The Atlantic: How Democrats Lost Their Way on Immigration

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After looking up income inequality data and immigration data I simply could not find a chart with both sets of data put together to really see how they changed in relation to each other over time. So I had to use the raw data and put together my own chart.



http://imgur.com/a/YZdWq

While I do agree with Democrats over issues like tax rates and the decline in labor unions on their impact on income inequality, they simply refuse to bring up the issue of immigration on income inequality.

Edit: Is there a reason that imgur pictures don't show up?

Immigration & inequality data comparison has to one of the dumbest comparison ever. This is why people need to study Economics.

There are multiple reasons for Income inequality - All scientific & provem but the biggest is Fraudulent Trickle Down Economics. Apart from that the fall of the strength of union & thus bargaining power, NAFTA causing companies to relocate & using it as a bargaining chip for wage negotiation, the rise of emerging nations with lower wage level (which meant US can't export goods anymore) & rather would import cheaper goods or services & so on.

The biggest reason is obviously Trickle down economics which has caused lop-sided income generation.





Significant income has been created but it's distribution has been rather lopsided.

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My 2 cents of the topic -

Immigration's role in preventing a collapse of Medicare, SS & entire US economy - US has an ageing population. The number of people who are old vs in the working age is disproportionately higher & could cause a budgetary crisis. An influx of people in their working age paying taxes is what is supporting this system (many just pay taxes & never get anything in return). Without immigration, it would collapse.

Support for refugees - I am bit disappointed in the racist undertones. US has f***ed up countries, killed people mercilessly & has been helped by trade for many decades. US has an absolute responsibility for Syrian & Iraqi refugees. Syrian women are doing prostitution in Lebanon. What kind of a mom would send her child in a boat? These are desperate people trying to have a shot in life. Every reasonable country must share some burden.

Net positive effect of Immigration - Most major economic studies show Immigration is a strong positive on the US economy on the whole. A large share of Silicon Valley CEO's & Top Management people who handle businesses which employ 100's of 1000's, some of the innovative companies, many businesses are run by immigrants. Many of these are highly educated - Pay significantly more taxes than non-immigrants, commit less crime, create jobs or manage large enterprises & are multi-cultural. Are there some odd cases of wage under-cutting? Yes. But a significantly high share of these are highly intelligent, educated people who work their as* off, pay huge taxes, get 0 welfaree e & contribute more to the economy than native borns.

Huge shortage of skilled workers in US - A high school degree is no longer good enough to get a decent job anymore. There is a massive shortage of skilled workers & the average level of intellect is pretty low, look at the low level of intelligence in this forum.

The National Association for Business Economics' latest business conditions survey found that 35 percent of the 112 economists who participated reported their firms had seen shortages of skilled labor during the quarter ending in July. That compared with only 25 percent in the April survey and marked a sharp pick-up from 22 percent during the July quarter last year.

http://www.cnbc.com/2015/07/20/survey-shows-growing-us-shortage-of-skilled-labor.html

A lengthy list of lines of work that will show significant shortages includes occupational therapists, nurses, plant operators and machinists, and the states with the tightest labour markets include Texas and Colorado.


A whopping 61 percent of owners we surveyed said they’re experiencing extreme or moderate difficulty finding quality employees to expand their business. While the 4.4 percent unemployment rate is low, there are still many people who want to work but are not currently employed. This includes people who have lost a job, are re-entering the workforce or are new to the job market. A significant chunk of those individuals are older — with 1.3 million Americans age 55 and older looking for work but unable to find it, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics

https://www.ft.com/content/41978d46-05a7-11e6-a70d-4e39ac32c284

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/economy-budget/335896-workers-wanted-skilled-labor-shortage-hinders-business

http://www.budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2016/1/27/the-effects-of-immigration-on-the-united-states-economy

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-03-24/immigrants-are-making-the-u-s-economy-stronger
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Don't have much to add, but can we look at the effective top tax rate for those eras?  I'm pretty sure no one was paying 80% on the top whatever % of their money at any point in history.  During the 1950s, I am pretty sure the Eisenhower administration and Republicans in Congress jammed through additional tax loopholes and even lowered the rate, so the whole "let's take the rates back to where they were under Eisenhower!" has always rung hollow to me.

Effective tax rates is not a good benchmark to judge income inequality & is mostly irrelevant. Effective tax rates of Top 1 or 2 % is a better indication maybe, but that kind of data is not available. Otherwise Effective is only an average & meaningless number for inequality.

For example - Corporate tax as a % of overall Federal revenue has fallen but payroll taxes has largely made up for it. Reagan for example increases Social Security tax, gas tax, cigarette tax etc & everyone paid for it including low income people while he cut taxes on high income people.

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"The thing that limits us is hiring the world's best engineers," he says, noting that 60 percent of the students at the top U.S. computer-science departments are foreign-born."Traditionally, most of them stay in the country and jobs are created around them. Now that we've hit these quotas, they have to go somewhere else," Gates says. "These are very, very high-paying jobs," he says, noting that the average salary, including benefits, is worth more than $100,000 annually, regardless of where the employee is based.

"The only question we can deal with is do we allow them to stay here and work," he says. "Traditionally, the U.S. — because it's so attractive — has had this huge advantage that other countries bemoan. ... Now, they celebrate the fact that we're kicking them out after giving them the world's best education."

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88154016

The IT Industry will leave the US if it can't retain the best educated people, people who have studied in elite institutions. The whole IT industry will die because these are some of the most intelligent, highly paid, innovative, talented people that there is who build an eco-system & an industry & create huge number of jobs.

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Immigration & inequality data comparison has to one of the dumbest comparison ever. This is why people need to study Economics.

http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

Neither of you must know anything about economics or common sense then. If you increase the supply of labor you drive down wages, while at the same time allow business owners to derive greater profits due to the lower labor costs. So increased labor supply means incomes for people at the bottom and middle go down as a share of the total, while greater profits means incomes for those at the top go up as a share. To just flatly say there is no effect from immigration on inequality without actually going through the real mechanics to debunk it, you prove that your reaction was simply knee-jerk because you are in favor of mass migration for other reasons and obviously do not really care about reducing income inequality by addressing all factors that contribute to it.

I never said immigration was the sole reason for inequality, but you can't deny it is a contributing factor. So let's agree to raise taxes on the wealthy, establish universal healthcare by expanding Medicare and Medicaid, adjust our trade deals so we don't allow outsourcing to nations that fail to meet our standards on human rights, environmental regulations, workplace safety, child labor, etc. and reduce the amount of immigration to only highly skilled people for occupations where there is a labor shortage. Why would Democrats refuse to make that reasonable compromise?

You make ridiculous arguments & it is unsurprising as it is coming from someone who has never studied economics.

The basic principle of Economics is Supply & Demand. US faces a shortage of highly skilled people especially in the areas of science, math, engineering etc. There is a skill shortage & this gap is filled by some of the most intelligent, skilled people who come in at good wages & help an entire industry survive, thrive & innovative.  Many of these people study in US Universities & many become entrepreneurs later.  For one, are the people coming in relying of Welfare? How much taxes will they be paying? How critical is that sector? What kind of crimes will they commit? Can they easily assimilate in the society?

America has an ageing population. The number of tax-payers to welfare/SS/Medicare recipients has fallen. There is a huge need for able bodied skilled high earning people to pay taxes for this system to even survive. Otherwise in a few years SS/Medicare/Medicaid, the general budget will go bankrupt !

Immigration should always be managed - I don't think any1 should support illegal immigration but if some is not a criminal & in the country for long, you have to take a call with empathy. But on the whole most immigration should be legal & depending on the needs of the society.

Which sectors need people? That is huge immigration laws are based. If you need doctors, you get them. If you need mechanics, you get them. There is a demand & according to it immigration numbers are managed. If you need 100 doctors & you let 10,000 immigrate, then that is stupid & terrible.

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Allow undocumented immigrants to sue and make the penalties for underpaying severe.

There would be less people to build houses as well. Immigrant families still pay taxes, and don't get much in the way of benefits.


People immigrated to the US because there were jobs. Mexican immigration has been going down for a long time. Immigration had been shown to have long term benefits.

http://www.budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2016/1/27/the-effects-of-immigration-on-the-united-states-economy

You are so out of touch on this issue. You are supposed to be the party of the working class and you are using arguments from the Wharton Business school. "Most academic research finds little long run effect on Americans’ wages." What did Keynes say about the long run again? That's right "In the long run we are all dead." So they admit that immigration does depress wages, but if you look over a long enough period of time, like say 30 or 40 years, then it all evens out so it's all good, right? Meanwhile, American families are suffering from depressed wages and lost jobs during their peak working years when they are trying to support families, but it's OK because we have the new Democratic party here to tell them that in the long run things are going to be to great.

Your party was involved in allowing a huge influx of immigrants and trade deals that took away jobs and depressed wages for American workers, and your solution is to continue the same policies, and just have those workers who lose out go on welfare. Most people don't want to live off of handouts, they want jobs, they want to feel like they are needed. What the hell happened to the party of FDR? What happened to big government works programs in times of high unemployment? Don't just blame Republicans, this is all on your party. You guys had compete control in 2009, with Congressional majorities not seen in a generation and you did crap with it. We should be subsidizing private businesses to take on long term unemployed, and creating temporary government jobs constructing and cleaning up public roads, buildings, parks, etc. We should also be paying to help retrain laid off workers. Again, don't just blame Republicans, you guys had the power and didn't do it.

Stop relying on the old talking point "America is a nation of immigrants" as a way to justify mass immigration now and forever. We've had periods where immigration was reduced and it worked out. The new arrivals became part of the melting pot, and we had the greatest expansion of the middle class in our nations history. Now the share of the US population that are immigrants is the highest it's been since the Gilded Age. It's no coincidence that the periods of high immigration overlap with the periods of high income inequality in US history. Also, we are at the point where unskilled labor is becoming less and less needed due to automation, so we should adjust our immigration policy to only bring in highly skilled immigrants in areas where there is an actual shortage. Let our own unskilled citizens have those few jobs that remain, and let them earn a decent wage doing them, instead of flooding the market with cheaper labor, all so the top 1% can extract bigger profits.

You guys also keep using talking points one would expect from a right wing business executive when you say they do the jobs Americans won't do. The reality is they do jobs at wages so low Americans won't do them, or can't afford to support a family doing them. You claim we wouldn't have enough construction workers if it weren't for illegal immigrants, when it was their presence that drove down wages and took away jobs in the industry, and forced Americans to look elsewhere for work with the hope they could find better paying jobs. If they weren't here then those jobs would pay a higher wage and more Americans would take them. So again, if your argument boils down to needing a permanent underclass of cheap exploitable labor to keep our country going, then you have no business calling yourself a party of the working class. Just admit you are either complicit in that exploitation or are useful idiots for the wealthy 1%.

Using arguments from a business school to justify not treating people like locusts because they immigrated to the US is "anti-working class" now? The actual article states that there in general isn't a significant effect on native workers, though immigrant laborers unfortunately face a decline of around five percent. Plus, you don't get to act like people have no right to human decency because they were born in a different country then you.

And to address some of your trash later in this thread, A. maybe poverty rates would be a better measure, B. People don't tend to immigrate when there are no jobs available, eg in an economic depression that hurts wages, C. The people who made immigration easier in the 80's were the same people who began a bunch of  damaging reforms that caused problems, eg killing unions, and finally D. Ice cream cone sales go up during june. Drowning deaths go up during june, does that mean that ice cream causes drowning? No, the truth is that the heat of summer makes swimming and ice cream more appealing. Correlation does not equal causation.

Using arguments from the Wharton Business school means zilch considering they will always be on the side of business owners. Wage stagnation began at the same time the immigrant share of the population increased, and outsourcing to countries with lax regulations began. It's far easier to bust a union if you can fire the workers and replace them with cheap illegal labor, or outsource the factory to a foreign country. Your party, that is supposed to be the party of the working class, actively worked with Republicans to allow it to happen.

People have the right to fight for human decency in their own countries, and we can use trade to reward countries that treat their people well, or punish countries that abuse their own people if we choose. There is no right to immigrate to the USA, and we are allowed to choose who can come here. Again, it appears you are putting the welfare of foreigners over your own citizens.

We had a falling immigrant share of the population between the 50's-60's, and saw huge gains in income for our own workers. The Depression and War was over by then, so it was a political choice to not allow massive waves of immigrants during that period, not immigrants staying away due to the economy. It was also a political choice to increase the number of immigrants after that.

Why are you guys refusing to do an all above approach to inequality? You want to just look at one side of the issue, thinking you can fix the whole problem, while you ignore half of it. We can raise taxes on the wealthy and raise the minimum wage, while we also negotiate better trade deals so they won't allow outsourcing to countries that have fewer regulations and allow their people to be exploited, and we can reduce the rate of immigration to only highly skilled people needed to fill an actual skill shortage.

Because let's say we only address half of the problem, like what you want to do, and we raise taxes on the wealthy and raise the minimum wage. Since you did nothing to address trade deals, or the presence of illegal labor, or the rate of legal immigration, the wealthy can flee to countries with lower income taxes, and relocate production to countries with cheap labor and lax regulations, and still import their goods to our markets with no trouble. Then all the jobs that couldn't be outsourced are now under competition from increased immigrant labor, so some businesses will hire illegal labor to pay less than the minimum with no benefits, or the presence of legal immigrant labor will increase competition for jobs and force people to take a pay cut down to the new minimum. Controlling the supply of labor is one power a government has through its immigration policy. Our policy has been designed to benefit the wealthy for decades with mass immigration of both legal and illegal labor at the expense of native workers.

Another Ridiculous argument. This is borderline paranoia to make incorrect statements.

The total share of Highly skilled Visas for example H1B is like 200K odd which is not even 0.1% of the entire population & the average wage is high. A huge share of these visas go to people earning 100K or above in a year. Wages have grown for the Top 5-10% of the workers. All this immigration of H1B visas has pushed wages higher for the entire IT eco-system workers. (Look at the income growth of Top 20%)

Wages have stagnated for the bottom 50-60%, many of whom don't have a college degree & manufacturing jobs have gone away. And it is pretty clear that increased automation, loss of power of unions, lower minimum wage, NAFTA & Free Trade agreements & Trickle Down Economics etc have caused the fall in wages. This is pretty basic Economics which most honest people would agree !

For example - If there was huge immigration & excess supply of labour, why is unemployment so low, why is there no large scale unemployment? How can people find jobs relatively easily after being fired? It is clear job creation vs wage increase is not in tandem because unemployment is at a historic low, corporate profits are at a huge high & salaries for top executives are very high but wages remain stagnant for the bottom half !