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?
Ding! We have a winner!
I've noted for some time that US corporations no longer give any thought to what used to be called the "greater social good." Now we have the specter of firms like Tyson's, Enron, and WorldCom. Businessmen of the last generation were generally more honorable than today.
No cheers, unfortunately.
"Au contraire! That was judicial activism, not legislation. Another bad day at the SCOTUS."
It was both. Unconstitutional legislation at the state level, upheld by judicial activist (or as I like to say: Constitutional Perversionist) judges.
George W. Bush's version of America.
"Either way, you helped me to invent a new tagline."
Excellent tagline. The free trader philosophy in a nutshell.
"I used to have lifetime employment, now I have lifetime employability."
"Well, I thought I did."
"I haven't been outsourced...I've been JACK'ed off!"
Full Disclosure: Never worked there in the first place.
Second Disclosure: I bet he thought he gave his first wife "lifetime marriageability" when he dumped her for Suzy Wetlaufer.
What a slimebag.
No Cheers, unfortunately.
"I used to have lifetime employment, now I have lifetime employability."
"Well, I thought I did."
"I haven't been outsourced...I've been JACK'ed off!"
Full Disclosure: Never worked there in the first place.
Second Disclosure: I bet he thought he gave his first wife "lifetime marriageability" when he dumped her for Suzy Wetlaufer.
What a slimebag.
No Cheers, unfortunately.
I was talking about La. when I said they passed legislation to take a person's property and sell it to a third party. Sorry I wasn't clearer on that point.
"George W. Bush's version of America"
More like the Dem AND Repub leadership version of America. At least until true consevatives take back the GOP.
Ummm, yeah.
I'll believe that when Carly Fiorina gets burned at the stake for destroying tens of billions in shareholder value, then getting rewarded with seven-figure severance packages.
No cheers, unfortunately.
Yeah, she kinda dropped the ball on that one, huh?
All too true. OTOH, it makes more jobs for entire QA departments, until that gets offshored too.
All Bill Gates' fault. He taught business to accept unspeakable weak, bug-ridden, unreliable, overpriced, LATE software, and think it was God's gift to mankind.
Full Disclosure: I started on supercomputers and never saw a "blue screen of death" on a Cray ;-)
Cheers!
Worth repeating.
:~)
The Chicoms will deliver a very hard lesson on real geopolitics
Good term. Very descriptive.
Damn it, states are supposed to protect property owners from thieves, not join the other side.
Please contact my uncle from Nigeria immediately. He needs your name, address and phone number to send you the goods.
Ah, those were the days: Univac 1108, CDC 8600, TI ASC, etc. I never had the pleasure of working on the Cray. You know, it felt good just to be in those computer rooms. Later I did the PDP-8, PDP-11, Nova, etc stuff. I always enjoyed working with them all.
Sigh.
Tariffs were not an "amendment". The power was contained in Article 8 of the U.S. Constitution:
Section 8 - Powers of Congress
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
These taxeswere the bedrock of the financing of the republic. And frankly, there is not a single economist alive today who is any smarter or more informed than the Founders, such as Alexander Hamilton was in his day. I have no doubt that his early advocacy for promoting manufactures with a general tariff policy would only be reinforced today by the manifest and undeniable success that China is realizing with its protectionist policies predatorily targetting the U.S. industrial base.
And if you are worried about "distortions" what do you think your precious Income Tax, Capital Gain tax and Inheritance Tax do????? THOSE are what need to be junked with a simple, clean, and relatively distortion-free tariff and national sales tax substituting for the current mess, and rescinding the 16th Amendment.
Your anti-tariff monomania is pathological.
The distortions that such a policy shift, abondoning the marxist-inspired tax code that we have now...returning instead to the Founder's approach... would be salutory. Less consumption, less importing, more U.S. production, more savings, more investments. No more federal stick to beat people with for domestic social engineering. Let freedom ring.
And let the Constitution prevail, not your nation-destroying distopia: "We the People, of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union,.."
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