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Comment by stcredzero | Hacker News Reader

The missing process-- the engine Jacobs finds for all economic life-- is import replacement.

What does it mean for the US, when we can't keep up with our demand to import qualified employees?

EDIT: "A city region is used to change, is constantly innovating; a supply region is not. It treats its resources as God's gift, a presumably eternal windfall; it prepares only half-heartedly for the end of the boom, and when it comes it's caught short."

Substitute "city region" and "supply region" for something and "worker" and maybe we have something that relates to another article about how workers rent their resources for pay. (Which I can't find right now.) In other words, is being a conventional worker like being a "supply region?"

Perhaps people are the opposite of cities? When people start to prosper, they seem to be outsourcing tasks.

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> What does it mean for the US, when we can't keep up with our demand to import qualified employees?

Import replacement would be finding ways to supply the same needs using domestic employees.

Also, the whole point of the analysis is that nations like the US are the wrong units to look at. It's not a question of whether the US can keep up with the demand for various kinds of workers; it's whether individual cities or city regions can. The Bay area, for example, seems to have no problem making use of qualified employees from anywhere in the world.

> is being a conventional worker like being a "supply region?"

Not necessarily. I think the key question would be, does the worker do anything to develop their "resources" (their skills and knowledge) so they can respond to changes in supply and demand by changing what they do or how they do it? Or do they just expect to keep being paid for doing the same thing forever, even if it is no longer economically viable?

> Or do they just expect to keep being paid for doing the same thing forever, even if it is no longer economically viable?

I agree with your point that it is incumbent upon every individual to continually improve themselves. However, I like point out whenever this sentiment is brought up (including by myself) that while individuals must continuously improve, it does not necessarily follow that organizations will improve. Even if those very organizations are crammed with lots of those continuously-improving individuals. Especially large, monopolistic or duopolistic organizations with a lot of staying power over long periods of time.

>What does it mean for the US, when we can't keep up with our demand to import qualified employees?

It means you're missing the root reason why people want to import qualified employees: Because they're more exploitable. If they (the employee) is dependent on their employer to not be deported, then they don't have the employment mobility to negotiate a better salary with.

> What does it mean for the US, when we can't keep up with our demand to import qualified employees?

Is that really what's happening? If so, why are wages stagnant? The "importing" is not because of a true lack, but because it's a way to seek a lower price-point than they could get domestically. (If not in H1-B land, then at least in agriculture.)

Also, "demand to import" seems a little weird. It's like saying "the demand to recycle aluminum". What's actually demanded is aluminum as a good. Recycling simply happens to be one possible way that it can be supplied.

"The "importing" is not because of a true lack, but because it's a way to seek a lower price-point than they could get domestically."

Isn't this what a lack is? There are very few situations in which a needed thing doesn't exist at all.

I think "we need a X gallons of oil to run the factory" is a demand in the supply-vs-demand sense.

In contrast, "our profit is low because oil is expensive, let's lobby the government to build a new oil pipeline" is somehow different.

> What does it mean for the US, when we can't keep up with our demand to import qualified employees?

Fix our educational system and train our own citizens? Seems pretty straightforward.

Yes. People are generally so focused on lowering their taxes that they forget what they pay for.

A simplified tax code, where it's still progressive, i.e. tiered, but no deductions would get rid of the feeling that we're paying more than our fair share because there would be fewer ways for people to game the system. It would also potentially recuperate the waste on the tax preparation economy.

And for people who don't think taxes/money is the solution to the education issues in the US, look at the difference between California's performance before prop 13 and after prop 13 passed. Prop 13 capped the amount that taxes could be raised on property for both individuals AND corporations, strangling the educational systems main revenue stream.

Here's Milton Friedman explaining why the first is politically unfeasible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TruCIPy79w8

>"People are generally so focused on lowering their taxes that they forget what they pay for."

I disagree quite a bit on taxation. But, what I will say is that by making taxes a mandatory (and often-argued about thing), we have put ourselves in a position where people will probably never come to see that with no "money", nothing that they want will get done/bought.

And allow more immigration, and streamline the immigration process to reduce costs for employers.

Because citizens are more important than employers.

I live in a region whose wealth largely derives from oil. Everyone's answer to the low price of oil is to double down on oil (despite the fact we're one of the highest cost producers in the world, and most firms are losing money on every barrel at these prices). It would be comical if we weren't in the worst local recession in 30 years...

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