[Puffer Fish]

Minimum wage workers can't afford rent anywhere in America
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/realest ... d=msedgntp

Time to cut off illegal and low-skill immigration?

A huge segment of the American workforce earns minimum wage or close to minimum wage.

28% of the workforce earns less than $15 per hour.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business ... nic-women/

Just over 50% of American workers earn less than $20 per hour.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/a-maj ... 2014-11-14

According to one study, 44% of U.S. adult workers are employed in the type of jobs that typically have median annual wages of $18,000. Most of these low wage workers were in their prime working years, 25 to 54 years old.​

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/minimum-wa ... wage-jobs/
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-aven ... go-around/


Continuing to add more people is just going to make the nation overflow with poverty.

There are already housing shortages in many areas. Too many people in one area push housing prices up, especially leading to severe shortages of the more affordable housing options.

Hasn't it been repeatedly stated over and over again that the mean reason for letting in these immigrants is so they can do the low paid work that supposedly "Americans don't want to do"?
Well I think there's going to be a big problem when HALF of these jobs in the economy are "jobs Americans don't want to do", supposedly. Things are going to start resembling the Third World conditions in many Latin American countries a lot more.

[Unthinking Majority]

And yet most Americans, and even most Democrats, won't elect someone like Bernie Sanders because he's a "socialist".

The Democrats nominated Hillary the neoliberal scumbag over Bernie Sanders.

COVID deaths, gun shootings, extremely high post-secondary costs, and low wages/poverty etc are the price of "freedom" many Americans so cherish at all costs. Pretty much all of America's allies figured out how to solve most of these problems many decades ago, but most Americans are so self-centered and ignorant they refuse to look outside their doors. Many Americans are total idiots and deserve their fates. I don't feel bad for them, they vote for their own suffering.

[Puffer Fish]

Pretty much all of America's allies figured out how to solve most of these problems many decades ago, but most Americans are so self-centered and ignorant they refuse to look outside their doors.

Hold up, that may not be an entirely fair comment.
You can break America's "allies" into two categories: Those with higher levels of diversity and/or have taken in higher levels of immigration over the years, and those with lower levels of diversity. When you do that a clear pattern emerges.
Most NATO countries in Europe, for example, had much lower levels of immigration than the US did until the late 1990s and 2000s. And as these countries in Europe increased the level of migrants from other parts of the world, their poverty rates increased, and housing shortages and affordability issues similar to those in the US started becoming a problem.

I do wonder if some of those countries became more Socialist because they had lower rates of poverty at some point to begin with, rather than the other way around.
I covered that in another thread: The Paradox of Poverty
viewtopic.php?f=9&t=177378

We should be cautious about selectively cherry-picking other countries in the world to compare the US to. Especially when nearly all of those countries happen to be Western European or majority White English-speaking, it should give us some pause to think. The correlation might be due to other regional or historical factors.

Lastly, there's also a theory about the "Global South", and it is worth pointing out that a larger percent of the US population lives closer towards the equator than in any other developed country, with only a few small exceptions. Geography, or the interplay between historical factors and geography, might also play a role in some way we do not understand.

[Puffer Fish]

Look, I wasn't necessarily saying that Socialism will help or not help. I'm just saying even if you get a government to implement Socialist policies, don't expect things in the US to look like Western Europe.
There are some big significant underlying differences between these two areas.

The same way that Socialism is not going to turn Eastern Europe into Western Europe.

[The Young Wizard]

Wouldn't at least part of the answer be to boost the minimum wage?


Also, people are going to continue to want to travel to the developed world so long as extensive poverty persists in the rest of the world. Either the world accepts that's its responsibility, or we just keep shutting down the borders. Given it's largely the international order is largely determined by the developed world anyway, it's largely our fault how those people live. So, in locking them out, we're punishing them for a situation we have largely caused.

Either I deny this, and live in a fools paradise, or I accept it but don't change, and accept I'm a monster who is happy to see other people live in misery to sustain their own life - stand idly by while their dreams, and the dreams for their families, are brutalised by the world, in all the worst ways, again and again and again, until it all collapses - or I do what I can about it. Unfortunately, the latter is little.

[late]

Well I think there's going to be a big problem when HALF of these jobs in the economy are "jobs Americans don't want to do", supposedly. Things are going to start resembling the Third World conditions in many Latin American countries a lot more.

If you act like a 3rd world country long enough, you get to be one.

(That's mine)

[ckaihatsu]

Continuing to add more people is just going to make the nation overflow with poverty.

There are already housing shortages in many areas. Too many people in one area push housing prices up, especially leading to severe shortages of the more affordable housing options.

I think we can safely blame *capitalism* for the ongoing speculative bubble that the housing market is -- it was the raising of interest rates in the '80s that spurred this development, of housing as an investment vehicle.


The Housing Affordability Crisis We Don't Want To Solve - YouTube

---

Pretty much all of America's allies figured out how to solve most of these problems many decades ago,

No, not so much....


European migrant crisis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_migrant_crisis


And:

But Lagarde made clear she was not in favour of winding back the ECB’s measures even as inflation starts to show signs of rising in Europe. She said monetary policy had to be “especially forceful and persistent” when interest rates were at their lower limit as they are at present. She said “forceful” and “persistent” were “key words” that policy makers should not “undermine or underestimate.”

The issues are the same as in the US. Such is the dependence on the flow of money from the central bank, the fear is that any reduction could set off a financial crisis. In 2011, in the wake of the global financial crisis, the ECB raised rates. That decision is regarded as having contributed to the sovereign debt crisis of 2012 which only ended when the then ECB president Mario Draghi said the central bank would do “whatever it takes” to defend the euro.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/0 ... l-j15.html