The All American Game

If we believe in economics 101 and supply and demand, if employers are having a hard time finding workers there is a solution. You don't have to bring in cheap labor from abroad to depress wages for American workers. You raise wages.

--Senator Bernard Sanders, on Vermont Public Radio.

The gist of the story is that although only 7% of Vermont's ski area workers are foreign workers, Sanders opposes allowing more foreign workers into the U.S. under temporary work visas.

How about an industry where 25% of all workers are foreign born, clearly taking jobs away from very well qualified Americans. Red Sox fans, you know where I'm going with this. Think of all the fine American baseball players, struggling to make it in the big leagues, who can't get a job because of David Ortiz, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Javier Lopez, Manny Ramirez, and many more are taking positions that American born players could be taking.

In fact, one out of every four baseball players in the Major Leagues are foreign born.  Think of how much better the game would be, and how much more the fans would appreciate the game if we didn't allow any of them to play.

No?  Then what's the difference between allowing foreign players to play baseball and letting them pick lettuce, run a ski lift, or work in a slaughterhouse.  They are better off and their customers are better off, just as spectators enjoy watching Ortiz and Dice-K play a lot more  than an American-born player filling their shoes.

Anyway, Go Sox!

Comments

[Ethan Shepard]

Re: the Sox... kinda hope they loose tonight just so we can see a couple of more games with Ellsbury and Pedroia knocking out a few more hits.

[Anonymous]

So Art are you seriously arguing that the presence of foreigners in Baseball (or other sports) is keeping the salaries down. Let's see, there is a guy out there who is an American who is a better ball player and will help a team win games but his salary is going to cost too much,so he is sitting home watching not playing, while the foreigners work for less? I don't think so

The difference is that the best lift operator in the world is worth, I don't know, say $10 bucks an hour and the worst is worth say $8 bucks an hour. No huge skill differentiation in lift operators (unlike baseball)and you can learn the job in a few days It's cold. It's boring. Bernie is right in that if Killington suddenly decided to pay $30 an hour for help the applicants pool of Vermonters would increase. But of course we know that it is not quite that simple.

I think you are trying to argue that Bernie is a hypocrite but I don't think your comparison between baseball and ski areas really supports your point.

[James Ehlers]

I heard the interview with Senator Sanders and Parker Riehle of the Ski Areas. Neither seemed to acknowledge the market's influence with respect to wages.

Since wages are a component of the final price of just about every product, for those of us in business, it is not simply a matter of paying more, even if we wanted to ... paying more usually means charging more, which usually results in depressed sales volume. We will not be paying more for longer when the market decides they like the price of a less expensive ski ticket in New Hampshire or Maine better. We will not be employing anyone at all.

Perhaps that is the goal of the Senator's policies. If not, he apparently needs more private sector job creators on his policy team for it appears he is one step away from government-mandated salary structures. This, of course, may be an over simplification of the issue, but then again so is the Senator's position.