KRISTOR writes at The Orthosphere:

Immigration of millions of unskilled workers reduces the price of labor. So for that matter does the entry of women into the workforce. Men used to be able to earn a wage sufficient to support a wife and children. It stands to reason that if you double the supply of labor by adding to it almost all women, you will cut the prevailing wages for most jobs – not perhaps by half, but to such a degree that it will thenceforth take almost two workers to earn the income that had once taken only one.

On the demand side, the regulatory and labor environment in the US is so completely whacked, irrational, cumbersome, and costly that it is better, easier, and cheaper, all things considered, for a manufacturer to produce in China than here. So the jobs are going to China. To the far side of the planet, where they speak a different and unrelated language, use a completely alien and wildly inefficient form of writing, and are culturally comfortable with fraud and corruption and cheating and adulteration – with harming their customers.

This is nuts.

All these massive distortions in the labor market that crush wages happened as a result of stupid government policies. The solution is not to add another layer of policy to correct them, but to delete the problematic policies, root and branch – and, where necessary (not very often) replace them with something rational – so that the labor market can right itself naturally in such a way that the minimum wages anywhere being offered ad libitum suffice for a family to live dignantly thereon.

This is simply done …  [cont.]

Kristor offers real solutions. Unfortunately, there is zero chance of them being implemented under our current political system.

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