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submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

While some contractors dismiss the plan as political rhetoric, many say they can’t afford to lose more people from an aging, immigrant-dependent workforce still short of nearly 400,000 people.

Both presidential candidates promise to build more homes. One promises to deport hundreds of thousands of people who build them.

Former President Donald Trump's pledge to "launch the largest deportation operation in the history of our country" would hamstring construction firms already facing labor shortages and push record home prices higher, say industry leaders, contractors and economists.

"It would be detrimental to the construction industry and our labor supply and exacerbate our housing affordability problems," said Jim Tobin, CEO of the National Association of Home Builders. The trade group considers foreign-born workers, regardless of legal status, "a vital and flexible source of labor" to builders, estimating they fill 30% of trade jobs like carpentry, plastering, masonry and electrical roles.

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[-] chaosCruiser@futurology.today 31 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

They did that in UK. Brexit worked out perfectly, and everyone lived happily ever after. Oh wait… Wrong story. It was a total dumpster fire and now labor shortage is crippling various industries.

[-] ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 day ago

It was a bit different. Brexit wasn't hiring workers for $14/hour because legal residents would be doing the job for $25/hour.

Besides that, we don't need more houses being built so much as we need a hard cap on any entity owning more than a few rental houses.

[-] chaosCruiser@futurology.today 2 points 22 hours ago

At the moment, they have trouble filling positions in restaurants and hospitals, because locals aren’t interested in working very hard for hardly any money. Also, all the Polish lorry drivers would need to be replaced by local UK residents, which appears to be harder than expected. (insert pikachu meme here)

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[-] njm1314@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Oh we absolutely need more houses being built. That's not even a question. Sure it would help to also have controls for the amount of properties one entity can hold, but doing that without building more houses would in no way solve the problem

[-] ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 23 hours ago

There's currently 15,000,000 houses in the US that aren't even being lived in right now. We in no way have to increase the production rate of building more houses in order to house everyone.

[-] njm1314@lemmy.world 5 points 23 hours ago

And are all those houses in areas where there's enough jobs to support the people living in them? Are all of those houses in livable condition? Further than that, what makes you think that Society needs one house to one person? If you don't have a surplus of houses you don't have the ability to move from one city to the next to pursue new opportunities. You always need a large surplus of houses so that Mobility is possible. So I think you'll find that when you look a little closer at that number it's not quite as advantageous as you think.

[-] Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 4 points 22 hours ago

his vows are no more meaningful than the clergy's vows of celibacy

[-] 800XL@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago

He knows this. The goal of the billionaires is to completely destabilize the economy, blame it on Biden and take power by force with Trump as the mouth piece. Buy guns, buy ammo, buy bolt cutters.

[-] hglman@lemmy.ml 0 points 15 hours ago

Yeah please don't toss out the underclass we all caush to have nice things.

[-] randon31415@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago

Drive up ~~home prices~~ Trump's property values.

[-] Myxomatosis@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

I’m sure he would find some way to profit off of the “driving up home costs” aspect of this.

[-] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 3 points 1 day ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWNko6ZSAzg

It's not wrong, but it's missing the level of danger involved by several orders of magnitude.

[-] OccamsRazer@lemmy.world -2 points 1 day ago

Our economy depends on a base of low cost labor that used to be from kids or young people. It's almost like Democrats have decided to fill that void with immigrants while Republicans are trying to get back to the low cost labor being from having more kids. It makes sense if your goal is to keep the machine running the way it was designed, or at least how it evolved to operate. Social security, insurance, fast food, service industries, construction would all need overhaul to function without low cost labor being their base. Seems like you could reduce consumerism in general to compensate for the reduced low income work force, but that would hurt the economic numbers and cause an overall contraction in the stock market. Tough pills to swallow for everyone who has accumulated any significant amount of wealth in this system.

[-] 31337@sh.itjust.works 6 points 23 hours ago

Isn't one of the arguments for raising minimum wage that higher incomes will result in more consumption and social program contribution?

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this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2024
621 points (98.0% liked)

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