That Dog Don't Hunt Ping!
Posted on 04/10/2006 6:45:04 PM PDT by B-Chan
Can We Please Stop Using This Argument?
People can rationally come to different conclusions on what should be done about the presence of millions of illegal aliens in the United States, but as that matter is debated, we should at least try to avoid some of the most obviously absurd arguments.
I therefore propose that we, as a nation, retire the "Illegal aliens take jobs Americans won't do/don't want" argument.
This is patent nonsense.
Anybody using this argument either has no grasp of economics or is being disingenuous due to the presence of an ulterior motive. (Them's yer two choices, so take yer pick, Mr. Bush.)
To see the absurdity of this argument, let's cast it in its starkest form: Food.
Before we do that, though, let me issue
THE BIG RED DISCLAIMER: The following treatment has nothing to do with ethnicity. It has to do with economics. In what follows I will talk about two groups of people--illegal aliens (whatever their ethnicity) and Americans (whatever their ethnicity). The fact that most (but by no means all) of the illegal aliens in this country are Latino in origin is irrelevant to the economic principles involved, as is the fact that many Americans are also of Latino origin. If you need to, swap the terms "America" and "Americans" for those of a random country somewhere else on the planet. The economic principles apply no matter where you are.
Now . . .
It is often noted that illegal aliens play a large role in the construction, landscaping, and domestic service industries, but nice buildings, nice landscapes, and nice domestic services are luxuries. Our most pressing survival-related need is for food, and so the "Jobs Americans won't do" argument can be cast most starkly if we look at the role of illegal aliens in the agricultural industry.
Suppose that all of the illegal aliens working in the agricultural industry decided to quit their jobs. What would happen to the U.S.?
Will we be seeing headlines in the New York Times like this one? . . .
Americans are not going to starve themselves to death because they "won't do" the job of harvesting the food.
Americans have been harvesting food ever since there have been Americans (otherwise they would have all starved long ago), so they are certainly capable of it.
Why, then, are so many illegal aliens taking the place of Americans in the agricultural industry?
Because they come from a different economic background and are willing to do the jobs for less.
The effect of illegal aliens in the agricultural industry is not that they do work that otherwise wouldn't get done. It's that they depress the wages in the agricultural industry to the point that such jobs are unattractive to Americans.
It's that whole supply-and-demand thing.
When you've got a greater supply of something than you have demand for it, the price will go down. If manufacturers make loads of DVD players and start to outstrip the demand for DVD players then the price of DVD players will go down as part of competition for customers.
Same thing happens in labor markets.
If the supply of agricultural workers outstrips the demand for agricultural workers then the wages attached to such jobs will go down as part of competition for employment. When the wages are depressed past a certain point, some of the workers will say, "Y'know, I could do better in a different industry" and they decide at that point that they "won't do" the agricultural jobs at the depressed wages being offered for those jobs.
But what happens if the labor pool shrinks? What happens if all the illegal aliens decide to quit?
When the supply of agricultural workers shrinks so that it no longer outstrips the demand for agricultural workers and employers start raising wages in order to attract the workers they need, and the work gets done.
Trust me, Americans are not going to starve themselves to death if they have no illegal aliens to harvest food.
What will happen instead is that the wages offered for such jobs will rise, Americans will start valuing such jobs more as a result (instead of looking down on them), and they will start doing them. The food will get harvested, and when it is sold to the public the added labor costs will be passed on to consumers in the form of a modest increase in food prices.
But there will be no massive wave of starvation in the U.S.
Something similar applies to the jobs in other industries that currently have high levels of involvement by illegal aliens. If the supply-and-demand situations of those industries were readjusted then Americans would be attracted to jobs in them as well, and the work would still get done. People might economize in some areas (e.g., taking care of the kids yourself instead of hiring an illegal alien to serve as a nanny), but we won't see headlines like:
That one's a non-starter, Mr. President.
***
P.S. BTW, Mr. President, do you realize how arrogant and insulting you are being when you use the "Jobs Americans won't do" argument?
This argument can be parsed one of two ways: (1) "Such jobs are beneath us as Americans, so we need to import foreigners to do these lowly tasks for us" or (2) "I preside over a nation of such hopelessly spoiled brats that we need to just cave in to their juvenile refusal to do such jobs."
The first is arrogant and insulting to people from other countries. The second is arrogant and insulting to Americans.
Since it can be parsed both ways, the argument is arrogant and insulting no matter what your nationality.
I therefore propose that we, as a nation, retire the "Illegal aliens take jobs Americans won't do/don't want" argument.
This is patent nonsense.
Anybody using this argument either has no grasp of economics or is being disingenuous due to the presence of an ulterior motive. (Them's yer two choices, so take yer pick, Mr. Bush.)
The truth hurts. Put them on the public teat, get them happily nestled in the ranks of Democrat voters and make room for the Moooslims to become the next civil rights abusee.
is there some type of Laffer Curve to measure just how much crap the taxpayer will take before he finally say's enough is enough with regards to the loss of our identity?
I wrote this letter to my three members of Congress today:
Dear Mr. Renzi, Senator McCain and Senator Kyl -- I'm sorry; I am pissed. I am incensed. I am nauseated at what I have witnessed today. These "sea of humanity" demonstrations by illegals, and especially the speeches by leaders who are certifiably communist; the overnight changeover from Mexican to American flags (where did all those flags come from; who bought them?). It is such a sham. And to have people who are breaking the law with every step they take in this land lecturing us about injustice. I tell you, I am nauseated by it.
I am a democrat, but haven't voted for a democrat for any national office for a long time. That party no longer cares about our country. They are not patriotic, whatsoever.
Please help me out here, help me and my wife to cope with what we are witnessing. Where is the conservative backbone in Congress?
HERE IS MY SOLUTION -- it is radical, but fair and comprehensive: Build a BIG steel wall, like Israel's. Build it a mile inside our border so the Mexican army cannot sidle up alongside or sabotage it or undermine it; make the mile between the wall and the mexican border a no-go zone. Build it double, with 100 yards of minefield in between. Build the inner wall of standard chainlink fence, as it need not be so formidable as the wall facing mexico.
Invite illegals already in America to come down, by the tens of thousands, to work on the wall, a month at a time, decent wages. Document them, then and there. Anyone who works on the wall a total of 6 months, whether off-and-on, or straight through, gets to come through INS legally, go straight to the head of the line, and bring spouse and children with them. They get to be citizens of the USA, on a special case basis.
Radical? Yes. But, if we don't have a border that means something (like every other country in the world), then we don't have a country. Please do something, quickly. The initiative has been stolen already. We need it back. We want our country back.
Your constituent,
Another stupid argument that needs to be canned is the idiotic, "we're a nation of immigrants." In fact, the vast majority of the CITIZENS living the United States were BORN HERE! Very, very few are actual immigrants. So, can everyone please disabuse yourself of this mistaken idea and stop using this worthless argument? (Yes, that means you, Mr. President.)
Why can't we all join in on this lawlessness? Chaos and anarchy does benefit some people, why not be the beneficiary?
It is better to allow lawlessness to continue. Now don't judge me. Think before you act. You don't want some proto-police state going around and prosecuting crimes/ruling our lives now do you. I didn't think so.
Hmmmmmmm. Interesting.
But it does sort of remind me of a Hogan's Heroes episode, where they were conscripted to build a bridge. Hogan made some aside comment to the effect that it would be the first bridge with a built in bomb...
bookmark
Funny how the liberals support corporate welfare for their causes and ends.
"It would be more efficient to put the employers behind bars than to try to round up all the illegals."
Why should an employer have to check on the legality of employees, when the federal government won't do it? Which one has the resources? If an illegal alien isn't hired by Employer A, won't he just go down the road to Employers B, C and D? Isn't it more efficient for the feds to stop him before he starts making the rounds?
It is, unfortunately for this article, a valid argument, especially in the case of food.
Ironically, the author steps on his own member: Anybody using this argument either has no grasp of economics or is being disingenuous due to the presence of an ulterior motive.
The economics are these: Americans might do the backbreaking agricultural jobs, but not for the wages at which illegals will do them. American farmers are operating on very thin margins and competing with foreign producers, so they've got a strong incentive to minimize their payroll costs -- hence the strong demand for illegal labor.
Farmers MIGHT automate -- but in that case, Americans still wouldn't be doing those jobs. Or the farmers might just go belly up -- again no agricultural jobs.
Sorry, the article dies on its own poor assumptions.
Looked to me like the Dallas Area Rapid Transit System (DART) was well able to handle shuttling 100's of thousands of people to and from that gathering on Sunday.
It's just a matter of where the bus stops...
The more pressure we keep on Mexico, immigration-wise, the more reformers
inside of Mexico can be emboldened and empowered to scale back monopolists'
abuses down there which keep our own country flooded with economic refugees.
Here's an interesting new thread on new legal reform progress that finally
emerged in Mexico I think as a result of immigration reform's failure:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1611677/posts
We can make a difference for our sake, and their's as well. Isn't it the
neighborly thing to do?
What did they do in the south after slavery was abolished? Invented machines that more efficiently processed cotton than humans could.
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