You can cut off low-skill immigration, but you still have to convince low-skill Americans to work.
There are something like 90 million working-age Americans out of the labor force, who are able to stay there because of government support. There’s a very high “welfare cliff” in this country.
What will it take for these Americans to take jobs picking apples, driving trucks or sweeping floors?
In my view, it’s a matter of incentives.
The returns to labor must be sufficient to encourage honest work, picking apples or whatever.
Second, there should be stronger social incentives to work. The welfare system needs to be radically redesigned. And no, I don’t mean radically cut. In my view, that isn’t practical in the near term.
I suppose there are people who don’t respond to incentives. They would probably end up in prison or in the fringes of society in any age, not just ours.
And a lot of people are out of work because there is no work thanks to Obama’s dreadful economy.