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Posted on 12/30/2025 6:16:26 AM PST by MtnClimber
In the eighties, I had a friend who worked for me on and off. He was a competent handyman and could do an oil change without screwing it up, something that was always useful in an auto shop, which I ran. Eventually, however, he got a better paying job as a drywaller.
Anyone who has ever done a home project with even a small drywall repair knows how difficult it is not to have even a small repair stick out like a sore thumb. Stevie was good and patient. He has that ability to measure with his eye. And so he was a very good drywaller, making a respectable wage with some benefits.
But about a decade later, he came back to my shop, needing work. He explained that his business had been taken over by mostly Hispanic workers, who worked as sub-contractors and were paid not by the hour, but by the number of sheets of drywall they hung. No benefits, of course. Their work may not have been great, but it was acceptable.
In all likelihood, many if not most of these new drywallers were illegal aliens. And in a one-decade cycle, drywalling became one of those jobs Americans just won’t do.
There is no such thing as a job Americans just won’t do. There are jobs Americans don’t want to or can’t get hired to do at the prevailing wage.
Some guys have the balance of a cat. They can walk on a 60-degree slope as easily as I walk on a treadmill. They tend to make good roof, chimney, and gutter masters if these are the fields they choose to enter. A fair number of guys would do this work when it pays a fair wage with benefits to cover the risk.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
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The 1971 Griggs vs Duke Power SCOTUS decision is a major reason that companies began requiring unnecessary college degrees.
Companies could no longer use their own in house tests for hiring without the constant risk of getting sued for hiring too many white males.
What you do is to have the employer pay for the employee’s kid’s schooling. That enables getting rid of property taxation.
What if an employer doesn’t pay?
¡Madre!
Estimado marido....
Señor Jefe....
In the 80s teens in our community would detassel corn. Hundreds of kids, including my own; would snap off the tassels for minimum wage.
Thenlivelihood. MSM and the public schools talked about jobs that Americans didn’t want to do.
That ended the job and the farmer’s livlihood.
“The sub will then hire illegals, who will do a hit or miss job.”
The sub typically has people he employs on a long-term basis. Most if not all of his people worked together with him as employees, often for a few years. The sub generally has sufficient skills, both for the trade and in English.
If a hombre gets sick, a primo(cousin) o hermano(brother) might get called in. The sub is on the job and keeping watch. The newcomer will only be doing non-critical work or working with an experienced hombre.
The only significant problems I’ve seen using invaders is in HVAC work.
“It takes 5 years for the average student to receive a bachelors degree.”
When I went to college, you were expected to do four years of work in four years.
Much of the value of going to college was proving you could get work done on time.
When it was just people coming here to work one could make the argument that society benefitted from lower prices. Now that it is multigeneration large families the taxpayer picks up feeding, housing, schooling, and medical care for the low wage workers and kin. Taxpayers get lower construction costs but higher taxes which inflate prices on everything else. Only person making out is the person hiring the low wage workers.
No white teenagers doing yard work. It's to "good" for them to do.
I run a side gig detailing cars.
I have a built in advantage. I'm an older white guy with zero tats.
I'm trustworthy enough new customers will let me use their bathrooms if needed....in some cases they'll leave the house unlocked for me. Many give me the key to their car so I can unlock it or move it as needed.
Over my lifetime I watched as they took over one field after another of work that Americans were pushed out of, while the elites and some freepers would just add the new field to the nonsensical and imaginary list of blue collar jobs that the American working people didn’t want to do.
Men loved construction and trades, working outdoors, the freedom of going from one job to another, they loved the schedule and pay of driving interstate trucks, women and teens also lost all the labor and entry fields available to them.
“Ludwig von Mises, the great Austrian economist, is said to have likened the idea of making up for past inflation with offsetting deflation —— to trying to make up for running over your neighbor’s cat by shifting to reverse and backing over it.”
herein lies a lot of the problem, since the Federal Reserve was politicized by Jimmy Carter and liberals by the 1977 dual mandate law to “take away the punch bowl just as the guests arrive at the party”. This is the reason why we now have both right and left wing populist mob rule, where young people feel free to wish baby boomers dead and blame them for all of their problems.
The Fed always is fighting past inflation, crashing the economy, then starting a new cycle of inflation. It also is why nobody cares anymore about budget deficits, because the Fed had its Funds rate at zero percent for all 8 years of Obama even as producer inflation hit almost 8% and consumer inflation rose to near 4% under Obama—— and even though he ran up twice as much debt as George W Bush did in 8 yrs, even though he claimed Bush ruined the economy by deficits and claimed he would balanced the budget. It once believed that a balanced budget drove down inflation and interest rates, but the era of big government started in 2001 when the Fed crashed the economy by raising its Funds rate to 6.5% to slow down the economy because the national debt was being paid off too fast, making Alan Greenspan worry about a lack of Treasury bonds to buy as a safe investment....such an awful thing that it was worth burning the USA to the ground over not having a national debt. Now we have a big one, all because of the Fed, which allows inflation to rise when the economy is bad and people least can afford it, but then once the economy is growing, the Fed hikes rates to slow growth before wages rise in the vain hope that prices will fall to meet wages, which happens only for a short time during recessions.......then the price of gas rises from $1 to $2, like it did under Greenspan and Bush, then rose from $2 to $4 under Bush and Bernanke and then again, under Obama & Bernanke.
the idea of counter cyclical tax increases to balance the budget went out the window after the late 1980s, when Reagan’s choice for Fed chairman, Alan Greenspan, jumped the gun and raised Fed Funds rate to 9.75% against a 4.3% inflation rate, not giving Reagan’s tax reform in 1988 any time to work to bring down inflation, and crashing the economy before Reagan’s 1990 tax increase on Social Security balanced the budget in George HW Bush’s first term. 1990 was a disaster for the GOP, and so was 2002 & 2008, all because of the Fed. The Fed had the brakes on the economy for almost all of George W Bush’s presidency, but had its foot on the gas for all 8 years of Obama, but Obama still could not balance the budget, and the only reason why George Bush’s father in 1990 raised income tax a little bit was so that billionaires would pay the same 31% tax rate as small business owners did because of payroll taxes.....and because Bush was promised that Greenspan would slash interest rates below 5% again, if he attacked the budget deficit. After all, having the Fed Funds rate at 10% to drive down 4% inflation was HIGHER than Paul Volcker having his Funds rate at 19% for 13.5% inflation. in 2000, Greenspan had his funds rate at 6.5% for no inflation....and the price of gold fell from $400 to $250.......was over $1,000 before Reagan, fell to $500 under Reagan, then fell to $300 under the first Bush. We need Fed reform bad, but the press pretends that the 1977 dual mandate law is necessary and 100 years old and bedrock Fed law, that even talking about the Fed violates its purported independence, but the Fed is omnipotent and lawless and gets to interpret its dual mandate however it wants with no rhyme or reason....nobody knows what the Fed does or why, when it uses interest rates to limit growth to keep wages from rising, so that both Fed and immigration policy take the side of buyers of labor over sellers of labor.
Democrats sell a view that Reagan did nothing, with the unemployment rate rising to 7.5% in 1991, which is where it was when Reagan started, Jason Fuhrmann now claims that a 73% tax bracket is necessary to produce the most revenue and calling GOP liars. Democrats say that Carter put Volcker in, and then the Fed tackled the inflation that was causing stagnation, that Reagan was wrongly elected and ruined everything giving money to the richest. In fact, Volcker cut the Fed Funds rate to 7.5% in 1979 and allowed 13.5% inflation to keep Jimmy Carter out of a depression before 1980, & because that is what the 1977 dual mandate was about. Stagnation from taxes and regulation causes inflation, not vice verse as Democrats now claim, when they lie to say that inflation from Nixon-Ford caused stagnation, but Carter and Volcker fixed the inflation, therefore ending the stagnation. In fact, Reagan’s tax cuts and deregulation were the only reason the Fed could clamp down on inflation without causing economic catastrophe, as 1970s economics textbooks actually said that a 9% unemployment rate was “full employment” and anything less than an 8% unemployment rate caused runaway inflation. Obama and Biden and Fuhrmann all are Carternomic followers without a clue. Biden especially....because he is all over the map.....demented from birth, really. Obama came into office claiming he would raise taxes and cut spending to balance the budget, but he broke his promise early and often, raided SS and Medicare to give tax refunds to people who pay no tax, and created new runaway spending programs.....did nothing to make America great again, not even proposing a tax increase for Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security or Obamacare......but what Obama did say was that we needed to get used to permanently higher long term unemployment rate to have sustainable growth, something Jimmy Carter would say. Obama and Biden clearly believe Carter and think Reagan made no difference at all, but inherited an economy that Jimmy Carter fixed, then ruined it....and Clinton fixed it, then Bush ruined it and Obama fixed it, then Trump ruined it, but Biden fixed it, then Trump ruined it again. Republicans lose when they just try to power policy through without persuasion and winning the argument with Democrats. When Bill Clinton became president in 1993, the economy was growing over 4%, and the unemployment rate and deficit were falling fast, with the Fed Funds rate having been slashed from 9.75% to 3% before Clinton took office....but after Clinton’s inflationary tax increase that was condemned by the head of the USA Socialist party for misunderstanding that FDR targeted the idle rich with taxes, not business owners, professsionals , entrepreneurs. FDR did NOT have high taxes on the upper middle class managers, etc. but people who lived on inherited wealth and did not work at all. Clinton’s tax code combined with Greenspan’s slight rate increase took 4% growth to near recession and drove up the interest rate on the national debt and deficit stopped falling fast, then in Clinton’s second term he cut the capital gains tax rate that Reagan raised to 28% back down to 20%, where it was in Reagan’s first seven years, when growth was the highest. It was Clinton’s tax cut......that gave us the growth that balanced the budget, drove gas price down to 90 cents by 1998
Of course the heat commanded a premium.
We had slammed the door shut on mass immigration in 1929 and the proportion of national income going to labor was much higher in 1968 than now. In fact, the expected lifetime income of a male high school grad in the late 60s was higher than that of a college graduate.
Real opportunity for ordinary people made for a much better country. That's also why, when I was a kid in NYC in the 60s, you never saw any homeless-- even the drunks in the Bowery could find work at a construction site or a factory to pay enough for a flop house and some MD2020.
Mexicans drink like fish
My brother, freshly graduated with a biology degree, began a summer job hanging drywall. His co-workers were union, supporting a family on hard work and good wages and benefits. This was in Southern California in the early 70s. Slowly but surely, all those good jobs went to the illegals, who worked for less, for cash, and lived in “group homes” where they shared rent and sent most of the money back to families in Mexico. This is all about standard of living. Americans can do the work, but the dramatically reduced pay won’t go anywhere close to supporting an American family at a standard that Americans expect.
Things got much worse when the schools decided that they would not be “immigration enforcers”, and started enrolling the children here illegally. Now, instead of sending money back home, the families came too, eventually learning how to access every benefit. Those who say “they pay taxes” are ignorant of the reality: if they have taxes withheld, most of them get every penny back, and then some based on Earned Income Tax Credits.
Caregiving is a big one. Americans won’t work for less than minimum wage. States like Washington license illegals and don’t care if they pay federal tax, as long as employers pay business taxes.
John McCain infamously claimed that Americans would not pick lettuce for $50 per hour, and talk radio lines lit up from white Americans who said they gladly would pick lettuce for $50 per hour, if maybe only part time, some said.
McCain and Bush were from the elitist out of touch wing of the GOP that thinks recessions are necessary and good.
It was shocking to watch how sheetrock work became so shoddy as the Mexicans took it over, and that applied and still applies to all the trades.
People overlook that immigrants from Europe were skilled craftsmen and/or used to being customers of skilled craftsmen, the best in the world, look at the cities and nations they came from and then compare that to Mexico, Mexicans and Latin Americans have never been known for being skilled at any of the things they do here, they came from places that were built as dumps with no standards or expertise with construction materials.
Mexican villagers that know nothing about landscaping replaced Japanese and white gardeners in California for example, and it shows.
Modern American immigrants come from cultures without knowledge or standards, yet took over those roles in one of the world’s richest most advances societies, from dirt floors and tin sheets roofing to advanced Western building and housing.
One of the biggest problems is that the whole illegal labor market encourages an entire host of illegalities, safety violations, and shoddy work, in addition to the illegal hiring and tax fraud.
“””””John McCain infamously claimed that Americans would not pick lettuce for $50 per hour, and talk radio lines lit up from white Americans who said they gladly would pick lettuce for $50 per hour, if maybe only part time, some said.”””””
Besides, this last 100 million people isn’t about picking lettuce anyway, a farm harvest job doesn’t require adopting a second national language and workers and their families counted by the tens of millions.
two friends of mine growing up had fathers who owned roofing companies with all white people working for them. My brother worked at a plant nursery in high school, then went to college to learn landscape architecture and horticulture,graduated, and borrowed $10,000 from our father to buy a plant nursery, landscaping company with two of his coworker friends, paid back our father in one year, sold the business for a big profit a decade later, then started two more businesses without borrowing any money from our father. He died at age 40 from an undetected hole in his heart from birth, but he already had two houses, two nice cars, a wife and two kids, was playing golf in Hawaii and fishing in Washington state. He had no problem getting his hands dirty years before he became Vice president,director of sales and marketing at a corporation he co founded. U did roofing abd caddying summers home from college, seven days per week.....still had lots of fun. did some roofing part time with my friend’s father when I was in my 20s, did some landscaping jobs with my brother....including a new Holiday inn when the temps were over 100 degrees, even worked as an exterminator in my late 20s for a year. ...hoping to be branch manager. the idea that Americans won’t work is a lie. My best friend waited tables part time for years as a teacher in his day job. My math teacher father worked in a liquor store at night.....his cousins were stone masons.
Who wants to work when you can get 50k doing nothing.
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