The idea that we must import untold millions of browns from countries totally incompatible with Western countries because there's a "labor shortage" is perhaps the most pernicious lie ever devised in economic history. The so called labor shortage is a total spook that only exists because the average American zoomer refuses to work at "Cheap Lardass Co." for the competitive weekly wage of 5 pennies, pocket lint & a stale potato chip. The employers & big businesses of America are so frustratingly shameless that they'd rather import these curry golems en masse in order to increase their bottom line by 2 percent, than give us even an inch. If young Americans were actually offered a decent wage for their effort the labor shortage in the country would vanish within a week.
Agreed. But even if the US deported every Indian, companies would still near-shore the good paying/possibly remote jobs. East Coasters, Latin Americans, Canadians, etc. all work sort of in the same timezone anyway ± a few hours, and the Dollar remains so dominant that tech workers from there can undercut American labor
and 5× what they'd make working in the countries of origin. Sure, you might not 100% trust an Argentinian developer with all your code-base, but hey he's 50% cheaper and has no benefits can't unionize or ever sue you
Wages are paid through intermediaries of intermediaries. AFAIK only taxable on the country of destiny, some even convert it to crypto (dunno the rates, though) for you. I've read somewhere ITT that that's good wrt. monetary policy, since it's exporting those fiat dollars. True, it's relatively low velocity of money stuff... but exported dollars mostly end up in treasury holdings abroad or are reinvested in the US; second route probably has to do with the US' high Buffet index and asset price inflation.
My general conclusion from working in tech: the market is efficiently fucking everyone over. Through a globalized rat race, and arbitrage of the US Dollar dominance and "good enough" labor available elsewhere:
- From what I heard, it's been killing national tech companies in latam because they can't compete for labor; ie. diminish innovation, economic output etc.
- Drives wages down in the US
- Introduces inefficiencies due to intermediary's rent-seeking, cultural mismatch/lack of trust
- Concentrates Dollars in assets with no economic output, rather than in the real economy, specially locals (since imagine Juan Juanes Cervantes Marques Garcia de Jesus y los Santos gets his $10; the majority of it he'll put it in a fab7 company or whatever, because wtf is he supposed to do with Dollars other than sell them to a bank or buy US stocks?)
