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America’s Descent Into the Third World
Chronicles Magazine ^ | Monday, July 25, 2005 | Paul Craig Roberts

Posted on 07/27/2005 6:21:50 AM PDT by A. Pole

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.

Financial activities created 16,000 jobs.

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

Where are the jobs for this year’s crop of engineering and science graduates?

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?

What kind of country destroys the job market for its own citizens?

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?


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To: 1rudeboy

Well it's true, according to the crowd who have an unmitigated belief that free trade supercedes everything, our Founding Fathers were rubes. And so was Wm. McKinley. The problem is, you just can't face the facts that this free trade extremism (which is quite different than the free trade concepts of Adam Smith) flies in the face of the traditional core values of the GOP. Now some of you are not GOPers but are at the far end of Libertarianism and Objectivism. But for those who have been *allowed* into the big tent, all I can say is, enjoy it while is lasts, because backlash is coming, I guaran-damn-ty it. When the backlash comes, the spirit of McKinley will be among us!


561 posted on 08/01/2005 6:01:08 PM PDT by GOP_1900AD (Stomping on "PC," destroying the"and Left, and smoking out faux "conservatives" - Take Back The GOP!)
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To: StockAyatollah

Or, they are not conservatives at all in the traditional sense. Some are actually transnational progressives. They are the GOP's own version of the Thomas L. Friedman faction on the Left. I think you'll find that the origin of their beliefs is actually in the ideas of 1940s liberal utopianism. We let anyone into the tent these days. Maybe we need a purge.


562 posted on 08/01/2005 6:03:28 PM PDT by GOP_1900AD (Stomping on "PC," destroying the"and Left, and smoking out faux "conservatives" - Take Back The GOP!)
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To: GOP_1900AD

I would love to hear what your idea is of the "free trade concepts of Adam Smith." I wonder if it's as far off-the-mark as your earlier reply.


563 posted on 08/01/2005 6:06:24 PM PDT by 1rudeboy
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To: ExitPurgamentum; Paul Ross

ExitPurgamentum
Since Jul 28, 2005

Are you Chinese or are you Russian?


564 posted on 08/01/2005 6:07:51 PM PDT by GOP_1900AD (Stomping on "PC," destroying the"and Left, and smoking out faux "conservatives" - Take Back The GOP!)
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To: iconoclast

ExitPurgamentum
Since Jul 28, 2005


565 posted on 08/01/2005 6:09:03 PM PDT by GOP_1900AD (Stomping on "PC," destroying the"and Left, and smoking out faux "conservatives" - Take Back The GOP!)
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To: 1rudeboy

I don't have the time to write a thesis about it. But if you actually read his writings, he never goes to the extreme of stating or even implying that economics trump nationhood or that they trump sovereignty. That's what makes the current free trade extremism (more proper terminology may be transnational progressivism) so extreme. This new ideology has moved beyond the idea of economics as an important (probably the most important) consideration in a nation's dealings, to a point where economics is touted to become the be all and the end all. Read Thomas L. Friedman's books - they are filled with such notions. I am sorry, but world history shows scant evidence that any transnational utopia can overcome the many different peoples (and their quirks) and the many distinct national structures. Every similar past utopian scheme fell apart into the realities of geopolitics and national interests. As it will again.


566 posted on 08/01/2005 6:16:21 PM PDT by GOP_1900AD (Stomping on "PC," destroying the"and Left, and smoking out faux "conservatives" - Take Back The GOP!)
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To: GOP_1900AD; Toddsterpatriot

Thomas Freidman is a Lawrence Summers/Robert Rubin/Lloyd Bentsen clone. No thanks.


567 posted on 08/01/2005 6:21:15 PM PDT by 1rudeboy
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To: A. Pole

Does this mean you think the economic trend is set in concrete, or do you think that it can be corrected?


568 posted on 08/01/2005 6:29:21 PM PDT by Clintonfatigued (Mike DeWine for retirement, John Kasich for Senate)
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To: GOP_1900AD
Some are actually transnational progressives. They are the GOP's own version of the Thomas L. Friedman faction on the Left. I think you'll find that the origin of their beliefs is actually in the ideas of 1940s liberal utopianism. We let anyone into the tent these days.


569 posted on 08/01/2005 6:30:47 PM PDT by A. Pole (For today's Democrats abortion and "gay marriage" are more important that the whole New Deal legacy.)
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To: Paul Ross

RE: BTW: You DO KNOW, don't you, that this "nuke 'em" line is the same kind of CRAP argument that the Liberals ALWAYS used against Reagan? H'mmmmm? It was successful against Goldwater, so the liberals recycle it everytime a solid conservative comes along.

What we've probably got here is a mixture. Some of these are actually Liberals over here disrupting FR. Some are from the extremist branches of Libertarianism and believe that a global pirate / privateer system can replace nation states. Some of more from the classic transnational progressive fold, either ther T.L.Friedman (Leftist) branch or the "republican libertarian" (Centrist Right) branch. And some are simply Russian and Chinese agents observing "the reactionaries" and how we respond to their various moves. I'd say that about covers it! :-)


570 posted on 08/01/2005 6:33:17 PM PDT by GOP_1900AD (Stomping on "PC," destroying the"and Left, and smoking out faux "conservatives" - Take Back The GOP!)
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To: 1rudeboy
I would love to hear what your idea is of the "free trade concepts of Adam Smith."

Is Adam Smith some type of infallible prophet that we need base our thinking on the interpretation of his scriptures?

"There is no other god than Free Market and Adam Smith is his prophet".

571 posted on 08/01/2005 6:34:14 PM PDT by A. Pole (For today's Democrats abortion and "gay marriage" are more important that the whole New Deal legacy.)
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To: A. Pole

Not what I was saying. Nice stab at a strawman, though.


572 posted on 08/01/2005 6:35:54 PM PDT by 1rudeboy
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To: 1rudeboy

But the Free Trader ideas are in his books. He's coming at it from the left, just like you are coming at it from the right (well, really from the center right). But left or right, the end game is the same. Utopian globalist economics are deemed to trump everything. But they cannot and will not. Another pipe dream.


573 posted on 08/01/2005 6:37:26 PM PDT by GOP_1900AD (Stomping on "PC," destroying the"and Left, and smoking out faux "conservatives" - Take Back The GOP!)
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To: GOP_1900AD
But the Free Trader ideas are in his books.

Let me guess, you don't have the time to write a thesis about it.

574 posted on 08/01/2005 6:38:59 PM PDT by 1rudeboy
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To: 1rudeboy

Either way, you helped me to invent a new tagline.


575 posted on 08/01/2005 6:42:43 PM PDT by A. Pole (" There is no other god but Free Market, and Adam Smith is his prophet ! ")
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To: A. Pole

The credit is all yours.


576 posted on 08/01/2005 6:43:23 PM PDT by 1rudeboy
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To: A. Pole

If I had a choice, I'd ask you to subsitute Milton Friedman.


577 posted on 08/01/2005 6:44:10 PM PDT by 1rudeboy
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To: 1rudeboy

No but in a nutshell, here are the concepts (which I personally think are overblown):
* Since the end of the Cold War, the "high walls" have come down and borders mean less
* The electronic herd (e.g. the global investment community) will "punish" countries that look out too much for their own national interests (at the expense of investor convenience / ROI)
* The "Fast World" (a globally integrated, high tech juiced) economic system is erasing economic "cultural" behaviors and pushing things toward global standards
* Eventually we will overcome all anti Western trends with all this

Certainly, I do not deny the existence of all but the last element. But to believe that such elements are either permanent, or that they trump geopolitics, is insanely naive. That's where I am coming from. I am an old school conservative mindful of the nation state.


578 posted on 08/01/2005 6:44:57 PM PDT by GOP_1900AD (Stomping on "PC," destroying the"and Left, and smoking out faux "conservatives" - Take Back The GOP!)
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To: ExitPurgamentum; A. Pole
Actually, I heard that even before the American Revolution, the Thirteen Colonies had the highest standard of living in the world.

British soldiers sent to America to fight the rebels were amazed by the prosperity they witnessed in the American Colonies--

They could not understand why a people so prosperous would rebel. (Maybe prosperity isn't everything?)

But I do remember that England did its best to discourage manufacturing in the Colonies, preferring instead to use the Colonies as a source of raw material, which England would turn into finished products to sell back to the Colonies.

I seem to remember the desire to manufacture things in the Colonies was one cause of the American Revolution.

Makes me believe the Colonies wanted to be independent--in all the ways a county might be.

And I remember that President Washington, on receiving Lafayette's symbolic gift of the key to the Bastille, proudly sent Lafayette a pair of shoe buckles that were made in the USA, as the symbol of American independence.

579 posted on 08/01/2005 6:48:21 PM PDT by Age of Reason
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To: rvoitier
legislation was passed where the state can confiscate private land and resell it to 3rd parties.

Au contraire! That was judicial activism, not legislation. Another bad day at the SCOTUS.

580 posted on 08/01/2005 7:10:34 PM PDT by Marauder (You can't stop sheep-killing predators by putting more restrictions on the sheep.)
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