America’s Descent Into the Third World

The June payroll jobs report did not receive much attention due to the July 4 holiday, but the depressing 21st century job performance of the U.S. economy continues unabated.

Only 144,000 private sector jobs were created, each one of which was in domestic services.

Fifty-six thousand jobs were created in professional and business services, about half of which are in administrative and waste services.

Thirty-eight thousand jobs were created in education and health services, almost all of which are in health care and social assistance.

Nineteen thousand jobs were created in leisure and hospitality, almost all of which are waitresses and bartenders.

Membership associations and organizations created 10,000 jobs, and repair and maintenance created 4,000 jobs.

This most certainly is not the labor market profile of a First World country, much less a superpower.

U.S. manufacturing lost another 24,000 jobs in June. A country that doesn’t manufacture doesn’t need many engineers. And the few engineering jobs available go to foreigners.

Readers have sent me employment listings from U.S. software development firms. The listings are discriminatory against American citizens. One ad from a company in New Jersey that is a developer for many companies, including Oracle, specifies that the applicant must have a TN visa.

A TN or Trade NAFTA visa is what is given to Mexicans and Canadians who are willing to work in the United States at below prevailing wages.

Another ad from a software consulting company based in Omaha, Neb., specifies it wants software engineers who are H-1B transferees. What this means is that the firm is advertising for foreigners already in the United States who have H-1B work visas.

The reason the U.S. firms specify that they have employment opportunities only for foreigners who hold work visas is because the foreigners will work for less than the prevailing U.S. salary.

Gentle reader, when you read allegations that there is a shortage of engineers in America, necessitating the importation of foreigners to do the work, you are reading a bald-faced lie. If there were a shortage of American engineers, employers would not word their job listings to read that no American need apply and that they are offering jobs only to foreigners holding work visas.

What kind of country gives preference to foreigners over its own engineering graduates?

How much longer will parents shell out $100,000 for a college education for a son or daughter who ends up employed as a bartender, waitress or temp?

"Stuff like TAX REFORM....REAL TAX REFORM...REGULATION REFORM...TORT AND LIABLILITY REFORM...WHERE IS IT?"

I think you really hit-it-on-the-head with areas where there is substantial opportunity to create a better environment for everybody. The hairball of a tax code that we operate under has experienced 50 years of evolution under conditions where the U.S. has been the nearly undisputed king of the economic mountain. Now the rest of the world is catching up....fast in some cases.

What are we going to do about it? Based on the reactions of the feather-bedding inside-the-beltway crowd, the answer seems to be "Do as little as I can get-away-with to squeak-by in the next election".

One unfortunate aspect of the psychology of large crowds is that in many cases they have to experience a "sputnik-like" event before they get the message. Some large organizations have managed to survive these events and prosper (Harley Davidson), many have not (Soviet Union, Eastern Airlines), and some continue on as mere shadows of their former selves (Spain, Hewlett-Packard (HP), AT&T).

With all due respect, are you qualified to write modern software? Are you qualified to design faster and smaller computer chips? Are you qualified to create AND MAINTAIN web-sites for the computer-illiterate?

I have four 7-foot tall books shelves in my home that carry computer books that have been purchased over a thirty year period. There are recent offerings on those shelves. I have read them, and my skills are current.

I am an embedded firmware engineer, and work closely with EEs to make devices like medical instrumentation, soil/concrete testing apparatus, and high-speed data loggers. I specify and use the latest uPs and peripherals. One cannot stay in this industry and fail to keep current.

The CEOs are getting rid of Americans solely to increase the apparent profit on the bottom line. This has nothing to do with skills. The H1Bs they hire are typically "greenhorns" that write really terrible code.

I don't do web pages. This is not really "programming", it is certainly not technical.

I wouldn't lean on your econ major so much since you are so wrong. You don't understand industrial hiring. Actually, if there were going to be "Summer hires" for manufacturing, most of them would be in May, June and July. So Dr. Roberts is correct. We have a problem. To pretend it isn't so is anti-empirical and unscientific. While, like many supply siders he is a political vagabond, historically he has been with us far more than against us. And the evidence is that GWB is not an economic conservatives. Quite the contrary. Hence, Roberts deserves far more respect from any one here who purports to be a conservative. His resume is rather better than most of us:

PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Roberts Paul Craig Roberts is the John M. Olin fellow at the Institute for Political Economy, research fellow at the Independent Institute and senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. A former editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal, he writes a political commentary column for Creators Syndicate. He also writes a monthly economics column for Investors Business Daily . In 1992, he received the Warren Brookes Award for Excellence in Journalism. In 1993, he was ranked as one of the top seven journalists by the Forbes Media Guide .

He was distinguished fellow at the Cato Institute from 1993 to 1996. From 1982 through 1993, he held the William E. Simon chair in political economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. From 1981 to 1982, he served as assistant secretary of the Treasury for economic policy. President Reagan and Treasury Secretary Regan credited him with a major role in the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, and he was awarded the Treasury Department's Meritorious Service Award for "his outstanding contributions to the formulation of United States economic policy." From 1975 to 1978, Dr. Roberts served on the congressional staff where he drafted the Kemp-Roth bill and played a leading role in developing bipartisan support for a supply-side economic policy.

In 1987, the French government recognized him as "the artisan of a renewal in economic science and policy after half a century of state interventionism" and inducted him into the Legion of Honor.

Dr. Roberts' latest book, co-authored with Lawrence Stratton, is The Tyranny of Good Intentions: How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice (2000, Prima Publishing). The New Colorline: How Quotas and Privilege Destroy Democracy, also co-authored with Lawrence Stratton, was published by Regnery in October 1995. Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, co-authored with Karen LaFollette, was published by the Cato Institute in 1990. His book, The Supply-Side Revolution, was published by Harvard University Press in 1984. Widely reviewed and favorably received, the book was praised by Forbes as "a timely masterpiece that will have real impact on economic thinking in the years ahead." He is the author of Alienation and the Soviet Economy, published in 1971 and republished in 1990, and Marx's Theory of Exchange, Alienation, and Crisis, published in 1973 and republished in 1983.

Roberts has held numerous academic appointments and has published many articles in journals of scholarship, including the Journal of Political Economy, Oxford Economic Papers, Journal of Law and Economics, Studies in Banking and Finance, Journal of Monetary Economics, Public Finance Quarterly, Public Choice, Classica et Mediaevalia, Ethics, Slavic Review, Soviet Studies, Rivista Di Politica Economica, and Zeitschrift Fur Wirtschafspolitik. He has contributed to Commentary, The Public Interest, Harper's, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Fortune, Investor's Business Daily, London Times, Financial Times, The Spectator, The Times Literary Supplement, IL Sole 24 Ore, Le Figaro, Liberation and The Nihon Keizai Shimbun. He has testified before committees of Congress on over 30 occasions.

Dr. Roberts was educated at the Georgia Institute of Technology, the University of Virginia, the University of California at Berkeley and Oxford University, where he was a member of Merton College.

Do you have anything to support your claim that a US made woodworking router costs $7.28 to make?

A few years ago I had reason to visit a manufacturing plant in Pickins, SC. (I was making a call to find a bug in a telephone PBX.) While there, the CFO took me on a plant tour. While on that tour I spotted the router that I purchased and use. When I indicated thusly, the CFO asked what I paid for the router. After I told him, he whistled, then said, "My God, more than a 1000% markup. We make them for $7.28 each including parts, labor, and engineering amortization".

Do you have a reason to think I am less than truthful about all of this? I am an American who is anxious to see America stay strong even after I am dead and gone. What possible justification can you have for disposing of experienced American talent?

I see that the good news about Boeing's order-book has eluded you. Have you considered taking a course in "Anger Management"?

A'hem, would you know good news if it hit you in the back side with a two-by-four?

The Boeing order book is improved...which if you actually read what I said, you would understand I implied with the 787 discussion. That is partly good news. We are preserving the COMPANY. But at what cost?

We continue to hemhorrage baseline U.S. aerospace industrial ABILITY. Speaking of taking courses, just what is your problem?

I have observed that those indoctrinated with the religion of absolutist unilateral unprotected trade (which is NOT what Adam Smith taught) totally fail to comprehend much of what's going on.

Your snide attack prompts one question: Do you even care about our country?

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