>>> C. Edmund Wright is typical of many of the Perry backers (including builders, poultry processors and grocery owners): as long as I can benefit from illegal immigrants I couldn’t care less how it negatively affects the country.>>>
That is very misguided. You cannot say that builders, grocery owners and poultry processors benefit from this labor and then say that their customers — ie all consumers — don’t benefit as well. Consumers set the price of any good or service, not businesses. The businesses then have to figure out a way to meet that price or go out of business.
So actually, anyone who has ever shopped for any good or service based on price has benefitted from cheap labor, be it legal or illegal.
And you can’t assume that I ever hired illegals, because I ran all of my labor through a third party HR firm to vet them.
More to the point, it is the non working illegals here soaking up benefits that are killing us. it is the crime gangs that are killing us. It is the continued hand outs and the continued weak border incenting this behavior that is killing us.
An economy that has evolved over 50 years with consumers and businesses and labor ALL HAVING AN IMPACT ON IT is not what is killing us.
There are LOTS of other factors involved, as well as plenty of counterexamples.
The whole concept of market segmentation for example. An automobile is first and foremost a means of transportation. A Toyota Yaris will carry a lone driver just as well as an Escalade; but some people insist on shelling out $50,000+ for the Cadillac (along with higher gasoline prices per mile, higher maintenance costs, higher insurance). This is in large measure due to *marketing* which works against pure price-driven demand.
On the other hand, you have Nike and similar sneakers made overseas: and yet somehow the savings don't get passed on to the consumer, but pocketed. The same is true even more strongly for (say) software, where Microsoft was sitting on a cash hoard of $50 BILLION and enjoyed profit margins of 57%, without meaningful competition (so much for the universal, airily declaimed statement that "excess profits will bring in competitors who will lower the price"); and yet had their high ups say to the managers, "Think INDIA! Two for the price of one!"...but the price of Microsoft crap didn't fall to anywhere near the marginal cost of production.
And you can’t assume that I ever hired illegals, because I ran all of my labor through a third party HR firm to vet them. More to the point, it is the non working illegals here soaking up benefits that are killing us. it is the crime gangs that are killing us. It is the continued hand outs and the continued weak border incenting this behavior that is killing us.
Yep, like under the table payment for fake IDs, identity theft, lying about the background checks, etc. etc. are merely fictional.
These type of arguments are typical of those who which to abuse the largesse of American society by calling something a "free market exchange" when in fact the exchange is very one-sided, and they are taking advantage of the desperation of an underclass in order to lower the wages they will pay: they are even willing to go so far as to undermine the social fabric and legal structure of their own society by allowing the mass importation of disease-ridden, criminal elements of Third World countries, if that is the *societal* price for their being able to assure themselves of a constant stream of cheap, weak, unskilled laborers. (Not to mention that the widespread economic costs of welfare, govt. handout goodies, swamping of medical facilities, higher crime, diversity coordinators and language instructors, etc. etc. etc. are socialized to be borne mostly (in a statistical, actuarial sense) by people OTHER than the shyster using the illegal foreign labor.)
Nice try, though.
Cheers!