddenly makes a lot more sense to take in immigrants.

But again, this is all operating under the presumption that immigration worsens or somehow prevents the resolution of these issues, which is contrary to the actual causes of the situation by any serious analysis. Immigrants are not going to increase or decrease average spending on housing; the issue of housing and rent prices is almost completely divorced from supply-relative-to-population; this is an ongoing issue in Western societies that has been widely recognized in economics academia since the 1990s.

Marxist, Keynesian, Chicago School, and Austrian Cult economics are all in agreement on the issue of immigration wrt prices and wages. Your proposal that immigration needs to be restricted in order to restore economic equilibrium and provide a decent standard of living is just not an idea that is taken seriously by any economics analysis; it's a purely knee-jerk reaction that belongs solely in the political realm of preying on prejudices and preconceptions to call for easy-but-actually-counterproductive 'solutions', like tariffs 'restoring jobs' to a country.

[–] jatone@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Thats probably because your opinions are pretty laughable. I really am sorry (not really, you're just parroting long debunked nonsense) but there it is.

Immigration is pretty much never the problem. Its always the capital class abusing standards of care to enrich themselves.

Its way easier/cheaper to abuse someone on a visa who is desperate to not go back than it is to compete for employees in a labor market that isnt coercive.

Which in turn puts downward pressure on nonimmigrants wages. If you remove the coercive elements of the systemic effects on immigrants the problem would resolve itself to everyone but the capital class' benefit.

Jobs would be filled at wages that allow for those individuals to go and buy things which in turn increases demand creating more jobs.

The only bit you need to take care with is the rate so you dont oversaturate an area.

That fact is you dont understand dynamic systems and you just quote idiotic takes from morons like musk who benefit from being able to exploit these people at your own detriment.

If you want to see a positive change grant citizenship to any undocumentedee immigrants who reports their employer for employing them, and remove company sponsorship of visas allowing them to freely change jobs.

You'll see a dramatic shift in employment patterns.

This is literally the same reason the US doesnt have decent healthcare. Its a coercive process that forces sick people and their family to work and exploited by corporations. Everytime you hear 'we need to put work requirements on x' you can pretty much replace it with 'i cant exploit these people as much as id like'

[–] maxwells_daemon@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Yes, we need child labor for the weed farms.