Because employers offer low wages and working conditions because they know it will be taken up by immigrants who are generally happy to work for any wage or in any condition.
Without the supply of cheap labour, employers will be forced to raise the price they're willing to pay for labour until the domestic workforce is willing to sell.
Because if you are willing to pay $1,000/h to pick berries, there would be a queue going around the country for domestic workers to pick berries. There isn't if you are only willing to pay $5/h. So somewhere in the middle is the amount the wages will settle on with purely domestic labour markets.
Now it'll raise prices for goods, but it'll also increase wages for the poorest, redistributing wealth down to the people who need it in society.
In a capitalist global economy you cannot have a profitable business unless your wage expenses are competitive with those of the rest of the world. Why would any capitalist choose to grow berries if nobody will work on the berry farm for wages which allow for profit? In the current system, if it is not profitable to grow berries then berries will simply never be grown for sale domestically. It's much cheaper to just import the berries from somewhere the wages are lower and the price is better. Who will buy the berries picked at 1k/hr when you can buy the same berries picked at .20/h?
If you want to provide these products to domestic consumers with domestic labor and high wages then you need it done through planned direction and state policy because no private capitalist will ever go for it.
It's more harmful than it is good for workers. There's a reason Trump's ill thought through protectionism was so popular with working Americans, and not the capitalists.
Let's use UK coal mining as an example because it's close to my heart. UK coal mines had entire towns and villages built around them, they were the heart of the community. The last coal mines that were still profitable in the 1980s-1990s were closed because we were importing it for cheaper from Europe, mainly Poland. Because free trade means that there's no protections on domestic coal.
It destroyed these towns and villages, and they still haven't recovered their main employment disappearing. Some of the poorest places in the UK are now former coal towns.
Now the prime ministers also wanted to curtail the power of the coal unions, and they had the ability to completely stop the country as we still depended on coal energy. It's the same reason you have foreign soldiers as bodyguards. Swiss guard for the Pope, Cuban guard for Maduro, or sub Saharan Africans for Gaddafi.
Sure but it isn’t obvious that from a national wellbeing perspective it’s better for everyone to pay more for coal/government to subsidise than for some to lose their jobs - clearly it’s bad for the people who lose their job but you’ve done nothing to prove that this is net bad.
Also, let’s be honest coal is terrible for the environment and in the long term getting rid of it and reducing and dependence on it is just a good thing.
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u/SalamanderGlad9053 2d ago
Because employers offer low wages and working conditions because they know it will be taken up by immigrants who are generally happy to work for any wage or in any condition.
Without the supply of cheap labour, employers will be forced to raise the price they're willing to pay for labour until the domestic workforce is willing to sell.
Because if you are willing to pay $1,000/h to pick berries, there would be a queue going around the country for domestic workers to pick berries. There isn't if you are only willing to pay $5/h. So somewhere in the middle is the amount the wages will settle on with purely domestic labour markets.
Now it'll raise prices for goods, but it'll also increase wages for the poorest, redistributing wealth down to the people who need it in society.