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?
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!
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.
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.
ExitPurgamentum
Since Jul 28, 2005
Are you Chinese or are you Russian?
ExitPurgamentum
Since Jul 28, 2005
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.
Thomas Freidman is a Lawrence Summers/Robert Rubin/Lloyd Bentsen clone. No thanks.
Does this mean you think the economic trend is set in concrete, or do you think that it can be corrected?
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! :-)
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".
Not what I was saying. Nice stab at a strawman, though.
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.
Let me guess, you don't have the time to write a thesis about it.
Either way, you helped me to invent a new tagline.
The credit is all yours.
If I had a choice, I'd ask you to subsitute Milton Friedman.
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.
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.
Au contraire! That was judicial activism, not legislation. Another bad day at the SCOTUS.
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