Why exploiting underpaid jobs to maintain unsustainable lifestyles is seen as "fine" rather then aberration?

People can live without milkshakes, chicken bakes, and with less toys to choose from local retailers.

But looking at Guardian article on the same topic only about quarter of "driver shortage" is EU drivers:
Logistics UK, which represents freight owners including supermarkets, has estimated a shortage of 90,000 HGV drivers, including about 25,000 from the EU who have gone home since Brexit.

And the rest is drivers either missing due to C19 restrictions, them switching to alternatives like home delivery rather then supermarket delivery, or just drivers trying to take a break in upcoming holiday season.

There are also tax changes muddying the waters - apparently drivers stopped being considered self-employed.
 

The dislike of immigration is as old as time itself. It's a fear of the other. In the US, every group that emigrated faced the same hostility, and once they became (relatively) accepted, they became the people who were most vocally anti-immigrant. A "pull up the ladder before people behind you can climb it" mentality.

Unless you change humanity, you won't fix this problem.
 

I'm with Shalcker on this one: if your economy relies on inequality and an army of desperate people ready to take any job, then the problem is not immigration (or lack of it): it's the economic system which is fucked up.
 

I would agree that our economic system is fucked up. In a system with perfect equality, people would do their garden and watch their children themselves, It needs serious economic inequality in order for richer people to be able to afford the service of poorer people as gardeners and nannies.
 

Covid has caused disruption in global supply chains but Britain seems to be the only European country where shortages have hit basic commodities on the Supermarket shelves. Here in Ireland I am a bit pissed off that I cannot buy a new graphics card but at least I can buy all the bread, milk and toilet paper that I want. In light of this I find it amusing that the pro-Brexit UK Newspapers are still printing headlines like "Remainder hysteria over shortages does not mean Brexit is to blame" (Telegraph 26 August 2021). Of course there are multiple reasons for the shortages but Brexit is at the heart of a lot of them.
 

"In a system with perfect equality, people would do their garden and watch their children themselves,"

and tend their own crops and livestock, mill and bake, forge their tools and then operate their appendix!

Separation of labour has its reason and even if everyone would be equal, specialisation would still be better, although with the obvious downside of greater impact from change.
Things are they way they are because humanity has more people with muscles than smart people. Otherwise Joe the builder would be scarce and highly paid and Billy the rocket surgeon would try to evade immigration services.

Specialisation has the natural drawback of changing times, be it Covid, Brexit or just other regulatory, social or technological changes.
 

"Why exploiting underpaid jobs to maintain unsustainable lifestyles is seen as "fine" rather then aberration?"

Because at the end of the day most people don't really care and just want convenience and cheap goods. Society as a whole has decided it's fine if some other people that they don't know or see suffer for that.
 

I find this is because they want to fit into the "In" group so they feel they must attack the Other even harder. I'm hispanic (Puerto Rican) and the amount of people in my community who spit vitriol at Mexicans, Venezuelans and others for being undocumented is shocking at times. More Puerto Ricans live in the mainland US then on the island due to the generally terrible government there and the only thing that separates us from Latin American immigrants is our island was conquered by the US. Yet there is a large group of Puerto Ricans that are staunchly anti-immigrant, ultraconservative and sometimes racist as well. In spanish we call that group of people "Lo que se creen blancos" or Those that think they are white.
 

@Camo: Separation of labor makes sense for all work that needs some degree of specialization. I happily pay a tax accountant as much per hour as I make myself per hour, because he is much better than me at understanding tax law. But most people wouldn't pay their gardener or nanny as much per hour than they make per hour, because that is not highly specialized work. The immigrant gardener and nanny only make sense because they earn only a fraction of what their employer earns per hour.
 

In the future, most undesirable and low-paid jobs will be performed by robots. The question is, what will the unskilled humans do then? Maybe UBI is the answer .. I don't know.
 

"I happily pay a tax accountant as much per hour as I make myself per hour,"
You may pay the tax accountant your hourly rate, but his work covers many more hours of your working time.
If the gardener had the same coverage and could condense mowing the lawn for an entire year into the same hours the accountant needs for your yearly tax filings, he might charge just as much.
Picture the tax accountant having to come once a week (or how often a gardener comes) or if the tax accountant would work the same hours of a nanny to do your tax filing. Would you still pay the same?

"The immigrant gardener and nanny only make sense because they earn only a fraction of what their employer earns per hour."

But why is that? Well, in my book it's a question of complexity of the work, saving time and maybe a bit of preference.
You already said, the work of a gardener or a nanny is normally not highly specialised. So more people have access to it and more supply drives down prices.
The other point is saving time. At the same rates, if you need two hours to mow your lawn, but the gardener gets it done in one hour, you could instead choose to work an hour to pay the gardener and gain the other hour.
If you could work as efficient as the gardener, you might still choose to work the hour instead because you prefer thinking about an engineering problem rather than pushing the lawnmower.
With the nanny, well there is no way of condensing watching kids for eight hours. If the nanny makes your hourly rate, then there is no benefit and the choice only comes down to preference.
 

Project Fear is old hat at this point. At least to any Britons who were foolish enough to envisage Brexit-related starvation a few Christmases ago.

It's quite possible, I suppose, that the effects of Brexit could damage a few supply lines elsewhere. It's equally possible that wages will increase in certain sectors that were previously filled by immigrants, resulting in better jobs for relatively unskilled natives. Both could happen. Tell me when they are running out of staples.
 

The predictions dismissed as “project fear” were just a forecast. But now that there are queues at the petrol stations and the situation is all too real, the government is actually planning a U-turn to let these bloody foreigners back in who do all the transports.
 

@tobold, the link above looks broken.
 

Fixed link