Yet another Hacker News

29 points neehao 2 hours ago 17 comments

bambax 54 minutes ago | parent

> "When policy is politically polarized, you need more facts," he said.

Mmmm... It seems in the world of politics, esp. populist politics, more facts don't bring better policies. They are simply ignored, or accused of being lies pushed by the ennemies.

> "We have all the facts on this we need. We don't need any more facts. In the land of truth, my friend, the man with one fact is the king."

-- Linton Barwick, In The Loop (2009)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdoN1LWGgfQ

throwup238 24 minutes ago | parent

Finally a The Thick of It reference in HN.

An AUS Utopia reference would probably be more fitting though.

fwlr 46 minutes ago | parent

The firms who do not win the visa lottery “just become smaller firms” instead of hiring market-rate labor because they still have to compete in a market against other firms who won the visa lottery and have access to below-market-rate labor.

Did the economists who ran this study miss this? Do they explain it?

emmelaich 32 minutes ago | parent

AEA leans strongly left. I wouldn't put much store in this.

grubbydiff 28 minutes ago | parent

"Reality has a well-known liberal bias."

grubbydiff 28 minutes ago | parent

Have you gotten a chance to read the paper? If not, you should consider reading it. They have explained it. It's got to do around the fact that domestic labor supply is inleastic but the foreign supply is infinitely elastic. You might want to focus on sections VI and VII for more details around their model and assumptions.

ralph84 40 minutes ago | parent

> Cmd-F housing

> not found

Yet another chamber of commerce article clamoring for more cheap labor without addressing where all of these people are supposed to live.

zanderwohl 27 minutes ago | parent

It is rather puzzling how this major contributing factor is going overlooked. It seems obvious from ground-level. Economists often talk about how expensive labor drives price increases, but don't talk about how price increases cause expensive labor.

grubbydiff 19 minutes ago | parent

Did you get a chance to read the paper? Did you read Section VII and footnote 51? If so, do you still believe that the article is "clamoring for more 'cheap' labor?"

And what other issues would you like to see besides housing and employment in the article?

mrjay42 31 minutes ago | parent

> "Evidence from a US government lottery shows that restricting foreign low-skill workers shrinks businesses without creating jobs for Americans."

Proving that the issue is capitalism and its systemic need for a reserve army of labour (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_army_of_labour) to pressure people to accept unfair conditions of living/work

HexPhantom 8 minutes ago | parent

The lottery is what makes this unusually interesting. A lot of immigration/labor studies get stuck on the obvious selection problem: firms that hire immigrant workers are probably different from firms that don't in a dozen other ways.