Jobs Americans Won't Do: Voodoo Economics from the White House.

National Review Online ^ | January 07, 2004 | Mark Krikorian

[rellimpank]

----AMEN-----

[hobbes1]

buffet-style restaurants need much less staff that full-service ones

Hey...that's great Mark..If you like scarfing at Sizzler, it's all good, but many of us prefer our dining out to be Dining.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Ride your tray ?
No thanks.

[hobbes1]

thus we have fewer attendants but more gas stations and get in and out faster than we used to when we trusted our car to the man who wore the Texaco star.

And those of you that don't live in NJ or Oregon, sweat in the summer, freeze in the winter, get wet in the rain...etc.

[BenLurkin]

I don't buy the WH's argument that there are jobs Americans "won't do".

Look, IF there are jobs Americans "won't do" then we don't have "unemployment". We have "refuse-employment".

[hobbes1]

My Point exactly. Apparently MArk thinks we should all be eating at Sizzler.

[StatesEnemy]

But it's the second part of the response to a tighter labor market that people just don't get. By holding down natural wage growth in labor-intensive industries, immigration serves as a subsidy for low-wage, low-productivity ways of doing business, retarding technological progress and productivity growth.

Not to mention that the TRUE COST of these workers (school systems, hospital visits, subsidized housing, food stamps... etc) is shifted to the taxpayer.

[hobbes1]

Good. Are you filling out that application to empty $#!tcans at Sizzler yet?

[ampat]

Concur. At any rate all those "americans won't do" jobs have been filled ten times over by legal immigrants who have come into this country over the last 50 years. If there are still some jobs, then let the legal immigrants (go through the legal process) get them.

[StatesEnemy]

No, it means the companies that are in need of folks to do these physically demanding, often hazardous jobs, are not playing by market rules - which is the same for a slice of bread as it is for labor.

Instead, they are importing slaves, and letting the rest of us subsidize their existence.

[Redbob]

TO hear some folks tell it, you couldn't get a home built here in the Southwest without Mex labor, but I can tell you that's not true:

Just yesterday I moved into our new place, and I don't think a single worker on that job speaks any more Spanish than "una mas cerveza, por favor, senorita!"

BTW, it came in under budget and only a *little* late!

[eleni121]

Mark you are not living in the real world.

I for one and I am sure there are many - would welcome some SERVICE! for a change!

Everywhere I go surly, lazy incompetent US born employees (many so-called professional ones) resent their jobs and as a result the customer/client is given short shrift.

Bring on the Mexicans or anyone else who is willing ot do the work without some tight assed unionists hovering in the background telling employees tbey have a right to dish out poor service.

[hobbes1]

Just yesterday I moved into our new place, and I don't think a single worker on that job speaks any more Spanish than "una mas cerveza, por favor, senorita!"

That's pretty interesting, but why are they calling YOU senorita?

[hobbes1]

Amen. See 3.

[WackyKat]

If the supply of foreign workers were to dry up (say, through actually enforcing the immigration law, for starters), employers would respond to this new, tighter, labor market in two ways. One, they would offer higher wages, increased benefits, and improved working conditions, so as to recruit and retain people from the remaining pool of workers. At the same time, the same employers would look for ways to eliminate some of the jobs they now are having trouble filling. The result would be a new equilibrium, with blue-collar workers making somewhat better money, but each one of those workers being more productive.

These "jobs American" won't do" only exist at that wage level and working condition because aliens can be found to do the work.

Illegals are a massive subsidy to business, which shifts the cost of illegals onto the taxpayers through the welfare state.

Illegal labor is "cheap" only to sleazy employers, it is very expensive to the rest of us.

[eleni121]

Well the "slaves" sure seem happy to be working and getting paid.

They also seem to be dying to get into slavery!

The truth is that Socialists want to stifle the economy by establishing the so called "living wage" which is in fact the wage that will cash this economy into the dust, especially for first time employees.

[Dubya]

grant amnesty to millions of illegals

How sad.

[CasearianDaoist]

Take them of of transfer payemnts and they will take those jobs.

[gubamyster]

ping