“You are absolutely right. Those who employ illegals are current day slave owners. They are employing labor with limited options and profiting as a result.”
No, no, no. That’s absolutely not what I’m saying. People who earn wages and are free to move on to another job are not slaves, no matter what they’re payed. I believe in a free market in labor, and if that means employers “exploit” the “underclass,” or whatever, so be it.
What I’m saying is that people who insist that we need a permanent underclass, imagining them as somehow below the marketplace and not prone to the usual laws of economics, are stupid. We didn’t need slavery, and we don’t need, I don’t even know what to call it. Semi-free labor? Labor is a commodity like anything else. Jobs will get done no matter we have to pay, even if it’s a little more, just like they were done after free slave labor disappeared.
For the record, I don’t care what anyone makes for an honest day’s work. I don’t care if it’s below minimum wage. Whatever they’re willing to work for, that’s the right price. Because they’re free to sell their labor for whatever price they can get, just like employers are free to buy labor for whatever they can get. That’s how it works with everything else, and that’s how it best works with labor. There’s no special government fairy dust that can come in and make everything fair and equal and blah, blah. Whenever anyone’s paid above the market rate, it comes out of something else.
Except when an element of the work force is here illegally- free market cannot work as it should. Legal citizens cannot compete with illegals for jobs. Illegal workers create a false low in the labor market. The dirty secret is that illegals cannot live on the low wages either which is why they overwhelm our social services and medical care. The benefits of hiring illegal workers are low wages, little or no benefits, and they will tolerate unsafe or otherwise inferior working conditions. The employer saves money hiring illegals but the taxpayers must pay the difference by paying for social services and medical care for the illegal workers. This puts an odd skew on free market that cannot be good.
Another issue that is seldom touched on- not all businesses are willing to hire illegals. In every industry that hires large numbers of illegals- agriculture, construction- you name it there are businesses that follow the laws and hire only legal workers. Those businesses must compete with businesses that do hire illegals and it is an unfair competition. Many businesses have been put out of business because they cannot compete with those that hire illegals. If we willingly allow some businesses to violate laws in order to show a higher profit- that is not what free market is all about either.
Hiring illegals should never be part of free market- there should be no illegal labor in the work force.
Exactly, the second part of your statement is that as labor becomes more expensive, innovation happens and reduces the need for labor. Over the long haul everyone's standard is raised. We didn't become an industrial nation because of cheap labor if that were the case Mexico would be a world leader in innovation.