Re:Small Businesses Lament There Are Too Few Mexicans in U.S
by danbruc on Saturday November 26, 2016 @09:29AM
(#13043612)
We shouldn't give low-skilled labor jobs to Americans, since that's economically inefficient.
What a job pays should not be defined by the required skills, at least not exclusively, it should be paid by the amount of work one does. And what a job pays is actually not defined by the required skills, it is defined by the availability and willingness of workers to do those jobs at certain wage levels, it just happens that increasing skill level and decreasing availability of workers are the same direction.
Note that I am not saying that a lazy worker taking ten times as long to produce some good as his coworkers should receive the same wage, nor I am saying you should not be compensate for spending additional years at an university to acquire higher skills. But after one accounted for those factors, it should really not make a huge difference whether you are developing software or whether you are picking oranges.
What a job pays should not be defined by the required skills, at least not exclusively, it should be paid by the amount of work one does. And what a job pays is actually not defined by the required skills, it is defined by the availability and willingness of workers to do those jobs at certain wage levels, it just happens that increasing skill level and decreasing availability of workers are the same direction.
Note that I am not saying that a lazy worker taking ten times as long to produce some good as his coworkers should receive the same wage, nor I am saying you should not be compensate for spending additional years at an university to acquire higher skills. But after one accounted for those factors, it should really not make a huge difference whether you are developing software or whether you are picking oranges.