The "skills we need" include a lot of manual labor. We depend on cheap labor to make food and other products cheap for consumers. There are instances in the U.S. where a crackdown on illegal immigration was pretty devastating to the local economy because it resulted in a bunch of vacant jobs nobody was willing to take.
In these instances the theory goes that the job creators would have to raise wages in order to attract workers who were legal to hire. When this has happened in the past, do these businesses just decide to fail? Or do they just move their business somewhere people are willing to work for next to nothing?
A lot of them have no choice but to fail. Consumers will not pay the price that comes with the increased cost of production. Also, the story I'm talking about is on farms where people simply aren't willing to do like 10 hours worth of labor to harvest. It's not an issue of a fair wage.
I guess in rural areas the pool for needed workers is too low? I think we would be surprised what a consumer would pay, but in this instance I would assume the cost wouldn't go up by a few cents but by 10 dollars or more?
I know it would be impossible to enforce, but if the welfare system could determine who truly needed it (mentally and physically disabled/too old for physically labor) they could also identify their able bodied / willing to work recipients. Then if a job existed in the area that would pay more than welfare they would actively try to train their able bodied welfare recipients to take and succeed at those jobs.
For example, Jim Smith lost his job at a factory that could no longer operate due to the rising wage vs access to workers. Jim goes to the welfare office and requests support. The welfare office cuts him a check and also gives him a list of jobs available from employers willing to pay more than he would receive from welfare. Jim chooses one that sounds good to him and continues to receive welfare as he trains for the job and until he receives his first check from the job.
This has to be cheaper in the long run for the government requiring less funding (and in turn less taxes) and helps to fill a job/employ a citizen allowing for positive growth in the community. It also offers a solution to replacing immigrant labor. If we think everyone deserves a living wage, how can we in the same breath say. . .oh well, except for immigrant workers. Or are we saying that immigrant workers need less money to live?
