America’s Descent Into the Third World

Chronicles Magazine ^ | Monday, July 25, 2005 | Paul Craig Roberts

[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?

[durasell]

My favorite shoes...

http://www.aldenshoe.com/history.htm

[appalachian_dweller]

***
Listen!!

All you people that keep complaining that we are losing jobs because of our sorry education is just plain wrong.

American workers are the smartest and most productive of any workers in the world and that is a proven fact.

We are losing jobs because corporations are going after cheap labor. Hard to compete with an 88 cent per hour job in china no matter what your education level maybe.
***

WE HAVE A WINNER!! Exactly right. Coporations are putting profit before every thing else, country included.

[Dat Mon]

YOU SAID..."They have a hard time getting the young guys to put in an honest 40 hours per week, even at $100,000+."

We are switching horses in mid topic here..he was talking about qualified candidates...you are talking work ethic.

I have an associate who is a software genius...he can create in 40 hours what most would take 80 to do....he doesnt need to put in long hours..although he does when required.

What I cant understand is why people such as your friend dont contract with the best people they can find as consultants...who not only are efficient...but routinely work over 40 hours per week.

The fact remains that many business types dont want to pay per hour for good engineers what they pay for a good mechanic to do their BMW tuneup.

[A. Pole]

The best and brightest U.S.-born students will never have a problem getting good paying work in this country. The mediocre and average, on the other hand...

No nation ever was made from "the best and brightest". And no nation can survive for long if only "the best and brightest" are making the ends meet.

[superiorslots]

Quote: This isn't 1941. We don't need fleets of thousands of aircraft, ships and tanks. We don't need a giant draftee army. Should we be spending more on defense? Absolutely. But saying we should put the nation on a war basis is a meaningless term, in this day and age.



You make the same argument(wrong as it maybe) that was made right after WWI. That "WWI was the war to end all wars"

[superiorslots]

Quote: It floors me that people are willing to place all blame college graduates and culture, but if anyone places even a minimum of blame on corporate greed, it automatically makes that person a socialist.

Bingo!! Best FR quote of the day.

[durasell]

Here's another brand. Also excellent and made in the USA...

http://www.redwingshoes.com/motorcycle/

[riverdawg]

"...he was talking about qualified candidates ... you are talking about work ethic."

Don't you think "work ethic" is a qualification for a job? In my field it certainly is.

As I said in the earlier post, I don't know with certainty the stated qualifications for their openings, but from many conversations with my father-in-law (a senior partner in a relatively small architectural firm, for those late-comers to the thread) I infer that they want to hire recent graduates from programs with good reputations who finished in the top 10-20% of their class and show promise of excellent skills, creativity, and a willingness to work hard. In other words, they want to hire the same kind of people most of us would want to hire for our organization. And to attract (what they hope is) this kind of person to their firm, they have to pay $100,000+. And, having done so, they have been unpleasantly surprised on more than one occasion.

[Paul Ross]

spell out an alternative that works in today's world.

Ronald Reagan.

[Eighth Square]

Somewhere, back when, we shifted our immigration policy heavily in favor of third world, but instead of seeking the best and the brightest we brought in the 'busboys' and the janitors. We can only absorb so many. Add to this the rise of the hippy left and it's resultant permisiveness, lack of personal responsibility, lack of discipline, crappy public schools, crappy teachers, drugs..........you get the picture. BUT, there is a ray of sunshine, the electorate is waking up, looking at their incompetent, bumbling elected Reps and moving for change. You saw the beginings in the last two elections, the 'talking' heads are becoming more vocal. The people are fed up with the frigging libo/lefty/dems and their frigging socialist, hippy, anti American agender. I believe we may just see a huge move to the right in 2006 and 2008.

[Modernman]

I woke up a cabbie at the dmv yesterday as he was taking a really hard sleep and I thought he'd miss his number. I want things but I don't think I want it bad enough

I worked some brutal hours as a lawyer in NYC. But, the car service guys who drove me home at the end of the day worked brutal hours, too, for maybe a quarter of the money. Kinds of puts things in perspective.

[Paul Ross]

We manufacture more than we ever have. The problem is, manufacturing has gotten so efficient that it doesn't need all that many workers.

Sigh. This old canard. We do not manufacture more than we ever have. Besides snowislander's point about inflation, we also are witnessing numerical misrepresentations. E.g., we are importing substitutes for subcomponentry of our own manufactures, then U.S. labels are slapped on...but the final shipped price is counted as the U.S. manufactures.

Did you know that the National Association of Manufactures tried to limit the membership in its organization that did this, so that they would be a more purely AMERICAN manufacturing association...but the motion just barely failed. Too many of the "BIGS" are doing it now, ...we have been sold out from the top.

Anyways, the substituted outsourced componentry helps explain, THIS:

You can argue all you want about productivity, but then we should not be losing manufacturing as a share of GDP. The facts say we are:

On a GDP basis the trend is starkly in the negative -- the U.S. manufacturing base declined from 30.4% of GDP in 1953 (when we had a trade surplus) to 12.7% in 2003 - a 58% drop in the manufacturing share of GDP - and more of the remaining manufacturing base is foreign-owned than before. (Bureau Economic Analysis table b-12, Economic Report of President, appendix table)

[Paul C. Jesup]

That's the conundrum. The best and brightest of our US-born students are smart enough to see what is happening out there. They think, why should I spend four or six or eight years in school pursuing a difficult field of study, only to be either unemployed or have my job outsourced to Bangalore?

That's unemployed and in debt for those not smart enough to realize that the younger U.S. generations are getting the shaft...

[Modernman]

The senior partners are now in their early to mid 60's and still work 55-60 hours a week. They have a hard time getting the young guys to put in an honest 40 hours per week, even at $100,000+.

Senior partners in law firms say the same thing. To be honest, they're right. Most of the lawyers around my age aren't interested in working the hours that the older guys did. We'll settle for less money if it means having a life.

[Dat Mon]

YOU SAID..."Don't you think "work ethic" is a qualification for a job? In my field it certainly is."

Lets back up...your friend said they couldn't find qualified candidates to fill job openings.

In my business...and most others I know...you gauge a persons 'qualifications' for a job based on their technical skillsets, their personality, and your gut instincts.

Now...to RETAIN that individual, once hired...they certainly have to have a reasonable work ethic...again...I look at results...not hours spent in getting there. But you have no reliable way (aside from GPA) of gaging work ethic until you actually hire the individual.

So I'm not buying your argument.

[superiorslots]

Quote: An initial study by Alliance found a decline of 16 million manufacturing jobs in China from 1995 through 2002


What else is NOT mentioned in this study is that company A in China may have gone from 100 employees down to 75 employees due to productivity gains but does NOT mention that another factory was shut down in the US and moved to china to hire the 25 displaced workers and also an additional 100 chinese.

China is bringing people in from the countrside to fill new positions because thy have a shortage of workers.

[churchillbuff]

How can the U.S. be third world when we produce so many intellegent, productive attorneys?"""

LOL

[superiorslots]

Quote: Fine by me, but it does not say someone has to have a good paying job..


This is codespeak by corporate ceo's who take their 25 million dollar annual salary and expect all their workers to live on subsistence wages.

[mercy]

I bet if you have just about any sort of degree AND you speak and write fluent Mandarin Chinese you can pick and choose your job at big money rates.

[hershey]

You should see the influx of Brazilians here in Eastern MA. A good many on phony papers, of course. They pull up in shiny new cars and ask where Burlington is or whatever. You have to walk over to their car, mind you. They can't get out and ask you directions! Many are roofers, landscapers, house cleaners, and God knows what else. It's true that local employers discriminate now against Americans. They prefer to hire foreigners, whether legal or not, and pay cheaper wages. It's bad. They say the influx of immigrants, legal or otherwise is up by two thirds here in Eastern Ma.