Rch/poor country workers -- in different labor markets

Re: Social-democratic vs market-friendly progressivism – Lane Kenworthy  
https://lanekenworthy.net/2016/05/26/social-democratic-vs-market-friendly-progressivism/

Hill and Bern can add a truly free LABOR MARKET to their agenda.

A 50% poor-country/50% rich-country workforce (Chicago work-force? – useful approximation) whose pay level set by collective bargaining – will have a higher level of pay than a 100% rich-country workforce whose pay is set by what I call “subsistence-plus.”
 
Subsistence-plus means what Karl Marx would have recognized (Teamster vet here: we are looking for good capitalist contracts; we are not looking for class enemies): bottom pay is set at the bottom tolerance level below which nobody will show up …

… $400/wk for poor country/$800/wk for rich (just to concoct a not too far off approximation to use) – e.g., foreign born taxi drivers/American born (that’s me) which latter will no longer show up for 60 grueling hours. Neither will the Crips and the Bloods who, if supermarket were paying the $800 they used to, would be stacking shelves instead of looking out for cops (that’s 100,000 out of my guesstimate 200,000 Chicago gang-age, minority males – at any one time!).

A 50-50% labor market whose pay is set by subsistence-plus – or at least a combo of subsistence-plus and collective bargaining – will not clear. A huge drop out of rich country workers will result – more or less permanently (street gangs, whatever missing American born cab drivers do now ??? I’m retired at 72).

I repeat: A 50% poor-country/50% rich-country workforce (Chicago work-force? – useful approximation) whose pay level set by collective bargaining – will have a higher level of pay than a 100% rich-country workforce whose pay is set by what I call “subsistence-plus.”
because I think this particular formulation will stick in human male heads which too quickly (instantly) vaporize any idea that is too far from current (hunting pack?) practice – doesn’t even get out the other ear. I think this formulation will stick.

And maybe Hill and Bern can add a truly free LABOR MARKET to their agenda.

(I’m just starting to work on the above – not even a first draft – but I am always over-anxious.)