I agree with Krugman. We literally have millions of Americans out of work, and they have all kinds of valuable skills. There is no shortage of skilled workers in the United States -- there is a shortage of employers willing to pay a decent and livable wage.
An absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that workers cannot be found at $10/hr does not prove that they can be found at $100/hr. The only evidence Krugman, Baker or any of the others has offered is that workers cannot be found at what they claim is too low a wage. They claim that those jobs would be filled if higher wages were offered, but they have never posted jobs at higher wages and filled them, nor have they offered other than anecdotal evidence of people available but unwilling to work for those wages.
Another point worth making is that as a highly skilled electrician I was worth a lot of money in my working days. But I can guarantee you that forced to choose between no job and a job at less than what I "thought I was worth" I would be working for a living. At any wage. I would not be sitting on my butt complaining that employers were not willing to pay me enough.
If there are indeed hordes of siklled workers in this nation who would rather sit on their butts and collect unemployment than work for "less than they are worth" then I hope that we do fall off the cliff and those lazy idiots do lose their unemployment "benefits." I have been supporting the provision of those benefits because I have been under the illusion that they desperately wanted work and were unable to find any.