Biden wins presidency

Changing the number of senators requires unanimous consent from every state, not just a constitutional amendment. Though I wonder if the constitution itself could be amended to change that clause?

 

Bet.

 

It's impossible to back up any statement, s the votes are secret and the pollsters are what everyone saw - again.

So all you can do propose a theory and explain your reasoning. And believe what you will.

I also thing that one of the big problems with politics today is the excessive concert with polls and focus groups or whatever. Pretending to have data for optimizing electioneering. Where no such data really exists and the pretending is more about making up justifications (it'll win the election) for policy choices made for other motives.

 

I do think Sanders screwed up in this election, precisely because he allowed those people to glue themselves to him. Basically is campaign in 2016 was much more "traditional" common sense for the common man, this time it was run by "activists" of a political bubble type.

 

I'll even go further and say: those highly skilled typically work in the remaining protected areas. Many have professional bodies maintaining barriers to entry, such as medics, lawyers or certain engineers. And they don't care for the people who do not have such protections.

Worse, many members of the wealthier "professional class" want cheap servants. Who makes and serves their latte? Who cleans their homes? Etc... They are relatively well paid but their money goes further if serving staff in all kinds of "unskilled" services is cheap. If food is cheap. And so on.

They have chosen their natural place in the class war, and it's no accident they're the ones more vociferously defending open borders. You'll notice they don't care much about defending robust labour protections for immigrants.
And of course there's the very simple fact that a country just cannot accommodate anywhere who whats to come in if indeed if enacted robust protections for immigrants and opened borders. When immigration is not managed by guarding borders and expelling unwelcome visitors, it's instead in fact managed by making immigrants exploited. Because otherwise an ever greater flow of immigrants would come into the open country until its standard of living fell to equal the third-world one. The locals in wealthier countries obviously (and rightly!) would't stand for it. And any hypocrite who argues otherwise is welcome to give way his worldly goods to the homeless and then talk.

 

This is funny because it's what Robert E Lee called the Union

This is liberal market garbo of the type you normally are pretty good at denouncing. The market utopia of frictionless labor movement all around the world pursuing the highest standard of living just isn't really a real thing even in a world with truly open borders...

 

"The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate."

It's hard for me to conceive any circumstances under which all the states would give that consent, which would be a prerequisite to amending the above clause itself.

 

What I was pointing out is exactly that such talk is a lie. It's not a real thing, it can't be done like that. The real thing with immigration is that it creates competition for labour supply and disadvantages the working class, while being advantageous to employers.

No left that claims to defend the working class can ever coherently also defend unrestricted immigration. That would only bee possible in a territory opening for colonization, of which there are none left. This is the reason why Trump won 4 years ago, why he still has very high support now, why the "populists" are talking more votes everywhere, and why the populists have been coming from the right. What passes for left in many countries refuses to be coherent. And voters notice.

You're left-wing and want to buff up your internationalist credentials? Fine do so in the old-fashioned way: support policies that free the poorer countries to develop themselves. Do manage trade but avoid squeezing those countries. Sent people to teach and build infrastructure there. Provide technical support free of royalties, charges, patents and other assorted "intellectual property". Let the young and enterprising people living there continue to live there and improve their countries.

 

I mean, I effectively already did, but go off I guess. "unrestricted immigration" is a right-wing strawman anyway. It actually means "immigration in any form", generally. A fundamental opposition to freedom of movement.

If the working class are competing with immigrants undercutting them in working class jobs, the immigrants are therefore also working class. There is no class division at that level. All involved are an exploited labour force, with the people above them pointing them at each other to keep them occupied. You as well. You keep making this an "us vs. them" argument which is inherently reactionary and also conservative in nature.

By all means, seek to support the development and freeing of exploited developing nations. But that's not an either / or. You don't have to limit yourself to just that.

 

You really can't see?

You can preach "it's all the same class" until you go blue. It's not the reality. Newcomers do lower the overall bargaining position of the working class under this capitalist rurebook. And until after you change that you can't pretend it is not so. You can't ignore the immediate material concerts of the working class people if you want to have their vote. Those matter very much! If you do ignore them they'll go and vote for the Trumps, even if only out of spite. Or the Le Pens. And they're not being foolish, why should they vote for you if you only promise to make their already bad situation situation worse in the short term?

Almost nowehere does the left dare present a political programme to dump capitalism and replace it with something else. No "social-democratic" party is presenting policies to change the rulebook. There are only a few relevant actually communist parties presenting that alterrnative.
So if you're a leftist social-democract, you say you want the capitalist rulebook to remain in place, which includes a "free market" for labour with wage competition, no effort towards full employment, oligarchic interests in place and coordinating at least as well as (currently far better than) worker's unions. Under these rules it is well estabelished that the bargaining position of workers is weather the more of them there are available for hire. If in this environment, saying this what you will keep it so, you also defend "open borders", a working class person voting for you would be voting against his/her own material, political and social interests.

 

First, the argument that immigration inherently reduces the bargaining power of labor is simply false, no more than the idea that an increase in the native population by births should reduce the bargaining power of labor, and the reason is simple: that people act as consumers as well as producers, so the addition of people to an economy creates demand for labor just as it adds to the labor supply!

The reason immigrant workers create an imbalance is because many of the low-skilled immigrant population also is undocumented. Lacking even the basic protections of US law they can hardly organize to advance their interests against their employers. The very apparatus of repression which, accoridng to your theory, benefits the US working class, is a primary reason that real wages in many low-skilled industries have collapsed.

If people are added to society and treated as full participants in society, there is no immutable economic reason that their mere existence should cause problems for the people who are already part of that society. It is political considerations that lead to this situation and as you always say there is a political alternative.

Finally I'll say you're certainly right that the "solution" to immigration is to eliminate the gap between the developed world and the developing world...but if you want to accuse the "left" of being incoherent here, surely we must agree that the right has no interest whatsoever in a global redistribution of wealth to poor countries. Indeed, most people on the right have ideas about immigration that can only really be considered coherent if we back up to the "treat people as full participants in society," and I think you'll find most anti-immigrant voters in the real world have hangups about this that amount to nothing more than racism.

 

When was the last time you worked on a farm?

Ever?

I did 1st job 1992. $22 NZD a day at the time almost a 2-1 exchange rate.

On modern exchange rate $15 a day.

On orchards here the pay has barely gone up since 2000. With the borders closed they're letting food rot rather than harvest it.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.rnz.co.nz/article/b0157273-e4db-48e7-8913-beeb9ac0d419

One job they wanted a 12-14 hour day 7 days a week for 3-4 months. And they charge you rent. On minimum wage ($18.90 hour approx $13 usd).


Even McDonalds doesn't pay minimum wage. Why work in farms for that rate and pay rent to do so?

Just import cheap labour.

Same time house prices just surged (again)

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/politica...st-cannot-keep-increasing-at-the-rate-that-is

Median house price just hit $725 000. Up 20%.

I wouldn't be voting for immigration on that either.

How's an immigrant going to buy a house unless they're rich already?

And everyone want to come here because Covid (you can still squeak in).

 

the epic irony of claiming diluted votes by Trump voters

 

Immigrants are practically irrelevant to the employment prospects of American citizens because they are part of a completely separate labor market which services particular industries. The US labor market has been stratified in this manner for DECADES.

I don't know what the EU looks like since free movement was instituted, but in the US this argument is nothing but a canard. The labor system already more or less had both groups living peacefully until that was disturbed for political reasons. Even the working poor in the US are not static peasants compelled into physical labor. That's what the migrants do.

 

those orchards with rotting fruit
Is that not an example of competition between kinds of products ?

Assuming there would be no trade with other countries for sake of simplicuty:
Assuming there is a living minimum wage
When a consumer can choose between products that continuously become "cheaper" from productivity increases and as alternative choice products where productivity can no longer be increased (hand picked fruit)....
the moment will come that the bulk of the consumers will buy the "cheaper" products and hand picked fruit has become a luxury product.
the alternative is to subsidise fruit picking or more general measures like redistributing by tax etc which can be combined with a lower minimum wage for the same free disposable minimum wage level.

 

We export mist of our food so it's reliant on international price.

It's a few cents more per kilo to pay the pickers a lot more.

Sort of what another poster pointed out though. People get cheap products (including liberals) but they don't really care who's getting exploited to do it.

Kinda like some here on CFC who buy from Amazon.

They live in their bubbles, pay token attention to a cause they care about.

GoP at least is honest. They don't pretend they're not going to screw you.

Anyone who objects gets called a bigot even as they get priced out of an area and have less negotiating power.

 

Since free movement was possible without restrictions in 1968, overall, in terms of real volumes there is not that much free movement of migrants in the EU between EU member's citizens except for some countries getting relatively more intra-EU migrants.
It is only since the East-European countries joined and the Euro austerity crisis after the GFC that there is more intra-EU migration. South-North migration (France taken as part of South) has been neglectible since the 70ies, despite the higher levels of unemployment. Too many hurdles.
Language barriers do play a role. Having learned English is not enough to migrate to another country when working between non-academic colleagues. Except ofc when you migrate to the UK or Ireland.
Jobs at the factory shopfloors or cleaning less affected by language problems. Jobs like fruitpicking totally unaffected by language problems.
Countries having already substantial or high levels of unemployment often still getting many extra-EU migrants. Often illegal migrants or refugees in rural jobs like fruit, vegetables, tobacco, etc often working below minimum wages (if there) directly as paid wage per hour or because being forced to work more hours and getting "paid" for less hours and having their offered "housing" deducted from their wages by the employer.
Also often illegal jobs in the personal care sector. A big informal sector for elderly care, family children care, household maids etc.

 

A consumer walking in a retail shop is most of all a consumer, a non-political consumer. Consumerism is a depoliticising factor in our society despite it having societal and therefore political consequences.

 

Now as a non-American I had no idea who Biden was before he was elected as Obama's VP in 2008, but I've gathered a few factoids about the man since then... is it not the case that he has been known both to have a slight stuttering problem and a habit of making verbal gaffes since, basically, forever? Would one expect a man in his 70s to stop with those things after doing them all his life?

 

Trump doesnt make verbal gaffes, when he says something stupid he actually means it. With Biden we know he meant well, just worded it wrong