Wages are falling because capitalists want more profits. Housing prices are exploding because capitalists want more profit. The person hiring immigrants instead of you is a capitalist engaging in capitalism. The person raising your rent more than your annual raise (lol) is a capitalist capitalizing on you.

But yeah, whoo hoo capitalism.

1. I do not deny that the judiciary in the US has been very corporate friendly, and that this is an importan factor. I do, however, dispute the notion that it is the main driving factor of middle class erosion.
2. There were waves of high immigration throughout U.S. history, yes, but they never lasted for 40+ consecutive years like the current one. Moreover, it must be noted that earlier immigrants came to a country which still had room for solid growth and which still had use for unskilled physical labor. Very different from a post-industrial, knowledge-based economy.
3. The courts are not the ones who laid the groundwork for offshoring. The free trade paradigm, slashing tariffs, creating tax loopholes which give internationally operating corporations an advantage, the admission of China to the WTO - those were all political decisions made by corrupt or misguided politicans, not by judges.

The current immigration wave hasn't lasted 5 years lol. It was negative at the end of Obama's term. More were leaving. You just don't know what you're talking about lol

You're stunted on single links here. Judiciary allows more corporate influence -> corporate influences lay the groundwork for offshoring, free trade, tax loopholes, by influencing politicians.

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Oct 24 2020 10:27pm

Sources desperately needed.


Here is a source for my point:
https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2019/12/net-international-migration-projected-to-fall-lowest-levels-this-decade.html



I'm not exactly sure if these numbers include estimates of illegal immigration on top, but either way, they show a net (sic!) migration of over a million per year at the end of Obama's term.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Oct 24 2020 10:43pm

I was talking about the Mexican border, which I assumed you were referring to because of the "unskilled labor". Those immigrating through other means are largely skilled.

Oh, so now you're pivoting to pretty much the only "bright spot" which can be twisted to support your talking point, namely the reduced levels of immigration from Mexico to the U.S. since the Great Recession, while conveniently ignoring everything else.
My initial claim was very clear: the U.S. has seen an influx of around 1 million people net per year for quite some time. I provided census data which prove this claim.

Note that even the legal immigrants coming to the U.S. on skill-based grounds like H-1B visas are still generally used to undercut domestic wages, or to keep them trending moderately upward where the fundamentals of the field would normally lead to far more drastic wage growth (Silicon Valley).

By the way, if corporate money in politics is this huge corrupting force as you claim, why do you support Democrats who are currently outraising Republicans by a 2:1 margin for the third election in a row? And it's not just small dollar donations, Wall Street prefers Biden over Trump too:
https://www.npr.org/2020/08/17/902626429/wall-streets-big-money-is-betting-on-biden-and-democrats-in-2020





I will admit, however, that I wasnt aware of earlier landmark rulings like Buckley v. Valeo or First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti. So you have a point there. But it's still a stretch to argue that the corporate influence allowed into American politics through these cases is what caused Reaganomics, NAFTA or the admission of China to the WTO. (Let alone the Hart-Celler Act of 1965...) Think tanks, academia and the media were shaping public opinion and pushed it into this "globalist" or neoliberal direction. Even with all the corporate influence in the world, politicians couldnt have pursued those neoliberal policies for decades if public opinion had been against them.

Basically, we're looking at a multifaceted problem, and you blow the importance of one piece of the puzzle way out of proportion.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Oct 24 2020 11:11pm

A clarification is not a pivot. Don't get so mad lol

I support Democrats because they're the closest thing to my views of the two major parties. You know that I don't consider them liberal enough, and routinely bash them for yielding to corporate influence instead of passing things that should have been passed 50 years ago. Seriously think about your posts before you make them.

Think tanks are corporate funded. "Academics" have been beholden to corporate donors in America for a long time now. The Kochs basically own several economics departments and use that power to keep them from hiring people who will do inconvenient research. The media would barley report on climate change for most of the period between 2000 and 2016, mostly because oil companies would explicitly buy advertising to dissuade them from doing so. You're listing things that have been pretty explicitly corrupted by corporate influence for before you or I were born lol.

Really, you need to do more research into this topic. You seem to have internalized that immigrants, the least powerful members of society, are the ones causing problems, when it's super easy to see that problems come from those with power and incentives to keep those problems from being fixed.

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Oct 24 2020 11:19pm

And what exactly do the courts have to do with any of that? Was there ever a time in American history when laws stood in the way of corporations founding a "think tank" to disseminate their propaganda? Were there ever laws against big money influencing or even controlling parts of the media? Your initial claim, which spawned all this back and forth, was that corporate-friendly judges are (one of) the root cause(s) of falling or stagnating wages.

I'm totally with you that corporate influence is the root of this evil. But neoliberal thinking attained its cultural hegemony through the corrupting influence of money in all of America's institutions, not just the courts. Most of those institutions, like the media or the educational system, were never really protected from such efforts. Neither was politics. Imho, the courts were not the decisive domino in the rise of neoliberalism and its devastating effects.



Aside from individual cases of violent crime, I never personally blamed migrants for the problems they cause, I always blamed those who let them in. And I wasnt talking about nothing but migrants anyway, offshoring and unbalanced trade is at least as much of a problem.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Oct 24 2020 11:30pm

Yes, corporate influence was far more limited in the past.

Like I said, you need to do more research. Valeo was news to you... that's just scratching the surface.

You did not answer any of my questions or points.

Do you agree or disagree that the cultural hegemony of neoliberalism, ranging from think tanks over universities to the media, is the most important reason why all those wage-killing policies were implemented over the past 40-50 years?
Is it true or false that those institutions were always susceptible to corporate money, independent from a "corporate takeover" of the courts?