RadioBanter - View Single Post - Here it is-BPL full rollout in Va

October 29th 03, 10:34 AM

(N2EY) wrote in
om:

"Dwight Stewart" wrote in message
link.net...
"Dave Heil" wrote:
Dwight Stewart wrote:

(snip)

Salaries are going up.

Compared to the cost of living, salaries are going down. The minimum
wage
is a good example. To keep up with the cost of living increase over
the last twenty-five years (to have the same spending power as 25
years ago), the minimum wage should be over $19 per hour. By the same
token, a person earning $19 an hour twenty-five years ago should be
earning well over $50 an hour today. Check it out yourself. Look at
the minimum wage 25 years ago (or any typical wage 25 years ago) and
increase it by the same percentage that living costs (rent, house
payments, utilities, food, and so on) have increased over the years
since.

There are all kinds of indicators that both support and contradict
your point, Dwight. But what I see is that the general trend is for
some necessities (housing, medical costs, college education,
insurance, *taxes*) to be increasing in price faster than wages, and
for other items, mostly "luxuries" but some necessities (computers,
electronics, energy, food) to be increasing slower than wages. So what
you get are people who can afford a really sweet ham rig but cannot
afford a house to put it in.

The trend is further muddled by the increasing number of
two-career-by-necessity families. People forget that 30-40 years ago a
family of four could live a very nice middle-class lifestyle on one
middle-class income - and you did not need a master's degree to get
such a job.

There's also the increasing number of things to spend money on. I can
remember a time when, for most people, things like a second car, cable
TV, a computer, and many other things were luxuries. Today they are
almost essentials.

I can think of one, Dwight. Those folks work and
pay social security taxes so that you can retire and
draw SS benefits. They also pay State and Federal
taxes. Many of them are very bright individuals.
Some are doctors. Some do computer design work.
Some do menial labor which most American workers don't desire.

Americans working at those jobs would do the same things (pay taxes
and so
on), Dave. Why do we need immigrants to do that? Some of those
Americans are even bright. As for the "menial" jobs, the only reason
those jobs are menial is because employers choose not to pay decent
wages to do those jobs. And as long as employers continue to find
cheap labor to fill those jobs, there is no incentitive whatsoever to
increase those wages. If anything, a ready supply of cheap labor only
drives down wages for other jobs, increasing the number of menial jobs
and decreasing jobs that pay decent wages. The direct result is less
well paying jobs for all working class Americans.

Then what's the answer? Shall we eliminate all immigration, or just
the illegals? Who gets to decide who should be kept out and who should
be admitted, other than obvious threats to security?

There's also an important factor being left out: Many of the "good"
jobs of former eras are being exported. Try to buy a shirt or shoes or
computer that's "Made In USA". If you think immigrant labor is cheap,
look at what the wages are in the developing countries. Remember
NAFTA? Remember the demonstrators at the GATT meetings? What do you
think they're demonstrating against?

How about this example:

Almost 100 years ago, my grandparents came to the United States from
Italy. They left in part because of the 1906 earthquake, but mostly
because they wanted a better life than they could get in Italy at that
time.

They were admitted through Ellis Island, like millions of others. They
wound up in Philadelphia, where they found jobs, learned the language,
built businesses and lives, etc. I don't think any of them even had a
grade-school education. They were from southern Italy, not northern or
western Europe. They didn't speak English when they got here, and some
of them never learned to speak it without an accent. They were Roman
Catholics, a religion widely despised in the US for various reasons.
They had to deal with all of the usual stereotypes applied to their
ethnicity.

Today their grandchildren all have college degrees, good jobs,
successful lives, etc. Typical American dream stuff.

Should they have been admitted to the USA or not?

(I'm sure some folks here would be really happy if they had been kept
out ;-) )

73 de Jim, N2EY

You talk a lot of sense, Jim.

I don't think we need look any further than the robber barons who are
running corporations to see why living standards are declining. Not all
can be an Enron or Arthur Anderson, but they can still manage to rip off
their own employees quite well. They send jobs overseas, and layoff as
many here as they can get away with, so each person left has more than one
person's job to do. Even a blind man could see it going on.

Immigrants (like me) make handy scapegoats. Most legal immigrants,
however, get in on 'family reunification'. If you want reform, that's a
good place to start. Being from a 'first world' country _none_ of my
family are interested in comimg here to live. Most of the people who get
in that way are not well educated or highly skilled. There again, Jim's
grandparents obviously turned out OK, so who's to say?

I got here by job-related immigration, where you have to prove that no
American is available for the job, amongst other things. You do this by
advertising the job, and you are allowed to advertise either in a
newspaper, or a professional journal, or through the state employment
service. Human nature being what it is, you choose whichever is _least_
likely to turn up a viable candidate. For a professional level job, that
would be the state employment service.

If you truly want to make immigration tougher, and in fact the US is
already one of the toughest countries to get into, you have to really look
at these details, instead of spouting rhetoric. You also have to deal with
the hard truth that every turn of the screw boosts illegal immigration,
and there are limits to where the border patrols can watch. If there is
any answer to that, it probably involves bringing the economies of Mexico
and points South up to US levels. Somehow.

Discuss!