Posted on 07/29/2015 4:48:06 AM PDT by 11th_VA
According to a new Washington Post/ABC News poll, seven in ten voters believe that the Republican party is “out of touch with the concerns of most people in the United States today.”
What follows is a plan for how the GOP can win back their trust — and a build a conservative majority in the process.
When Americans went to the polls in 2012, the following was true: Work-force participation had sunk to its lowest level in 35 years, wages had fallen below 1999 levels, and 47 million Americans were on food stamps. Yet Mitt Romney, the challenger to the incumbent president, lost lower- and middle-income voters by an astonishing margin. Among voters earning $30,000 to $50,000, he trailed by 15 points, and among voters earning under $30,000 he trailed by 28 points.
And what did the GOP’s brilliant consultant class conclude from this resounding defeat? They declared that the GOP must embrace amnesty. The Republican National Committee dutifully issued a report calling for a “comprehensive immigration reform” that would inevitably increase the flow of low-skilled immigration, reducing the wages and living standards of the very voters whose trust the GOP had lost.
Over the past four decades, as factories were shuttered and blue-collar jobs were outsourced or automated, net immigration quadrupled. Yet the corporate-consultant class has pronounced that an insufficient level of immigration is the problem. A more colossal misreading of the political moment has rarely occurred.
Perhaps the most important political development now unfolding in the U.S. is the public’s growing loss of faith in our political and financial elites of both parties. To open the ears of disaffected voters, the GOP must break publicly from the elite immigration consensus of Wall Street and Davos. Republicans have a clear path to building a conservative majority if they free themselves from the corporate consultants and demonstrate to the American public that the GOP is the only party aligned with the core interests, concerns, and beliefs of everyday hardworking citizens.
Immigration and Jobs are the 2 biggest issues by far in 2016.
Its amazing how many people refuse to see the obvious.
The public has had enough.
Really? Are new college graduates middle class? Only 31% of American heads of household have a college degree. 30% have only a high school degree or less. What is your definition of middle class? How are young American ssupposed to get entry level work when competing against immigrants who will work cheaper and in many cases off of the books?
Wow. Crazy Bernard is sounder on immigration than Jebbie, Grahamnesty, McCainiac, Rubio, Boehner, and McConnell.
I know that’s not saying much, except how far bought and paid for those open-borders jerks are.
What both Sanders and Trump get is Americans with jobs are better off than Americans without jobs, so it is better to have more Americans with jobs. So simple it defies the Washington party. The GOP should be the party of working people but is so corrupted by the cheap labor express they have become the socialist elite party.
A Trump vs Sanders election would do more to take down the corrupt Washington party than any other matchup. But they might be assinated for going up against the rulers of the land.
Trump is not good on legal immigration. He is part of that high walls and wide gates crowd. Trump wants more legal immigration and the process expedited to bring more in faster. This is not good for providing more Americans with jobs.
My point is that 18-year-old high-school grads (”just coming into the job market”) are not going to make enough money at that point to be in the middle class. Part of the reason is that they are competing with large numbers of equally unskilled legal and illegal immigrants, which was the point that Sanders was making. (I'm chagrined to find myself agreeing with something Sanders said!)
The more general point is the following: In the (increasingly distant) past, it was possible for someone like my parents, who did not go to college, to enjoy a middle-class living standard and provide their children with educational and other opportunities to do even better. Today, someone who completes their education with only a high-school diploma is unlikely to make it to the middle class unless, as I said, they acquire a set of [trade] skills, work hard, and exhibit fierce determination to get ahead. In other words, they have to out-compete the immigrants, something my generation didn't have to do. (We had our own challenges, but they were different.) I don't see the necessary traits in many of today's high-school grads.
In a a possible Bush vs Sanders election I would vote for the perverted Socialist. What a world....
We have a surplus of labor, both skilled and unskilled, yet we want to bring in more and more foreign labor both as permanent immigrants and guest workers. Even so-called conservatives like Cruz want to increase the guest worker programs fourfold. These will be skilled workers with college degrees who will compete against similarly educated Americans. Initially, we were told we needed immigrants to do jobs Americans won't do; now we need skilled workers to do jobs that Americans can't do. It is a big scam to get cheap, disposable labor. I will guarantee that during these debates you will hear some of the candidates say we should be attaching green cards to the diplomas of foreign born graduates of US universities. There are 900,000 foreign students in the US.
Immigration is destroying the middle class and the mobility of Americans. The American Dream is being crushed under an unending wave of immigration. We have just had the two largest decades of immigration in US history. Over 30 million legal permanent immigrants have entered since 1990. The Gang of 8 bill that passed in the Senate would have tripled legal immigration over the next decade with 30 million entering and the guest worker program would have been doubled to 1.4 million a year. 14 GOP senators voted for it (including Rubio). Cruz offered an amendment to quadruple the guest worker programs and to prevent a path to citizenship for those receiving amnesty. Cruz still wanted them to be allowed to be legalized. Just no citizenship.
Today, someone who completes their education with only a high-school diploma is unlikely to make it to the middle class unless, as I said, they acquire a set of [trade] skills, work hard, and exhibit fierce determination to get ahead. In other words, they have to out-compete the immigrants, something my generation didn't have to do. (We had our own challenges, but they were different.) I don't see the necessary traits in many of today's high-school
Today's college graduates will not have such a guarantee. They will be competing against imported foreign workers as well. Half of recent college graduates are working at jobs that don't require a degree.
About 260,000 people who had a college or professional degree made at or below the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Things may be looking up a little, though -- it's the smallest number since 2008. The worst year was 2010, when the number skyrocketed to 327,000.
Despite the recent improvement, the number of workers with college degrees is still more than double what it was in 2005, prior to the Great Recession.
It is not just H-1B visa holders that impact US-born graduates. We only issue 65,000 a year now. Obama has added to the number thru an executive order allowing spouses to work.
The big impact comes from legal immigration. We bring in 1.1 million legal immigrants a year. The chart I provided to you shows that 36% of the heads of lawful immigrant households have a college degree. These are legal permanent immigrants. And 10% of the illegals have degrees. These are large numbers when we have an economy that has the highest labor participation rates in 38 years. Many college graduates are working for minimum wage if they are working at all.
But they are a drop in the proverbial bucket compared to the number of unskilled or semi-skilled legal and illegal immigrants who have displaced low-skilled U.S.-born white, Hispanic, and (disproportionately) black citizens.
Did you take a look at the graphs and charts I provided to you?
It may seem like a drop in a bucket to you, but a college graduate who is saddled with huge debt and can't find a job is a disaster.
Moreover, I'm not concerned about the ~ 250,000 college graduates who are working at (or below) the minimum wage. I live in a college town and I know about a dozen of these young people. Some of them are taking a year or two off before going to graduate or professional school and they pour my iced coffee in the morning at a local shop. Others are spouses of grad students who are helping to make ends meet while their husbands or wives finish grad school. (My wife did the same thing many years ago.) These folks will not be working minimum-wage jobs five years from now.
I think you are missing the big picture. This is a disturbing trend that has been going on for some time. There were 127,000 working for minimum wage in 2005 and 2006. Now there are 260,000. We are creating more part time jobs than full time jobs. Workers have become a disposalable commodity because there is a surplus. Wages are declining virtually across the board.
Here is a study that has some remarkable findings about the decline of men's wages since 1969
Over the past 40 years, a period in which U.S. GDP per capita more than doubled after adjusting for inflation, the annual earnings of the median prime-aged male has actually allen by 28 percent. Indeed, males at the middle of the wage distribution now earn about the same as their counterparts in the 1950s! This decline reflects both stagnant wages for men on the job, and the fact that, compared with 1969, three times as many men of working age don’t work at all.
Surely, the most astonishing statistic to be gleaned from the trend data is the deterioration in the market outcomes for men with less than a high school education. The median earnings of all men in this category have declined by 66 percent [not a misprint]. At the same time, this group has experienced a 23 percentage point decline in the probability of having any labor-market earnings. Roughly 10 percentage points of the 23 percentage points is attributable to the fact that more men are reporting disabilities, even though work in physically demanding jobs has been declining for many decades. Men with just a high school diploma did only marginally better. Their wages declined by 47 percent and their participation in the labor force fell by 18 percentage points.
We are creating a huge permanent underclass that depends on government handouts to survive. Our inner cities are tinderboxes waiting to explode. Civil disorder is going to become the norm. And mass immigration just adds fuel to the fire.
Yeah. This is great. A socialist communist crank Who wants to give the fruits of any labor to people who don’t work, or a turd who wants to give away anything that is left regardless.
Just great.
I agree with all of that, but the effect of increased immigration in the U.S. labor market is overwhelmingly concentrated among young, low-skilled white, Hispanic, and (especially) black native-born citizens. That is essentially what Sanders was arguing, and I agree with him. It is also what almost all of the research I know about on this subject concludes. But, there is very little effect of increased immigration on “college-plus” graduates; one of your tables illustrates this point. The college graduates I know who are working for the minimum wage are doing so voluntarily (for the reasons I mentioned in my earlier post), not because they can't find better paying jobs. I have to admit, though, that I don't know any art-history or womyn-studies majors, so that may bias my small sample. And even if I did, I would argue that they “chose” to work at a minimum-wage job by virtue of their choice of academic major.
I guess its too much to ask to want a leader who represents actual taxpayers.
Trumps wants to stop all illegal aliens from getting in and deport all the criminals and deadbeats. Stop the hiring of illegals by going after business owners that hire them. End the welfare, schooling, healthcare etc for illegals. Make all the illegals who are working and contributing to America GO BACK to back of line and apply to get in, making it much harder to get in but also speed up the process for getting in for those who fit sound immigration criteria. That is exactly what is needed, and no other candidate or current politician even comes close...well except maybe Sanders, on the illegal aspect.
Should not added “on the illegal aspect.” at end of last post, Sanders is directing his comments to both illegal aliens and legal immigrants.
That covers about half of our population. By 2019 half of the children 18 and under will be minorities as defined by the USG. By 2043 half of the country will be minorities. I have no idea what the objective of your position is. Is the fact that this impacts more heavily on the low skilled, low educated Americans any less impactful on our society and economy? The home ownership rate is the lowest since 1967. We have a growing wealth gap. If the number of people who have disposable income to buy products and services is decreasing, that hurts everyone.
We live in a welfare state. What happens to the costs of maintaining a growing and aging underclass? We have 70 million on Medicaid, 47 million on Medicare, 54 million on SS, and 47 million on food stamps. We are running huge deficits. Where is the money coming from to fund these benefits? Immigrants, legal and illegal, use welfare to a greater extent than the native born. We are importing poverty.
But, there is very little effect of increased immigration on “college-plus” graduates; one of your tables illustrates this point. The college graduates I know who are working for the minimum wage are doing so voluntarily (for the reasons I mentioned in my earlier post), not because they can't find better paying jobs. I have to admit, though, that I don't know any art-history or womyn-studies majors, so that may bias my small sample. And even if I did, I would argue that they “chose” to work at a minimum-wage job by virtue of their choice of academic major.
Anecdotal information does not something true. HOw about some facts;
Millennial College Graduates: Young, Educated, Jobless
The millennial generation is still lagging in the workplace, just as it did last year. It makes up about 40 percent of the unemployed in the U.S., says Anthony Carnevale, a director and research professor for Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce.
As of May, the data show 13.8 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds are out of work, an improvement over 14.2 percent in January and over the same time last year, when it was 15.4 percent. The trend is encouraging, but the number is still way above the national jobless rate of 5.4 percent.
In a study by Carnevale’s center at Georgetown, the age at which young adults on average reach the median wage, across education levels, increased from 26 to 30 between 1980 and 2012. Those hardest hit were high school graduates and young men. Full-time employment for high school graduates declined 13 percentage points for the period, while the rate for university graduates declined by 8 points. As of 2012, young men earned only 58 percent of the mean wage, down from 85 percent in 1980.
Carnevale’s center found that the employment rate for young graduates was the worst around the ages of 21 to 25, with the employment rate for that segment falling from 84 percent in 2000 to 72 percent in 2012. During this time, the gap in full-time employment for whites versus African-Americans also widened, from 6 percentage points in 2000 to 14 points in 2012, with African-Americans on average not making the median wage until age 33.
And the fact that these college graduates are working a low paying jobs, hurts even further the high school graduates. An entire generation is being decimated. And yet we continue to bring in millions of immigrants. And if the GOPe and the Dems have their way, we will be bringing in more educated, skilled immigrants in addition to the low skilled. uneducated ones. Is it any wonder that home ownership rates are low and welfare rolls high or the wealth gap increasing? We are taking on the profile of a Third World country with the rich living in gated communities, a small middle class, and a huge underclass scuffling for government handouts, which will require more revenue from the rich and middle class.
Demographically, the fastest growing part of our population is minorities. And minorities make up a disproportionate share of those in poverty. And 87% of the legal immigrants we bring in are minorities. And immigrants and minorities vote more than two to one Dem.
That’s why I believe our system is broken. We are not represented. How did we get here?
So give us a plan to deport 2 million criminal aliens. Will he get support from the Dems or the GOPe?
End the welfare, schooling, healthcare etc for illegals.
Sorry, but SCOTUS has ruled otherwise. ERs and schools cannot turn away illegal aliens from being served. Most illegal aliens get welfare payments from their American born children who are US citizens thru birthright citizenship. 300,000 children a year, about one in 10 births, are to illegal alien parents. They are entitled to Medicaid, food stamps, etc. And they can vote at 21.
Make all the illegals who are working and contributing to America GO BACK to back of line and apply to get in, making it much harder to get in but also speed up the process for getting in for those who fit sound immigration criteria.
Illegal aliens have committed multiple crimes besides entering illegally. They commit ID theft, steal SSNs, lie on employment forms, work illegally, evade taxes, etc. As someone who has actually issued visas, most of them couldn't get a tourist visa let along an immigrant visa. Do we want people who intentionally violated our laws to stay and work here?
And what about the 4 million intending immigrants waiting their turn in various hellholes around the globe to enter legally. They have gone thru the background checks, physicals, etc. Some have been waiting many years depending upon what category they fall in. We take in more immigrants every year than the rest of the world combined. Over 30 million legal permanent immigrants have entered since 1990. The back of the line could be a long time. What incentive would an illegal have to leave with no certainty that they will be allowed back in?
NumbersUSA gives Trump a C+ behind Walker with a B- and Santorum with an A. Sanders gets an F-.
LOL yea right amnesty Walker gets a B- .... Christie and the Huckster gets a C’s , while trump only gets a C+.
I see some inaccurates with what they claim are stances already, but will have a better look at it later and reply more on it later.
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