Vox
18 HN mentions · mentioned in 13 months, 2015–2026
3:52 · 410K views · Jul 29, 2015
A short clip of Bernie Sanders in conversation with Ezra Klein of Vox, where he rejects open borders as a proposal that serves the Koch brothers. It is an excerpt from a longer interview on global poverty.
HN commenters cite it in immigration debates as evidence of Sanders' 2015 position that open borders and high immigration hurt wages.
18 comments from Hacker News
It's supply and demand 101, illegal immigration combined with offshoring lowers wages and increases profit margin for the wealthy. Low wage jobs are taken by illegal immigrants, forcing US citizens to take on debt to go to college, where wages are also lowered because there are now thousands of college grads desperate to pay off their debt that can't be eliminated through bankruptcy due to congress being lobbied. A wonderful scam. Same thing with big tech companies pushing for more H1B to push down engineering wages and lower standard of living. This stuff shouldn't even be left vs right, it should be common sense. Here's bernie sanders talking about how open boarders is pushed by the koch brothers to give them cheap labor this video We're rapidly heading towards feudalism 2.0. You can already see it in the Bay Area(and essentially any major urban area) where only the wealthy can afford a home. The majority pay a large chunk of their income to their landlord
Anti-globalization was always a hot topic for the left. Read Chomsky on NAFTA for example and free trade: [LINK] Here is Bernie Sanders being visibly upset at raising immigration levels and instituting "open borders" policy: this video I am kind of interested how the current liberals become pro-globalization all of the sudden. They went from organizing large anti-globalization riots, and getting tear gased fighting it, to "What do you mean? We love globalization!". I want to see a more specific analysis in how the shift happened, and maybe a more detailed timeline. Certainly an interesting topic. Here is of course Zuckerberg with his letter worrying that people are not buying the globalization shtick very well anymore: [LINK] If you squint enough to not notice the liberal veneer he puts on you might think he is one of the Koch brothers.
Older family friend made $30/hr in the 60-70s with pension and benefits working in a meat packing plant with a high school education. Same job today pays $15/hr with no benefits thanks to illegal immigration. There's a reason people like the Koch brothers spend millions in support of illegal immigration, they wanted to drive down the labor cost for jobs like the above. this video Offshoring and illegal immigration has killed low skill jobs and given billion dollar multinational corporations the ability to demand whatever they want from workers because they have unlimited labor supply. This doesn't just effect low skill labor either, it forces more people to go to college and take on debt which then drives down the wages of high skill work as well. It's a scam and the american people should be angry
I made a few tangential points regard globalization in a similar discussion. Basically wondering how globalization which was a very right wing corporatist idea (Sanders calls it a Koch brothers proposal here this video basically) became a favorite of the new left. And conversely anti-globalization was a top issue for the left along with TPP, NAFTA and other such stuff. I think it is rather ironic that the new "left" love them globalization all of the sudden, even when their younger brothers were tear-gassed protesting it, just a decade ago or so protesting against it. (More discussion here [LINK] along with a promising book on the subject, 'The Technological Society' by Jacques Ellul suggested by Drumlin. Still waiting for it to come from Amazon)
I don't think that's quite right. I think over the last 10 years a lot of the anti-corporate energy of Occupy Wall Street has been funnelled - by means of the culture war - into "identity" issues that have little potential to harm corporate power or profits. I would argue that this did not originate on the right or left but was the result of a political class that's beholden to endless donations. To me, one really clear example of this is immigration. As recently as 2016, Bernie Sanders was saying that mass immigration is a Koch Brothers strategy for keeping wages low[1]. I think he was right. But the left has been cajoled away from this position over time because it had the potential to harm their corporate donors. [1] this video