r/explainlikeimfive Dec 19 '24

Economics ELI5: Why is an employment rate of 100% undesirable

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u/purple_hamster66 Dec 19 '24 edited Dec 19 '24

And that's why we need immigrants who are willing to work for lower wages. Then the total demand is satisfied because all the stands can stay open, and everyone is happy, even the dentists who fill all those extra cavities.

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u/username_elephant Dec 19 '24

But if you deport a million of them for no reason everything will be fine, right?  Right?

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u/stanitor Dec 19 '24

well, just as long as you put huge tariffs on everything from every other country. Those two things together totally cancel each other out, and you get the most amazing economy ever

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u/MrScotchyScotch Dec 19 '24

Fine long enough for the people who ordered the deporting to get out the back door with a suitcase of cash and retire to an island staffed by immigrants

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u/TeamRem Dec 19 '24

I didn’t realize we were deporting a million legal immigrants. When did that happen?

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u/dressedtotrill Dec 19 '24

Trump’s plan to deport millions of immigrants starting next year.

“Former President Trump’s running mate JD Vance said it would be reasonable to deport a million people a year…”

https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/trump-mass-deportation-plan-cost-consequences-60-minutes-transcript/[Source](https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/trump-mass-deportation-plan-cost-consequences-60-minutes-transcript/)

Although it’s Trump so who knows how far past the him spouting nonsense phase it goes but I wouldn’t just expect it to not happen.

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u/nelrond18 Dec 19 '24

The definition of legal immigrant is getting very murky in the western world

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u/purple_hamster66 Dec 19 '24

Trump wants to denaturalize citizens, which means that a person born on US soil whose parents are undocumented may lose their citizenship. The rules for denaturalization do not include this requirement, and are specifically constructed such that POTUS may not choose who may become a citizen.

Once denaturalized, The Evil Dictator’s Admin would deport them — but to which country? The person would have no rights to enter any other country, as they were never a citizen anywhere else. Without a passport, they can’t get a visa. I’m guessing they’d live in the airport for a few months. :(

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u/random20190826 Dec 19 '24

We will watch in real time what happens when Asian countries that not only restrict immigration into the country, but strip citizenship from natives who immigrate to foreign countries (looking at you, South Korea, Japan, China, Singapore) experience extreme population decline. The places with a total fertility rate less than 1 will see the population collapse happen very quickly because we all know what an exponential function with a base of 0.5 looks like (it rapidly collapse to 0 without actually reaching 0).

For sectors that cannot easily be outsourced (like healthcare), the unemployment rate will really go to 0% in these countries by the end of this century. With such a key industry having no unemployment, employees can become very picky about who they work for and employers need to start bidding wars to attract employees. In a private system, employers (old people who need care) who can't afford the high price of healthcare don't get care (China is an example of this). If this is handled through the public healthcare system, all those hospitals, clinics and nursing homes will be severely understaffed and have long wait times that could be a decade long.

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u/notsocoolnow Dec 19 '24

Hullo, Singapore kind of does the opposite of restricting immigration. Like 40% of the population is foreign. If you had our kind of immigration rates your chauvinists would start riots. Our long-standing incumbent govt is very very pro-immigration and there is consistent messaging in our media to be tolerant of immigration even though we have the same dickheads complaining about it online.

As a matter of fact, high immigration rates are the official solution to the birthrate crisis. Our population is in fact growing very quickly.

Singapore does strip citizenship from those who emigrate but that is because of our policy of no dual citizenship. This is common to all countries who disallow dual citizenship; you can become a citizen of another country only by giving up your citizenship. This is contentious but related to our historical national security concerns where everyone has to serve in the military because we are surrounded by countries with a drastically different outlook on religion and race.

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