Ont. migrant workers march in protest

Good for them. Maybe they'll raise the cost of their work to where Canadians will do it, and we won't need to import them anymore. But of course by then it will be deemed a right for them to come, and next they will demand being able to stay here permanently. And since we're not racists we will let them. We could save a lot of money by getting rid of immigration Canada and the border guards - not like they actually do anything.

These guys should sue for human rights violations like the tunnel workers for the Canada Line in Vancouver did. A bunch of South Americans were hired at lower wages than a bunch of Europeans, because the Europeans had higher skills and did not get plane fare and accomodation paid for. The South Americans went to the Human Rights Commission and were awarded the same wages as the Europeans, plus got to keep that airfare and accomodation. Very nice for them.

I knew you would show up to preach on the evils of the immigrants that in general work harder than the locals. Not their fault they are at least willing to find a job that pays instead of sit around and collect welfare checks because they think they are too good for minimum wage. I have an easier time finding unemployed Canadians than immigrants, and around here there is no job shortage, there is an employee shortage and yet we still have an unemployment rate of 5%.

You also completely miss the mark on economic knowledge, if the wages go up, so do the employers costs, the employer needs to get his money so he raises prices, thus creating something we call inflation. No matter how high minimum wage gets a lot of unemployed Canadians will consider themselves too good for it and live on welfare instead because they make a fair amount of money for sitting around and doing nothing.

I think there are people who would take these jobs. Fact is the employers recruit from countries like Mexico, South America to keep the costs down. I have been told that some university students were turned down for picking jobs. There are many immigrants on welfare and they don't have a problem with it. But I best stay away from that can of worms!

I think the temporary migrant farmer workers is a part of the immigration program that works. I was unemployed in the 1990's and thought about farm work but (1) you need a car to get to the work and (2) you still have to pay rent on your place in the city. So actually it's not a good proposition for people on welfare. To get Canadians to relocate for the season you'd have to pay high wages, as they do in the northern work camps. The northern work camps are the annalogy. High wages would be too expensive for family farms - so use foreign workers. I think they could pay them a dollar or two an hour more. The colourful term for farmer workers is "stoop labour", it is back breaking.

Sometimes people argue that immigration works by pointing to migrant farm workers. I think it's the exception; it works rather well.

Oh, you're right. We should all lower wages across the board - think of how we could wrestle inflation to the ground then - we could have deflation, what fun that would be. You should lower your income too - that way you could sell whatever you do for less and help the cause.

What a bunch of bullshit about people who are able to work being willing to live in $600 a month instead of working for a decent wage.

Just the usual trite arguments - lets race to the bottom, create a society of a few haves and more and more have nots. Yeah, that will be pleasant.

Isn't that the type of economy that fueled Communism in Russia?

Oh, you're right. We should all lower wages across the board - think of how we could wrestle inflation to the ground then - we could have deflation, what fun that would be. You should lower your income too - that way you could sell whatever you do for less and help the cause.

What a bunch of bullshit about people who are able to work being willing to live in $600 a month instead of working for a decent wage.

Just the usual trite arguments - lets race to the bottom, create a society of a few haves and more and more have nots. Yeah, that will be pleasant.
The point of it was that no matter how much the wages go up a lot of Canadians will consider themselves too good for it because the cost of living will go up with it.

Min wage nets you ~1300 a month which I was easily able to live on during my year off, they do work for a decent wage, I have found immigrants to be better workers than the locals because they have a lot more to lose.

That sound familiar already, oh, right, we call that Capitalism, the funny part is that is already happening, in the USA the top 20% in income have 80% of the wealth and it is becoming an increasingly small number of people who control the money.

Sorry but you are off the mark here in terms of economic knowledge also. Employers can't just arbitrarily raise prices. Prices are determined by demand. When you go to purchase a product, do you care what the business spent on labour or hydro or materials? Of course not. Your purchasing decision may depend on many things, but when you're faced with a price increase, it's doubtful that you'll care much whether the business had to spend more on labour.

I hear that fallacy all the time. People complaining about hockey ticket prices say "The damn greedy players and their salaries are driving up ticket prices". But that's completely incorrect and completely backwards logic. It's the demand for the sport that's driving up the prices and ALLOWING players to earn the higher salaries. Businesses certainly can attempt to recoup increases in their costs by inflating their prices, but whether they'll be able depends on a myriad of other factors including elasticity of demand and market structure/competition. Ultimately pricing is determined by consumer demand, not the business owners' desire to offset his costs.

Sorry but you are off the mark here in terms of economic knowledge also. Employers can't just arbitrarily raise prices. Prices are determined by demand. When you go to purchase a product, do you care what the business spent on labour or hydro or materials? Of course not. Your purchasing decision may depend on many things, but when you're faced with a price increase, it's doubtful that you'll care much whether the business had to spend more on labour.

I hear that fallacy all the time. People complaining about hockey ticket prices say "The damn greedy players and their salaries are driving up ticket prices". But that's completely incorrect and completely backwards logic. It's the demand for the sport that's driving up the prices and ALLOWING players to earn the higher salaries. Businesses certainly can attempt to recoup increases in their costs by inflating their prices, but whether they'll be able depends on a myriad of other factors including elasticity of demand and market structure/competition. Ultimately pricing is determined by consumer demand, not the business owners' desire to offset his costs.
I am aware of the supply and demand system, but when labour costs rise say $5/hour per employee and they are still using an old price they will be raising it to recover their losses, I know of a couple places that have been trying to get their prices increased because the main company set Canada wide prices and labour is killing their profits.

Exactly - the spread between the wealthy and the rest keeps increasing, in the US but we're following right along. And what you are proposing just keeps that trend going. Let's keep importing more and more people to do cheap, low paid work, while a few get rich off it, and Canadian workers are laid off and then blamed for being lazy welfare bums. Those people we are importing have no connection to Canada if they go back home - they just take the money they earned out of our economy. Or, like the "Gastarbeiter" in Germany, they stay in the country but never assimilate.

We used to have a much more egalitarian country, and it was a better one. Now we seem to just want to copy India and China, with a few people at the top making the bucks and more and more people sinking into poverty.

Isn't that the type of economy that fueled Communism in Russia?
You fail Revisionism 101.
Communism collapsed therefore every concept it was based on is invalid. Even thinking about economic "classes" is abhorrent, treasonous and soon to be ruled a mental illness.

Exactly - the spread between the wealthy and the rest keeps increasing, in the US but we're following right along. And what you are proposing just keeps that trend going. Let's keep importing more and more people to do cheap, low paid work, while a few get rich off it, and Canadian workers are laid off and then blamed for being lazy welfare bums. Those people we are importing have no connection to Canada if they go back home - they just take the money they earned out of our economy. Or, like the "Gastarbeiter" in Germany, they stay in the country but never assimilate.

We used to have a much more egalitarian country, and it was a better one. Now we seem to just want to copy India and China, with a few people at the top making the bucks and more and more people sinking into poverty.
So we fix it by shutting down immigration? Clearly the immigrants are to blame for finding a job while politicians and the businesses themselves are completely innocent. It's not like those organizations have the power to pay a higher wage or force companies to do that....wait.

This is some serious dejavu, we were just covering the Anglo-Canadian view that Canada had for the West until like 50 years ago where the main focus was assimilating the immigrants or stopping them from coming. Perhaps you missed it, Canada is multicultural and encourages immigrants to keep their culture, the fact that we do that is a reason we are loved by a lot of countries and considered a place of freedom. But hey, they weren't born here so that have no right to leave whatever dictator infested country, unjust law system, or rampant criminal activity they may be fleeing from. A lot of immigrants come here because the choice between living in a country that frequently leads the world in rights movements and living in a country where you go to bed every night not knowing if you would be free the next day is a fairly easy one.

Because immigrants who have graduated from universities which do not cover the Canadian system are always superior? Because immigrants clearly can become completely fluent in a completely new countries system in a fraction the time and thus do the job faster and cheaper than a native Canadian? People aren't fired because a company found out they can import a worker that will work for $5 less but at the same time not know the Canadian system or in 99% of the cases speak English fluently. People get fired because the company A) Got tired of their bullshit B) Is losing money and is laying off workers C) The job they were hired for was completed D) The company found out you aren't as educated as they want, lots of other reasons but those are the big ones.

The upper tiers require an education that is from a Canada approved university/college, and I doubt they would be willing to fire proven workers over a few dollars an hour. Lower tiers generally already pay so little they cannot go much lower and immigrants happen to be the guys applying for these jobs because their university degree is not recognized by Canada (My family knows a person that was a surgeon in China with her degrees but it is not recognized in Canada and the cost of getting certified is too high for her so now she works for a fraction what she could)

Isn't that the type of economy that fueled Communism in Russia?
You fail Revisionism 101.
Communism collapsed therefore every concept it was based on is invalid. Even thinking about economic "classes" is abhorrent, treasonous and soon to be ruled a mental illness.
No country has ever really gone Communist, it has been done successfully in smaller groups though.

They can TRY to raise their prices, but that doesn't mean they'll be able. In general, businesses don't set prices, consumers do.



Again, if businesses set prices, everything would be $1M. Wages are determined by Marginal Revenue Product of Labour (MRPL). That means that wages are a RESULT of revenue generated, not a factor in it. You're thinking is backwards. Labour doesn't kill profit. Labour creates profit.