Caymen said
Isn't capitalism all about checks and balances. If you can not hire people for $5 bucks an hour to mow someones lawn, maybe you should pay more. If you have to pay an employee $50.00/hr to mow the lawn and you can not get customers because you charge too much, then you find a different field to work in. Let the consumer decide what he or she wants to pay for a service. If it is too expensive, Sears sells lawn mowers, they can do it themself. If they do not want to do it themself, then the only other choice would be to pay someone $50.00/hr.
Capitalism does have it's checks and balances. The "problem" that I assume many have isn't that capitalism isn't working, nor is it that the "free market" isn't setting the wages. I say that because you seem to imply that the market is not setting the wages, and the capitalism isn't working. Nothing could be further from the truth.
In actuality the market is defining the wage, and the "availability" of the lower-waged employee (the illegal) is keeping that wage low. So comments like "If you cannot hire people for $5 an hour..." are simply incorrect as with illegals and by employing people under the table you CAN find workers at that low wage or at similiarly low wages.
That's the reality. Some would say that illegals keep those wages artificially low; that by having the lower wages the small business owner that hires them is simply making higher profits, and that if that owner had to pay more, he would just make a little less profit and/or raise prices a little. Well, that's sounds good on paper, but we really don't know, now do we, because this isn't really anything more than a "thought experiment" (look it up), with no real data to show would happen if illegals didn't have these jobs.
I have said it time and time again. It is largely small business owners that hire illegals. They don't work for themselves. And most of these owners are incorporated or an LLC, and most file the correct federal and state business taxes. It wouldn't take much forensic accounting to show that for many of them, they are paying people under the table. Audits would be easy to conduct. Yet, we don't do it....why? It surely isn't because the "Small Business Alliance" lobby is so powerful.
Anyway, I agree, wrong is wrong, and if you pay someone under the table you are breaking the law....yet I suspect there isn't a person here that hasn't been paid by someone, at some time, tax free.
Also, this is much more than just a landscaping industry issue. There are illegals in all industries.
What would it look like if they were all gone, and we filled those jobs and paid people legit? I don't think the wages themselves would go up that much...slightly, but not a lot. The extra burden of taxes would be the big hurt for most small businesses. Instead of paying an illegal $10 and hour under the table to lay pavers you might pay some other guy $12 or 15 with taxes and unemployment comp.
You want to know who I blame for this? Again, I will blame parents. Look at a lot of the jobs held by illegals; often it is labor jobs, often summer jobs. Why can't Joe and Jane 14 to 21 year old work those jobs? Why can't little Jimmy mow lawns, or lay pavers, or swing a pickaxe? Why can't Susie bus tables, or load the dishwasher?
No, folks, I think the reality is that there ARE jobs out there that by their nature do and probably should only pay up to $8, $10, or $12 an hour, and they are hard working jobs, and there was a time in this country where they were considered "filler" and "stepping stone" jobs for our young adults.
I've talked with small business owners. They can't find any "kids" to work for them. Do you think there is a coincidence in the rise of illegals the past twenty years along with the same rise in our own affluence and coddling of our children: buying them cars because "they deserve i
