RickJay is already addressing the majority of your argument. But, I felt it would be beneficial (to others) to point out some other things:
Since you haven’t defined a social democracy, then one must assume that the traditional usage, which is a democracy dedicated to socialism. It’s been tried, it has failed/been abandoned.
Let’s analyze this so-called history: Hardcore protectionism during the first years of the US were used because we basically had no economy, or a very nascent economy. One of the things early Americans liked doing was pirate copyrights for books (outright copying). After WWII through Vietnam, we were the only nation with a majority of its industries not bombed back into the stone age. If the same thing were to happen now, we would be light years ahead of the rest of the world instead of within a stone’s throwing distance.
Let’s look at raising tariffs: arguably started, definitely exasperated the Great Depression, Bretton Woods (an easing of tariffs) started some relief, entering into GATT (again an easing of tariffs) spurned more economic gains, the retreat from Bretton Woods all together in the 70’s greatly relieved economic pressure.
China, India, and any protectionist country easing its tariffs have all seen boons to its economies, especially China and India who went from grinding, crushing poverty and subsistence farming to just regular old poverty and subsistence farming. Any statistic that you can find otherwise will be answered by the a recessionary economy.
Even assuming 10 bad years, which isn’t true, but so what, it doesn’t prove anything. The recession from 2007/08 - present (ok, 2010) was just that damaging to real wealth. To claim otherwise is nothing more than willful ignorance.
Collapse is only certain if politicians continue to spend our wealth and future wealth into oblivion. Even then, it would still take tremendous protectionist policies to keep out the influx of foreign investment. The dollar should fall until goods and services from the US look more attractive, which is what is happening now as the GDP is rising.
[QUOTE=Le Jacquelope]
This has been repeated a million times. What has not been repeated is that their middle class is exploding in size. What is America’s middle class doing?
[/quote]
America’s middle class is saving and re-adjusting their spending habits. Demand took a giant dump when this happened. Regardless, RickJay’s point still stands, compared to any Western country, the middle class of China and India are poor. I had more wealth in college and law school when I was working part-time, and my parents weren’t rich, and I paid for law school. Where would you rather be middle class in China/India or US/Canada?
Yes, they do. We’re all evolved from primates. A branch of them changed wholesale into modern humans.
Don’t be so arrogant about Canada.
Your unemployment is at 7.8% with real unemployment at over 11%. That’s not as bad as America but it isn’t good. And the new jobs you’re generating are low-paying, too.
Ah yes, denial, denial. It’s just a river in Egypt. :rolleyes:
I’d rather be middle class in a country where I can strike for better pay. I’d rather not be middle class in a country where the middle class is shrinking.
I don’t think it would take 1-5 years for 1% of the wealthy to reacquire 60-80% of the wealth. While it’s true that some people who are poor use up all their funds immediately, like in your example, but they are not the majority. Some people are good with money, and will make more quickly. But to assume that the middle class will give up all their funds within 1-5 years is silly. Most would buy homes and property, at the very least, even if they don’t actively invest in anything else.
The other thing I have an issue with, is that you assume that everyone who is rich is rich because of their own doing. Many of those that are currently rich are NOT where they are because of their own personal investments or wise decisions.
Also, many, many middle-class persons would love the chance to invest and start their own business, but lack the funds. You are suggesting that they’d fail it anyways, since they haven’t succeed so far. I believe most do not start their own businesses because they lack sufficient capital.
If wealth was redistributed, some of the rich would get rich again, some of the poor would get poor again. But many in the middle class would do well for themselves - people who currently have no options to do so. There would be a “rich and poor” again, but I believe that:
Different people would find themselves in different locations on the capital spectrum.
The vast gap between the richest and the poorest would be much less - for more than 1-5 years!
The middle and upper-middle class would see the greatest of gains.
Having to go to school for 25 years… in your opinion is that a good thing or a bad thing? You said that people just need RE-training… but this would suggest that people need MORE training, in order to be useful to the economy.
But there aren’t nearly as much high level stuff now… so this concentrates the wealth into fewer and fewer people (in the USA).
But less and less people get to collect commissions and earn a living that way. Amazon, for example, gets to keep the commissions for itself, when another retailer would still have to pay it out to salespeople.
Do you see it as a problem that the USA still consumes as much as it always did, but has stopped producing the things other Americans want? America is full of rich middlemen…
I’d gladly move out into farmcountry… but there are no jobs there. Most of the crappy service jobs Americans have require you to live in the city and pay ridiculous amounts for property.
This is very strange, in my opinion. But there’s a lot more to this. Technology would allow the abandonment of “the office” and allow people to work from home. Allow them to work 200 miles away - in a place where land is cheap - but for some reason society does not allow them to. When I was younger and had to do a 4-week coding assignment for work, I had to come to the office everyday. (I had to live close to accommodate this.) I could have easily work from home, or the cottage… but no… I had to come in for some inexplicable reason. I now work mainly with clients and people, and so I can’t afford this luxury… but many people in the office could do their work from home. Hrmm…
There is less and less the working poor can provide for the rich. And the people they do need, they need less of them: instead of 10 farmers, they need 1. Instead of 100 people making their Ferraris, they need 10.
While maybe not in America, I’ve read much about the rich hoarding plenty of land, especially in developing nations. Or the government, who takes it away from farmers, and the sells/leases it to multinational corporations. Best of all… the people who lost their land now get the wonderful opportunity to work in sweat shops on that same land. Ironically, they get less “wealth” for it, since they eventually realize they can’t afford the food that they used to grow themselves.
It is the fault of the government (who are usually bribed and paid for by the rich).
Your suggestion does, however, pose an interesting situation to consider. Please feel free to comment, suggest links, or flesh out that idea. *What would happen if the rich disappeared?
*
I think the poor would stop shopping at Walmart, and start buy local. The poor would start making things for each other. This would also lower the skill-barrier… and so while things would cost more, people would have better paying jobs. I can’t really see if this would be better or worse for them, though…
This idea of hitting reset or redistributing wealth wouldn’t last. You even said, “Most would buy homes.” How did that work out for us? It is exactly the reason resetting wealth would fail. Most people would buy homes, what homes? Homes way too big, way too expensive, in the wrong area. Home ownership increases unemployment and locks people in. There is this American fallacy that rent = bad and own = good. Most people should rent, few people have the long term stability to own. The mortgage crisis should have taught us that.
Second to this point, a lot of people are going to get extremely wealthy as a result of everyone trying to buy property. It’s how they got so wealthy before 2008, it’s how their going to get wealthy in 2012. Remember that word, commissions, it applies to the design, build, sale, and maintenance of a house. Those that are skilled at it will become wealthy quickly. Those that aren’t will pay extra commissions and go broke quickly.
For the record, I don’t assume this, nor do I assume those that are poor are there because of their own actions. But I’m willing to go with an 80:20 split of deserve vs happenstance.
Sure, and many of those businesses would fail. There is plenty of capital out there, remember all those rich people? They want their capital doing something. If you’ve got a business proposal with any chance of success there is someone willing to fund it. It means you share the profits, but the option is always there.
And after the reset switch is flipped, you’re going to have those that spend capital and those that invest it. The rich are going to get rich investing in ways to get people to spend capital. People in the middle will earn commissions.
Yes, different people, but would the numbers change?
The simplest way to view this is through compound interest. Put $1million in an account with 3% interest, and put $1 in another. After 5 years the two accounts have $1,159,274
and $1.16. The rich will always get richer. The poor will stay poor. The only way around that is to some how get enough tax off that interest (or wealth) and distribute it to the $1 account.
Again, I disagree. Consider this thread: What is the mindset of middle class people that keep them middle class?. Most in the middle class don’t want to be rich, when given a bunch of cash they’d sink it into their family and carry on as normal. If we’re lucky they’ll invest it in their children’s education, which might improve the nest generation. But I think it’s more likely they’d just send their kid a more expensive school.
A few weeks ago I tried to give one of my employees a promotion. I was willing to offer him a lot more money and better hours. Problem was that what I really needed was extremely basic computer skills. Seriously, nothing fancy, but the ability to use Word, cut and paste, print out a sheet of labels. Log into his account and send me an email. He couldn’t and I couldn’t afford to train him, so he missed a pretty big opportunity that would have moved him from poor to middle class. The world is a lot more complex than it was 50 years ago. I’m still amazed when I see people that can’t type, to me that’s basic literacy. I have no idea if this is a good thing or a bad thing. People at the bottom will unfortunately need more training to do the same low level and low paying job. Like I said, even digging a ditch has gotten complicated, now it involved gps position, soil analysis, and a level of precision they didn’t have 50 years ago.
Again, Amazon shifted the commissions in two directions: lower prices, and technical jobs. They have 13,900 employees all earning income as the result of those transactions.
I’m not sure if it’s a problem or not. The alternative to me is very low level subsistence living. The stuff Americans consume today is very different than it was 100 years ago. But the fact still remains that at least for now it’s still Americans creating/designing/developing the stuff Americans buy. And that is where the real wealth is. Those jobs continue to pay well, but the guy punching out the widget is going to earn less every year. Might as well let some kid in China punch out the widget while a kid in the US designs it.
Right now my wife’s company offshores a lot of their low level coding to the Ukraine. They could just as easily have people in rural America do the same work. But people in rural American can’t do the work, those that can’t don’t want to move there, and neither group wants to earn what a Ukrainian earns. Meanwhile, the Ukrainians are thrilled, there is a flood of good paying jobs.
There is no reason you couldn’t set up shop in rural America, creating a company that provides low level coding, employ 100 Americans, and out bid the Ukrainians. But you won’t be able to find Americans to fill the positions, and you’ll end up hiring foreign kids on H1Bs and Canadians on TN visas.
So that 1 person is making more. Find a way to provide a good or service to that person and now you have some of the money. With that money you will pay for goods and services to someone else. We call that capitalism. It doesn’t matter if it gets concentrated, it still needs to move, and there is money to be made when it moves.
Sure, but in a lot of cases the sweatshops produce far more than the swampland they’re sitting on. And all too often those sweatshops are welcomed as a way for people to earn “steady” income throughout the year. Farming is risky, and sporadic. But Americans always need new sneakers.
If you lopped off the top 1% nothing changes. The new top 1% are “rich” and get richer. The bottom stays the same. It’s just like a game of poker. As wealth gets concentrated they wield more power allowing them to get richer. Remove them from the game just allows someone with less skill (or less luck) to concentrate the remaining wealth. Reset the game and it starts over again. Those without luck/skill lose quickly to those with it. Power concentrates again.
Unlikely. People want lower prices, Walmart provided that. There is lots of opportunity to buy local today, and it’s currently very trendy. So people are willing to pay a premium for it. Eventually they’re realize they’d rather the cheaper apple than the local apple and frankly the local apples suck. They’ll also realize that they really depended on exports because they were good at growing oranges. Then they’ll realize that a lot of money was made getting the apples and oranges from one place to another. But all the other “buy local” movements means they can’t sell oranges any more. It’s called competitive advantage. And it can actually make both parties better off. Let the areas that are good at growing apples do that, so they can sell them to the place that’s good at growing oranges.
What we’re seeing now is that America’s competitive advantage has shrunk and shifted. So either find a new one or curl up in a ball.
If you “lower the skill level” it means the poor are making low level things for other poor people. Like I saw in the trip to Tanzania, the poor people spend a lot of time making sandals out of old tires to sell to other poor people. It takes very little skill, and very few resources, but lots of time. There is also no margin in it, so they continue to stay poor. If they had the skills to make better shoes, they could sell them at a higher margin to rich people and move our of poverty.
It’s also worth pointing out that the current Canadian unemployment rate of 7.8% **is actually lower than the usual unemployment rate for most of 1970 on, even during good times. ** During previous recessions the unemployment rate was far higher; in the early 80’s it topped 12%.
Your ability to list cites is only trumped by Gonzomax, a poster you no doubt idolize. For those of you playing at home, you cited two message boards (which appear to be the same post) and a partisan hack (Ian Fletcher) who admits that 90% of economists have the opposite opinion (anti-free trade, Fletcher’s opinion). I’m not even sure Fletcher is an economist as I do not see his name anywhere at the UofC online sources, he claims to be one and claims to be educated at the UofC of all places, but does not list his degree. One thing that academic types like to do is list their degrees. Everyone who I have seen who has responded against Fletcher claims their educational lineage. The only reason I looked up Fletcher in the first place is because he is purported to be an economist, from the UofC, against free trade to a Le Jacuelope degree (or is Le Jacq against free trade to a Ian Fletcher degree? But, I digress…)
Recession. Keep hand-waving it away, or provide an explanation as to why it isn’t effecting any of the economic indicators.
It is back, at least for India and China. The consulting company my company works with fired almost a 1/3 of their Indian staff because of the recession. They’re all hired back/replaced with the commitment that they must give 3 months notice before they leave, to ensure some sort of workforce continuity. My company did the same thing, but we didn’t fire as many Indians.
Employment rate is not the sign of a strong economy. It’s one of the signs, but not the sign. Are prices lower than 10 years ago? Do we have more goods and services available? Have product features improved? It’s all yes, these are signs of a strong economy. However, I do acknowledge that the recession destroyed a lot of wealth, so no, this decade is not as strong as say the 1990’s. But, the 1990’s didn’t have two recessions. Yet, things are cheaper, products and services are more innovative, and inflation is low.
Oh good a non-answer. You can call leaving your work duties anything you want, a strike, a protest, a religious retreat, etc. If you cannot prove/demonstrate your value above the prevailing wage rate, then you will not get better pay. End of story. The only place you would not be able to do that is when the government controls your wage.
This is the same Economist that admitted that globalism has hurt America’s working class and that America is at risk of rejecting it.
You mean to tell me that in all this time you haven’t learned that I don’t give a flip what you have to say about Gonzomax? What’s your problem with Gonzomax that you keep having to bring him up? Damn, he must have really laid down a lot of hurt around here for his name to keep coming up into conversations.
That said, you’re mistaking idolizing gonzomax for simply pointing out the fact that his arguments are far more rooted in reality. His cites actually back up what he’s saying, unlike his opposition’s “cites”. Being associated with him is a compliment. I like to be associated with anti-globalists, because they are right.
Two different posts, same board. But their facts are solid.
Still, though, I can imagine you found it a bit shocking that I do not stand alone when it comes to opposition to your free trade religion. If you knew the size of the anti-globalist movement in America you would certainly be taking a softer tone about this. We’re not a group you want to keep alienating with your rhetoric.
Ah yes, truth by consensus. News flash: they’re all partisan hacks with no more credibility than Fletcher.
If we follow your logic 80% of Americans oppose free trade and 68% of us actually explicitly want higher tariffs. But here’s where you deny that this is true even though the Wall Street Journal themselves discovered the magnitude of American sentiment.
For some reason you think your majority is bigger and more powerful than ours. Problem is, we vote. At some point you’ll be forced to come to grips with the fact that you continue to alienate us at your cause’s peril.
The recession ended in China and growth came back. It then dipped AGAIN as soon as they lowered their tariffs again. It has not gone back to what it was before they lowered their tariffs.
It is by far the only meaningful sign that is worth anything.
You keep telling yourself that fantasy. End of story.
Any growth they have now is because America has not run out of jobs to send them. When we do run out of jobs to send them, they’re done for as a nation. That moment of truth may be coming soon. The US dollar has about 3-4% more value to lose before investors really start fleeing.
That will mean the end of free trade and globalism. With America being the world’s largest importer of goods and exporter of jobs, when we go down, Asia goes down, and then everyone else. It’ll be a good day because China and India’s addiction to stealing American jobs will be an addiction they have to kick. Cold turkey.
And the best part? You won’t even be able to blame it on tariffs!
What will you people do when America runs out of jobs to export? Don’t even bother answering that; we all know the answer.
You know, you are free to keep going with the argument that 7.8% unemployment is better. It’s like comparing dead to deader. And I’m too busy laughing at your “Canada’s unemployment is usually much worse” which suggests you’ll probably be going back to those unemployment levels, which will catch people like you totally by surprise because you cling to this superficial and absolutely hilarious argument:
“Canada’s unemployment is a LOW 7.8%.”
“Canada’s unemployment is usually much higher.”
“Canada has free trade.”
“Therefore free trade is helping Canada.”
What would replace capitalism should be re-asked, What would replace capitalism and democracy?
I mean that quite seriously.
I think we could agree that one problem of our economy is that a doctor makes $400 an hour and a sanitation worker doesn’t. What makes one hour of one man’s time more valuable than another man’s? Certainly, the men are equal on a fundamental level. Which job is more important? I wouldn’t get stuck arguing either side particularly, only that it depends on what the moment necessitates. But clearly, there are philosophical reasons why there is an imbalance in wealth. This can’t simply be combated with laws (i.e.: some other economic system). You have to change people’s values on a philosophical level.
If people weren’t consumed by wants and were content to live modestly, then what would it matter if we traded bananas for air passage?
The problem is that people want more than they need, and they want more than other people. So instead of “blaming the system”, let’s realize the system is a product of who we are and what we want. Where else did it come from?
Maybe one or two people on the planet at any given moment in time were content with what they had.
The world is effed up because of people. We’re all equally guilty for the way things are. Nobody is better than anybody in truth. And we’re all capable of the same evil. If people changed, then things would change in the world. Man won’t ever solve society’s problems.
For those lurking at home, the claims that China’s growth are the result of increased tariffs has been thoroughly debunked. Since joining the WTO China lowered its tariff rate considerably, and then saw dramatic economic growth. Whether there is direct correlation is fine to debate, but to some how suggest increased tariffs lead to increased economic growth is flat out wrong. China also continues to import more and more each year, plenty of which is bought from the US.
And as another data point in this on going fight against lunacy: http://www.cnbc.com/id/42373371/
“Nonfarm payrolls rose 216,000 last month, the largest increase since May, the Labor Department said on Friday. January and February employment figures were revised to show 7,000 more jobs than previously reported.”
“The private sector accounted for all the new jobs in March, adding 230,000 positions after Februarys 240,000 increase.”
Barter system is still capitalism, but involves lugging around chickens instead of cash.
And for the record, “liberal democracy” although never defined, is still capitalism. We have yet to see a successful alternative to capitalism. And for that matter, we have yet to see capitalism that didn’t include some form of socialist policies.
What is shows is that when given an opportunity people will team up for their mutual benefit. We see this all the time with condos and housing associations. And more significantly we see this we group based health plans. The US is full of socialism with a little tribalism mixed in.
It doesn’t matter many time you or Le Jacquelope say that it doesn’t make it so. But don’t let that stop you from writing it over and over and over and over and over and over. Maybe, just maybe, next time it will magically happen.
Capitalism is a form of economic policy, [social] democracy is a form of government. You can’t replace one with the other. We could have communism and democracy, or we could have capitalism and dictatorship. Instead we have a rather well functioning system of capitalism and democracy, where each person gets one vote regardless of wealth.
And despite what you see out your basement window, we have a heavily regulated capitalistic system. But that means you won’t get something for nothing, no matter how much you whine.
You get as many votes as Warren Buffet. And just because he can afford to flood the airways with political adds doesn’t change the fact that when you go behind the curtain you can vote for who ever you want.
The fact that wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few should make it even easy to vote the policies that favour you. But for some reason that doesn’t happen. Can you tell me why? Or would you rather just keep yelling plutocracy?
And just to throw a wrinkle in your plan, I have plenty of wealth, pay plenty of taxes, but can’t vote. Care to explain that?
The poor and financially inept buy the most lottery tickets, while the middle class usually avoids it. I’ve read some surveys on who buys lottery tickets, and their incomes, but I cannot find it at the moment. Needless to say, purchases were biased towards the extreme poor and those without financial skills/experience.
Most lottery winners who blow it all, blow it on valueless items, and items that rapidly depreciate/vanish. Land doesn’t lose value like a car does, or a $2000 bottle of wine. If people were to invest in land, they’d always have some capital saved up automatically, since land will never lose *all *it’s value, even in worst case scenarios. No way you’d lose all your capital in 1-5 years if you put 50% of what you got through redistribution into land.
Is this based on fact, research, studies, surveys, or personal experience and opinion? Other’s personal experience and opinion (including mine) would say it’s more like 20:80 instead.
I disagree. If the standard rate of return at any point in time is 8%, for example… if your proposed business will only return 4%… then you will get NO investors. What if your proposal returns 0%, but is enough to pay yourself a salary? Such a situation would also help give jobs to numerous others as well… but you will still get NO investors.
Many would be fine with a low-return self-run business… but this is something they need to invest their own money in, because no one else will invest in such a business.
Please comment on this.
Even if the numbers didn’t change, you’d have better businesses, with better productivity and efficiency… at worst.
Businesses should be taxed more than people. Especially the ones that can’t leave the country.
Depends how much they get. If they won the lottery, they’d invest it into funds. They want a simple life, yes, and so they’ll let someone else manage their money for them. This is almost the same as if they started their own businesses… but some capital is lost to commission.
Many middle class do want to work for themselves, at the very least. Maybe not start huge corporations, but have enough money to become self-employed. I have yet to read the thread though, so I will take a look at it. I have lots of engineering-school friends, and friends who went to business school, and friends who grew up in poverty… so from my perspective, I have trouble finding middle-class people who DON’T want to start their own business… but this makes me a bit biased… so I will think more about this.
I had a friend who sold expensive things, and got huge commissions (6-figures). Now, he only sells to old people and others who are afraid to shop online. My point of this was simply to illustrate the fact that while there may have been many ways to earn a living and acquire capital… it’s being reduced more and more over time: Either you a) invest capital, or b) be a wage-slave selling your time for money.
Americans want: electronics (SE Asia), cars (SE Asia, Europe), or cheap disposable crap (China). What do Americans want that’s actually made in America?!? (All I can think of is fast food and other subsidized corn-based products.)
So is the consensus that the reason why the American middle class is stagnating is because their potential wealth is effectively being redistributed to other countries?
I think you are oversimplifying it. Machinery and technology is making old jobs obsolete, but not necessarily making new ones. Yet you assume that it always does. I’m not sure I can believe this. It always takes less people to make a tractor than it did to manually plow the fields. BUT, you say this frees up their time to do something else with their time… yeah… like collect welfare and wait in the unemployment line.
I can’t help but see that as technology increases, jobs will irretrievably be lost. People will have less to offer others, since machines do most of the work. You can make those machines, sure, but you don’t need as many people, and you need to go to school for 25 years, and work for dirt cheap pay for another 5+. Meanwhile, the rich are getting richer than they ever have been.
The land was farmed by locals. Now they work in a sweatshop that was built on their stolen land, and they don’t get enough money to buy the same food they used to make “for free”. Sure, this isn’t a problem with capitalism as much as government corruption, I’ll concede that… but the well propagated myth that sweatshops increase the standard of living for those working in them is a lie. It’s a lie they tell us to make us feel better about buying crap that was built in sweatshops.
Power does concentrate, and this is a problem, as I see it. Taxes should de-concentrate the power. Strangely, the governments of most nations seem to tax the upper middle class and the lower upper class the most… those at the top are usually immune through whatever loophole lobbying/bribery was able to get them.
It doesn’t matter who I vote for, when all of them are bought out by the same dollars from the same people.
I think it’s a bit silly to suggest that the rich don’t have political power. I understand the problem with separating capitalism/economics and politics… but it’s a separation that can’t be realistically made.
The point is you two put forth similar, as in terrible, cites. That’s the point, I’ll repeat it again, you put forth terrible cites. Anyone and their dog can put forth a cite of someone agreeing with them. The issue is in the analysis. Look at the cites against you. For the most part they are from experts, with actual analysis, not some hackneyed ranting, partially thought-out drivel. Some armchair economist is not going to have the weight of authority as someone who specializes and has devoted a significant part of his life to the subject.
Regardless, while I freely acknowledge that all information should be viewed with critical skepticism, and you’re free to do it, too, when it comes down to the analysis you put on your ideological blinders on and reply with some quote that is as authoritative as my dad.
Care to analyze them? They have dissenters in those same threads. Ian Fletcher, according to himself, has 90% of economists against him.
Yet, policies haven’t change your way. Things get cheaper, more trade happens. People still vote everyday with their wallet.
By your reasoning, we’re all prostitutes and whores because we all do things for a paycheck. Here’s a news flash: people in academia, those who are published in peer reviewed journals, are not hacks, otherwise, the word has lost all meaning.
My logic also has room for the belief that many, many people are ignorant about economics. I’ll believe that much more easily than that 68% want higher tariffs. Oh, and believe the headline before you read the article or critically observe the polling question (as it has worked for you so well so far).
Yes, and when is that? People still shop at Walmart and Target. Free trade is now, it is working now.
I would tell you to go back and re-analyze the data, or hell, emacknight already did it for you, but I already know that you wouldn’t understand what it was saying.
Yeah, right… Inflation? CPI? Wage rates? Savings rates? GDP? Consumer confidence? Banking system/financial system health? You do realize that it is possible to be employed and to be worse off year after year, while doing the same job, right?
I asked you a direct and logical question with two choices and you can’t answer it. Ergo, a non-answer. Copying my writing style or any other only makes you a worse debater.
Stealing jobs? Is there a law that guarantees a job? Can a job actually be stolen? Stealing necessarily implies right of entitlement. Who again is entitled to a job and how (apart from an actual labor contract)? Losing 3-4%, compared to what?