Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

3Saints, bottom line the conservative fear-baiting drum-beat about immigration as being so bad
for you is not born out by the research .. a section of mine again in case you didn't read the links ..

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For years, economists have been poring through job market statistics looking for evidence that immigrants undercut less-educated Americans in the labor market. The most recent empirical studies conclude that the impact is slight: they confirm earlier findings that immigration on the whole has not led to fewer jobs for American workers. More significantly, they suggest that immigrants have had, at most, a small .. http://www.nber.org/digest/apr09/w14683.html .. negative .. http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gperi/Papers/OP_april_2010.pdf .. impact .. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/16/business/yourmoney/16view.html .. on the wages of Americans who compete with them most directly, those with a high school degree or less.

Meanwhile, the research has found that immigrants – including the poor, uneducated ones coming from south of the border — have a big positive impact on the economy over the long run, bolstering the profitability of American firms, reducing the prices of some products and services by providing employers with a new labor source and creating more opportunities for investment and jobs. Giovanni Peri, an economist at the University of California at Davis, estimated that the wave of immigrants that entered the United States from 1990 to 2007 increased national income per worker .. http://www.frbsf.org/publications/economics/letter/2010/el2010-26.html .. by about $5,400 a year on average, in 2007 dollars. He also concluded that the wave had a small positive impact on the average wage of American workers, by lifting the overall economy. If immigrants hurt anyone, it was the previous cohort of immigrants .. http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gperi/Papers/OP_april_2010.pdf, with whom they most directly compete in the labor market. .. http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=108026088
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A bit of the abstract of the first link

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Using data from Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and other cities, Card draws three conclusions. First, workers with less than a high school education are perfect substitutes for those with a high school education. In other words, dropouts and high school graduates, whether immigrants or natives, compete for the same jobs (although high school graduates earn somewhat more per hour). Second, workers with a "high school equivalent" education and those with a "college equivalent" education are imperfect substitutes. The former simply do not have access to the same jobs, opportunities, or wages as the latter group. Third, within broad education classes, immigrants and natives similarly are imperfect substitutes. "Immigrant arrivals have hardly distorted the relative fraction of college-equivalent workers in the economy and have therefore had little impact on the college-high school wage gap," he writes.
http://www.nber.org/digest/apr09/w14683.html .. http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=108026088
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So it seems the competitive effects of immigration are concentrated among the immigrants themselves, and has negligible effect on the number of college equivalent workers in the economy .. the 2nd link is only useful if you search "minimum wage" in it to get a long list of studies .. a bit of the 3rd link ..

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At first blush, the preoccupation over immigration seems reasonable. Since 1980, eight million illegal immigrants have entered the work force. Two-thirds of them never completed high school. It is sensible to expect that, because they were willing to work for low wages, they would undercut the position in the labor market of American high school dropouts.

This common sense, however, ignores half the picture. Over the last quarter-century, the number of people without any college education, including high school dropouts, has fallen sharply. This has reduced the pool of workers who are most vulnerable to competition from illegal immigrants.

In addition, as businesses and other economic agents have adjusted to immigration, they have made changes that have muted much of immigration's impact on American workers.

For instance, the availability of foreign workers at low wages in the Nebraska poultry industry made companies realize that they had the personnel to expand. So they invested in new equipment, generating jobs that would not otherwise be there. In California's strawberry patches, illegal immigrants are not competing against native workers; they are competing against pickers in Michoacán, Mexico. If the immigrant pickers did not come north across the border, the strawberries would. .. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/16/business/yourmoney/16view.html .. http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=108026088
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in case you missed it. And since you have brought the minimum wage into it again that
cat is well and truly out of the bag, i reckon, as so many places in the USA are upping it ..

On Seattle .. The early results from America’s experiments with higher minimum wages
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/08/04/the-early-results-from-americas-experiments-with-higher-minimum-wages/

only time will tell .. i'll only add that this business of cities and counties having different minimum wages side by side while i understand arises, i guess, from a sense of 'the more competition the better' business, it seems to me that it also creates more anxiety and conflict .. i don't know, just for me, i look at Australia ..

The U.S. has a $7.25 minimum wage. Australia’s is $16.88
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/08/19/the-u-s-has-a-7-25-minimum-wage-australias-is-16-88/

and see more money in circulation by those who spend it, less people in poverty, fewer full-time workers on food stamps for you guys (when i tell people here that situation exists in the USA they are astounded as food stamps resonates here as only involving people at least not in full-time work), and no big deal disruption of the economy because of the higher minimum wage and no big negative arising from the more relatively equal wage structure across the country.

You have disruption

Hundreds of Fast-Food Workers Striking for Higher Wages Are Arrested
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=105958738

much of which could be avoided

Patrick signs minimum wage hike into law....THE VERY SMART GOV FROM MASS,...KUDOS
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=103811241

while all along there is no doubt one absolute

Weekly Address: We Do Better When the Middle Class Does Better
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=106895702

yet so many of your conservatives continue with crazy

5 Craziest Laws Passed by GOP Legislators, Just This Month
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=105135428

We could fiddle and faddle on specifics, but rather for me anyway better to look as some semblance of the bigger picture.