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Sam_Odio | 5 years ago

> there's a valid reason as to why it's being done (to prioritize Americans out of work)

The "Fixed pie fallacy" [1] is probably both one of the most important tenants of modern policy-making, yet it's rarely explicitly discussed or debated.

Cyclone_, your thinking relies on this fallacy, namely that if one person is working a job, that's one less job available. [2]

In reality, there is quite a bit of empirical research that indicates when people work (especially highly skilled jobs like in tech), it does not reduce (and may even increase) the jobs available to others [3].

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy 2. https://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/07/opinion/lumps-of-labor.ht... 3. https://siepr.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/publications/...

discuss

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jjoonathan|5 years ago

If globalization and automation are so good at job creation, why did the American manufacturing workforce collapse?

Economies are complex, counter-intuitive feedback machines, but the "supply and demand" model fits the last 40 years of data, while the "floats all boats" model really doesn't.

"Lump of labor is a fallacy, honest!" sure sounds like the kind of opinion I could get a good penny for if I were an enterprising economist, though.

kjksf|5 years ago

He was talking about software jobs.

"More than half of the top American tech companies were founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants"

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/30/us-tech-companies-founded-by...

Recent immigrants were responsible for creating tens of thousands of jobs, most of them for Americans.

Software isn't a zero-sum game even on a country level and certainly US benefits enormously because companies like Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Netflix etc. are global giants but employ massive amounts of highly paid people in US.

shuckles|5 years ago

If globalization and automation are so good at job creation, why did the American horse buggy workforce collapse?