Posted on 03/27/2002 10:58:37 AM PST by gubamyster
Paul Craig Roberts
March 27, 2002
White males are suffering from long-term deterioration in lifetime income growth and job security, according to a study, "Divergent Paths," just released by the Russell Sage Foundation.
The study by four academic sociologists and statisticians compares the wage growth and job security of young white males who entered the labor market in the late 1970s and early 1980s with the experience of a previous generation of young white males who entered the labor market in the mid-1960s. The study finds that 90 percent of young white male workers can expect to have lower lifetime wage growth than the previous generation.
The study concludes that "upward mobility has deteriorated for young white men who entered the labor market in the 1980s." The change is significant and permanent, comprising "a massive downshift in earning standards" that has hollowed out the middle class and left large numbers of white males stuck in low-wage service jobs that have no future.
The trend is especially adverse for the 66 percent of the work force that never attains a four-year college degree. However, even college graduates are experiencing difficulties. Although better off relative to other young white males, 65 percent of college graduates who began working in 1980 have experienced less income growth than college graduates who began their careers in the mid-1960s.
The researchers have no satisfactory explanation for their worrisome findings. They point fingers at deregulation, corporate downsizing, decline of unionization and a stagnant minimum wage, and wander off into left-wing drivel about "the imbalance of power that is inherent in a capitalist system."
A better explanation of the study's conclusion that the majority of white males "can no longer expect stable careers that lead to a solid, family-sustaining wage" is found in race and gender quotas and massive unskilled immigration, and in the way the United States practices "free trade."
The study shows that women "experienced real wage growth during this period," when "earnings for male workers stagnated and even declined." In order to protect against U.S. Department of Justice (sic) lawsuits, every U.S. corporation has had to institutionalize race and gender quotas that discriminate against "over-represented" white males. These quotas have adversely impacted the upward mobility of white males.
Massive unskilled immigration from Third World countries greatly increases the labor supply and undercuts the wages of unskilled and low-skilled white males.
Formerly, the United States practiced traditional trade. We imported what others produced best and exported what we produced best. Some traditional trade still takes place, but the United States also practices a new kind of trade.
U.S. companies export unfinished and semi-finished materials to their factories in Mexico and China, where Mexican and Chinese workers add value. The goods are then exported back to the United States for sale to the American consumer. In this type of trade, America will always run a deficit because what we "export" has lower value than what we "import."
When goods cross borders, they are measured as international trade -- but such movements are really intra-firm trade that allows cheaper Mexican and Chinese labor to be substituted for U.S. labor. U.S. companies produce for the American consumer with foreign labor.
The result is a decline in higher-paying jobs in the United States as companies move higher value-added operations abroad to take advantage of cheaper labor.
A recent Cornell University study, "The Impact of U.S.-China Trade Relations on Workers, Wages and Employment," concludes that U.S. companies shift their production to China in order to produce for the U.S. market with cheap Chinese labor. The study estimates that a minimum of 760,000 U.S. jobs have been lost to China since 1992.
"An increasing percentage of the jobs leaving the U.S. are in higher-paying industries producing goods such as bicycles, furniture, motors, compressors, generators, fiberoptics, clocks, injection molding and computer components." The shift in production is so extensive that the United States has run a trade deficit with China in advanced technology goods since 1995.
China requires U.S. firms that want access to China's low-cost labor to relocate Research & Development operations to China along with factories, thus replacing American designers, engineers and scientists with Chinese ones.
White American males face deteriorating career prospects because U.S. companies substitute foreign labor for U.S. labor, civil-rights policy requires discrimination against white males in employment and promotion, and massive immigration drives down wages in construction, services and other employment.
The end result of the job transfers will be a U.S. population too poor to purchase the products produced by cheap Chinese and Mexican labor.
Contact Paul Craig Roberts
©2002 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
As a result, this country has one of the worst economies in the world. When it gets down to it -- talking trade balances here -- once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here -- once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel -- once the Invisible Hand has taken all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity -- y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone else
The NEA has done its job well.......morons generating more morons.
My son is in business for himself and treats his employees very well if they proform, fires three for everyone he keeps.
And I type this as a currently unemployed (not for too much longer, I hope) white male.
In response to this "unfair" situation, the elites embarked on a program to "clip the wings of middle class white men". Immigration, affirmative action, quotas, free trade, drastic taxation with redistribution, etc, have had a devastating effect on the lifestyle of white middle class America.
I remember reading a famous Swedish sociologists' analysis of America which was written back in the 40's (Race, an America Dilemma), which noted that 50% of all white households in the South had live-in servants. 50%!! Now, considering that almost all of these households had a non-working wife...that stat is asounding. What percentage of white families in the South today can even afford to have a non-working mother....much less afford both a non-working mother AND live-in help?
I use this example to illustrate the slow evolution of life for white middle class america. Now, both spouses work (for less than what one paycheck earned 50 years ago), the kids are in daycare, they are discriminated against in hiring and promotions, their jobs are shipped overseas to sweatshops, and they pay outrageous taxes (to finance a bloated government and to pay unearned salaries to those folks who used to work for them in their households).
Its a sorry situation. The elites, meanwhile, are earning far more money now (as a percentage of average worker's salary) than they ever did 50 years ago. Things have worked out quite well for them. Being at the top of the pyramid in a third world society is great.....you can live like a pharoah. Not a bad deal.
As for whites a members of other races...The Bell Curve has a fantastic section which deals with race, income, and IQ. Actually, if you correct for IQ, blacks make more money in America than whites do (ie: a black man with an IQ of 130 makes significantly more money than a white man with an IQ of 130).
Now call me crazy, but there are some pretty bright kids out there. If they applied themselves as much to a career as they did to goofing off and watching TV, they'd probably be okay. A dismal future is a future that can be wiped away through effort, and ingenuity. I know, because I did it.
I fail to understand how the shifting of low wage jobs overseas limits the ability of white men in this country to get high paying jobs. If the high paying jobs were going overseas, that would mean that our people need a new work ethic.
As to the quotas - yes, those cause trouble. But as Thomas Sowell has so recently pointed out, whites would have had their job pool increasingly taken by blacks and women regardless of quotas. All quotas did was mess up the timetable - probably in favor of the whites. Once blacks had access to education they were going to be competing for the same jobs as whites and some whites were going to lose the competition. Ditto women.
Maybe we should start replacing our columnists with foreign columnists.
Shalom.
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