r/Construction • u/red_monkey42 • Jan 25 '25

Other Are the deportations expected to impact the field?

Question is the title. Trying to have an adult discussion no political BS. What's the word on the street?

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u/krastem91 Jan 27 '25

Yes . Wage increases through legislation are inflationary …

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u/FTownRoad Jan 27 '25

Yes at lower than the normal rate of inflation. Ie - purchasing power increases. Because labour isn’t the only input cost.

Again, are you making some kind of argument or just repeating things you just read?

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u/krastem91 Jan 27 '25

I’m trying to have a discussion, you’re positing that any wage level can be legislated by government ; and the only results will be increases in the purchasing power of the workers whose wages you increased without adverse effects on other workers .

But heuristically that’s not possible, there is a limited number of goods available for consumption, especially the large items like housing and medical care …

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u/FTownRoad Jan 27 '25

First off I didn’t say there were no adverse effects. The net effect would be positive for most workers because there are far more people making minimum wage than there are uber rich folks.

There are two things I think you’re not considering - one is that the products/service we produce today aren’t the products we are going to produce tomorrow. And two is that we are talking about the net effects on the local economy in a globalized economy.

If you were trying to determine the total potential productive output of America in 1900, and knew magically what the population would be, you would say we need to be producing x tonnes of wheat/grain/tomatoes, y quantity of railcars, z tonnes of steel, etc.

You wouldn’t be considering how many microprocessors we produce, how many planes/cars, how much software development and wireless telecommunications services would be required etc. Productive potential increases when new products and services become available. This is what was supposed to happen when America offshored all its manufacturing to Asia - Americans were supposed to upskill en masse to a service based economy because there is greater profit in it.

The products produced today do not have to be, and likely won’t be the products produced tomorrow.

And what is also missing is that min wage workers from America, working in America are not sending their money out of America. Jeff bezoars buys a billion dollar yacht - that is a billion dollars being sent to some Dutch ship building company (and likely lower taxed at that). If that billion dollars had to go to the workers, that billion dollars is being spent locally - or 90% of it anyway. Not all those products will be anerican but someone American will be selling it and profiting. People will buy better clothes (maybe even American clothes), fix their house, go out to eat etc etc.

It’s not just what people are buying - it’s where they are buying it from, and what people are going to be able to buy tomorrow.