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To: CowboyJay
More mis-info.

The reality is that the US has labor shortages that are not going away.

As Alan Greenspan(to include all economists) has said numerous time, if you constrict the labor supply, wages will rise. If wages rise without a corresponding rise in productivity, inflation rises.

39 posted on 02/17/2006 8:29:49 AM PST by Ben Ficklin
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To: Ben Ficklin

Wages rise... hmmm... you mean businesses have to compete to attract legal citizens instead of just importing illegal workers. Competition leads to technical innovation. Innovation leads to increases in productivity.

Where C=available capital W=available workforce E= societal efficiency (technology, level of education, hours worked per person, et c.,.)

C x W x E = National GDP.

Standard of living = GDP/W.

You would suggest that the only way to increase the GDP is by increasing W. That is a logical fallacy. Our population, W, is currently in no danger of declining. The population where I live is exploding.

Productivity has been rising quite nicely. Real wages, however, were down last year. Wasn't because of a labor shortage. It's because our E factor isn't going up. There's no competitive pressure between domestic companies for it to go up due to the flood of cheap labor.

Point is, an expanding economy gives no net gain to the average citizen if it's purely a factor of population growth. The only way to increase our standard of living is through innovation. Inflation will never stop altogether. It's a product of expanding world population and scarcity of resources. An expanding national population will inevitibly lead to further inflation in housing prices.

PS - Why is it your set considers inflation bad, except when it's housing inflation? Please illuminate this poor ignorant soul. I tend to run on common sense, which runs contrary to most of what you're selling.


45 posted on 02/17/2006 10:34:51 AM PST by CowboyJay (Rough Riders! Tancredo '08)
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To: Ben Ficklin
The reality is that the US has labor shortages that are not going away.

Meaning some employers would rather not pay market-clearing wages. Funny how the free market suddenly ceases to operate when the wide open border is threatened.

70 posted on 02/18/2006 3:12:57 PM PST by Pelham ("Borders? We don' need no stinking borders!")
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