Should We Repeal the law of Supply and Demand

self FR ^ | 1/11/ | Bob Schmidt

[spintreebob]

I did breakfast early this morning at McDonalds near a large ATLANTA institution construction site with hundreds of workers on a cold Saturday morning. McDonalds was crowded with them. The women behind the counter were obviously family of some of the construction workers, all macho. All construction workers were Hispanic. Almost all were Mexican. Many were obviously recent immigrants. A significant number were teenagers. Some appeared to be as young as 14. The teenagers might qualify as Dreamers. (I have experience since 1962 developing this skill of recognizing them.

Were these young teenagers here on Saturday morning on a take your son to work day? Or do they work here 6 days a week? I did not ask. Mostly I eaves dropped on their conversations in Spanish.

Construction is booming in the US (except Illinois and a few isolated places). There is a shortage of people qualified to be construction workers. The number one requirement is to come to work on time, be sober with no hangover, not high on pot or other drugs, and willing to do what needs to be done. That criteria excludes some unemployed people, and some employed people who would like the higher pay scale that construction has over fast food. In Atlanta, go to a fast food place where non-Hispanics are employed. Watch how the employees arrive to work and smoke a joint, or take a drink while in their car before coming in to work. Watch how they go to their car on break and smoke a joint. These people are not qualified for the higher paying construction jobs.

There is a big demand for people willing and able to work in Atlanta, and apparently in most of the US. How will the demand for workers be filled? Should we repeal the law of supply and demand? Should we restrict the availability of people willing to work and kill Trump's economic boom becuae we don't like the law of supply and demand?

[spintreebob]

Should we limit who can win? Who can get too much of a good thing?

[kearnyirish2]

Employers already repeal that law by trafficking foreigners here to take American jobs; American workers’ lots in life will only improve when their salaries increase, and that isn’t happening.

[Two Kids' Dad]

I have no problem with legal immigrants. Illegals belong in their home country, even if they’re good with a hammer and saw.

[SaxxonWoods]

You sound a little weird, spying on people.

Maybe we should repeal vanities.

[central_va]

We have too much legal immigration. Where have you been? All immigration needs to stop for many decades.

[Cowboy Bob]

Many were obviously recent immigrants.

Their backs were still wet...

[Jim W N]

If you can repeal the law of gravity, you can repeal the economic laws of supply and demand.

Let me know how that goes.

Socialist governments, of course, keep attempting to do just that but the results are akin to someone running out of a 10-story building thinking he has repealed these unchanging laws. Another failed socialist government off to the scrap heap - but yet they keep trying.

Next.

[central_va]

What a pant load. As wages increase the supply of labor increases. WE DON'T NEED NO STINKIN' MEXICANS.

America for Americans.

[Dilbert San Diego]

I read this three times and sorry, not sure what the point is. Is this article assuming that these workers are here illegally? And that we can’t do anything about illegal aliens because some are working in areS where we have a shortage of workers?

If I missed the point entirely hopefully someone can educate me on the point of this article.

[Jim from C-Town]

Sorry, Bob.

American workers who refuse to work qualify for welfare. Obama saw to that.

Eliminate welfare for healthy people, cut off the supply of cheap foreign slave labor and see how quickly those jobs are filled with Americans. A large increase in wages will also occur.

It isn’t Supply and Demand when the government is distorting the market.

[Vaduz]

Here in California most all construction workers were Hispanic and their work shows it companies won’t pay a normal wage for skilled workers and fire traps are built every day.

[JPJones]

“All immigration needs to stop for many decades.”

Yup.

Let the Age of Assimilation begin.

[vladimir998]

Are you going to repeal the law of gravity next???

[central_va]

There is a shortage of people qualified to be construction workers at the wages being offered.

Fixed.

Wages have been suppressed by illegal and legal immigration. The laws of supply and demand work both ways. Higher wages mean more people will apply to do that work.

[Jim from C-Town]

Your economic understanding of the situation is not complete.

We do not need new low skilled workers. We need to motivate the 90,000,000 American citizens who are of working age who are not working to actually work. In order to do that we have to make working more lucrative to these people than not working.

Welfare reform is the key to this.

[Leaning Right]

You are actually asking the wrong question. The real question here is this: Should we ignore laws that are on the book?

If the answer to that question is yes (for whatever reason), then the door is open to ignore any law. The “Rule of Law” becomes the “Rule of Doing Whatever Feels Good At the Moment”.

[Jim W N]

“What we need” does not “repeal” the laws of supply and demand. Changing the supply in the free market or changing the demand in the free market does not “repeal” the laws of supply and demand. It is how the free market creates wealth.

Governmental wage and price controls, on the other hand, like minimum wage, are the boneheaded attempts by government to ignore or “repeal” the laws of supply and demand always with disastrous results like the guy running out of the 10th story window.

[Jim from C-Town]

I stated in a previous post that the government is distorting the market.

I think we are on the same page here. At least the same chapter.

[PGR88]

Supply and Demand work quite logically. The nanny-state pays American men to stay at home on the couch (or in prison), and then imports 3rd world men to do the difficult jobs that US companies supposedly can't find any workers for. Its a win-win for the Left.

There's an estimated 10 million perfectly fit and capable men between the ages of 23-50 who simply do not work. That number increases if you take into account the rapid rise in people on disability or in prison using figures from the 1950's as a basis.

And its all funded by massive government debt and deficits in our printed Federal Reserve currency. The perfect progressive scheme.

[ichabod1]

It’d be nice if you weren’t required to speak Spanish, or at least Spanglish to get hired in construction.