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To some extent, yes, but it's less a question of raising prosperity and more of shifting it. People who eat lots of chicken will be somewhat poorer, people who work in chicken processing plants will be richer. So it goes. I suspect it would do a lot for American cohesion.
At the risk of scoring cheap points, the last time America imported people to pick cotton for shit (no) wages, it didn't work out well.
Do you think the last 4 years has been good for American cohesion? Because we've gotten pretty much what you describe- higher wages at the low end, paid for by higher inflation overall. But people don't seem happy about it, especially people on the low end.
And I think there's a pretty significant difference between literal slaves and migrant workers, don't you?
Just to be clear, I'm not American and I don't have boots on the ground experience. My understanding is that Biden just pumped money into the system, which is obviously inflationary and primarily benefits those with assets. To the extent that working-class wages rose, it would only be to keep up with inflation. I don't think it's quite the same thing as reducing the lower-class / middle-class divide. EDIT: @Crowstep suggests that I am wrong and the rise in working-class wages is real. He's not American either but he has sources so I will concede.
You were mentioning Dubai and Singapore, "where we have lots of migrants workers but only for the low-wage jobs, and Americans are given a huge boost to help them enter the middle class". My point was that, in the same way as having a slave caste, or post-slavery segregation, this system doesn't seem like it will be stable long-term. It seems likely to generate massive amounts of resentment and political struggle. Places like Dubai make that arrangement work because they're willing to do whatever they have to do in order to keep the migrants in their place; I don't know if that's stable either but I really don't think modern America has the stomach for it.
My lived experience is that the lower middle and middle classes would happily go back to 2019 in terms of both price and wage levels, but actual lower income people would not. Wage growth at the bottom is real.
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Biden pumped some money in toward the beginning of his administration but a lot of the 2020 stimulus money was still beginning to make its way into the economy when inflation started taking off. Republicans like to blame Biden but, to the extent that inflation involved COVID stimulus money, there's plenty of blame to go around. Anyway, you can talk about COVID money pumping and supply chain disruption and this was all definitely part of it, but the low-end labor shortage and resulting wage hikes were obvious to anyone who wasn't still hunkering at home in 2021 or 2022. You couldn't walk into a restaurant or convenience store or retail establishment without seeing a help wanted sign in the window promising a signing bonus and a starting wage that was at least 50% higher than anything imaginable in 2019. Activists had been pressing for a $15 minimum wage for years, but, in the absence of any legislation, places that were paying like $9/hour were now proudly advertising $14. That this was necessary was evident in the fact that these places were all operating for fewer hours than before the pandemic and were obviously short-staffed when they were in business. It wasn't uncommon to go into a McDonalds at the height of the lunch rush and find a single cashier working the register. Even now Wal-Mart, which used to be open 24 hours almost universally, closes at 11 pm. All-night restaurants are a thing of the past. US Steel used to have a year-long waiting list for basic laborer positions and now offers 85k/year with bonuses and no overtime and still can't get people to stay more than a few weeks. I don't know how much this contributes to inflation, but I don't think it helps.
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Whether it was Biden or other systemic issues, the distribution of the last few years has been strongly towards wage growth in the below-median (under $35K/yr) section.
Pumping money into the system, especially the pandemic giveaways and outright PPP fraud, seemingly (?) has allowed that segment of society to coast for longer without work.
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