The Return Of The Giant Sucking Sound

SFGATE.com (The SF Chronicle) ^ | 02/09/04 | Adam Sparks

[sfwarrior]

Since 2001, the United States has lost 2.8 million manufacturing jobs. Hello! Is anybody listening? This is a crisis. Our house is on fire, and few in Congress are paying attention. And, at the rate things are going, the only jobs even college graduates will be able to get will be in the service industry. That's political lingo for flipping hamburgers.

[Happy2BMe]

"Some issues should transcend politics as usual. Both Republicans and Democrats should work closely together, in a nonadversarial way, for the defense of our nation after a foreign attack and for the protection of the America worker against the same."

In whose lifetime?

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

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

[A. Pole]

It's ironic that Ross Perot is one of the largest employers who is outsourcing.

You are confusing the general rules with the individual situations. If your remove tariffs (free trade) the companies and consumers who try to make patriotic choices are severly penalized.

If you are a producer who wants to hire Americans and pay American taxes you might be competing with foreign imports which are cheaper than your costs. If you are a consumer your choice might be between deprivation or buying Chinese made goods. If you are a worker you might be forced to go deeper into debt and ask for government assistance in order to "compete" with Third World labor.

The original rules and equal playing field should be restored and this is what Mr. Perot wanted.

[sfwarrior]

A. Pole
Bingo. You've said is succintly. Now if only other freepers and conservatives would get it.

[Happy2BMe]

"Secondly, how do you explain your free market mantra to the folks at fly over country? Let them know a good shoe shining job is just around the corner?"

Explanations are in order . .

American Workers

High Immigration Harms Many American Workers

Federal policies of high immigration interfere with market forces that otherwise would cause corporations and other employers to find ways to maximize American wages and working conditions while also maximizing productivity.

The result has been a decades-long wage depression in many occupations and even in some professions.

America has become less of a middle-class nation because of the quadrupling of immigration since 1965. And it has become more of a society of wide economic disparities.

Virtually all studies of this phenomenon have concluded that the greatest harm is to those American workers who already are the most vulnerable: those without high school degrees, those with lower intrinsic intelligence, those with fewer skills. The harm also is disproportionately felt by native-born minorities, especially Hispanics and Blacks, and by recent immigrants.

For these reasons, the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, chaired by the late Barbara Jordan, concluded that present immigration numbers are a source of economic injustice in this country. The Commission recommended lowering immigration numbers significantly.

"Since 1970, immigration has increased the number of unskilled job applicants faster than the number of skilled job applicants. First-year economics predicts that increasing the relative number of unskilled workers will depress their wages, because employers will not need to raise wages to attract applicants for unskilled jobs. Nonetheless, those who favor an expansive immigration policy often deny that the increase in the number of unskilled job applicants depresses wages for unskilled work, arguing that unskilled immigrants take jobs that natives do not want. This is sometimes true. But we still have to ask why natives do not want these jobs. The reason is not that natives reject demeaning or dangerous work. Almost every job that immigrants do in Los Angeles or New York is done by natives in Detroit and Philadelphia. When natives turn down such jobs in New York or Los Angeles, the reason is that by local standards the wages are abysmal. Far from proving that immigrants have no impact on natives, the fact that American-born workers sometimes reject jobs that immigrants accept reinforces the claim that immigration has depressed wages for unskilled work."

High Immigration Harms Many American Workers and Produces Wage Depression

Mexican migrant workers oppose Bush immigration proposal.

High Immigration Harms Many American Workers and Produces Wage Depression

Mexican migrant workers oppose Bush immigration proposal.

[A. Pole]

This is an ever-expanding economy, I don't care whether we're in a down cycle or not we're always expanding.

Yeah, sure. Tell it to the Argentinians. Almost every great power in the past has fallen because of such over-confidence/hubris/hutzpah. Good example was XVIc Spain.

[Biblebelter]

This article is quite a find. Considering it is from SF, it is surprising to find it provides more fact than opinion. The effect of the income tax has been to increase direct employment in the public sector and by other spending make many other jobs dependent on public spending. This means we are becoming a socialist nation. We are getting to the point where one of the main functions of government will be to provide employment for workers of today and retirement benefits for former employees. I am constantly amazed that business in the private sector has become more productive, and we have many government agencies which are operating as they did when their agencies were created. Enron would be an accounting model of fiscal responsibility compared to the USDA which has literally billions unaccounted for. If only we could keep the manufacturing jobs here and ship the government bureacratic jobs abroad.

[jpsb]

Tell that to the furniture makers in mid Atlantic states. The unions are gone, got it? There are just a few pockets of union strong holds left, mostly in the North East. But yall keep sending all the damn jobs overseas and union will make a comeback big time. I can easily see unemployed American going to the harbor and trashing cheap imports at the dock. Any day I expect the un and under emplyed to do just that.

[sfwarrior]

Nice try but no banana. Most freepers would agree with you that the rate of immigration is far too excessive. But you ignored answerin the main question posed by the original column, how does an American worker making between $25-$40 an hour, at a factory or "knowledge" job, compete with those making 10-20 cents an hour.

Let everyone on this thread hear your answer simply and clearly. Go. Your turn...

[Iscool]

American's have been sounding the alarm bell but NO ONE IS LISTENING. This very well could cost President Bush the election. I've had enough of these CFR, Globalist traitors. America is in a race to the bottom, and they could care less! By the time they realize what they have done to America, it will be too late. We are at the mercy of the traitors in our own government.

What you need to realize is they they DO hear you...But, there agenda is not our agenda...Surely you remember George Sr, "Read my lips-New World Order"...We left the American Order...We are now in the NEW World Order...We saw this coming at least 20 years ago but we ignored it...Just as we are still trying to ignore it...

Ross Perot told us...Pat Buchanan told us...And we trashed them...They got trashed so badly that no one else is willng to step up to the plate...So if you thought the New World Order was a good thing, you may as well just set back and enjoy it, if you can...

[hgro]

And crooked labor unions?

In general, all international unions operating in the United States have done more to drive business off shore - even more so than government regulations.

Their very nature has allowed corruption to flourish in unions with little or no fear of the government. Why?
Because they buy and own politicians who cater to and allow the workers to be subjigated and controlled.

[Thorin]

Great piece. Thanks for posting it.

[sfwarrior]

If you look at this thread, most freepers and conservatives don't get it. They've all been brainwashed to think that protectionism and conservatism are oxymorons. It's the opposite. Republican use to protect American workers now they're protecting who knows what?

[janetgreen]

Great cartoon and tag line! Ain't it the truth!

[eskimo]

It'll take time to make some FRers and Republicans to understand that conservativism and protectionism is not any oxymoron.

Many of the party groupies will never succumb to reality. They seem to be hopelessly duped into believing their party will soon gain an advantage. They seem unwilling to learn from the present political reality that no advantage will be forthcoming since that would be to the disadvantage of those who own and operate political parties.

[A. Pole]

The payoff for having aborted our way to prosperity in the 70s and 80s. Those millions of aborted fetuses would now be the 20-somethings who would be manning the very jobs now taken by illegals.

Point to remember!

[ninenot]

Nice spin, Rush

The "straw man" he creates at the end---'all in a soup kitchen,' of course, is a ridiculous parody of the real, verifiable, and proven claim: that manufacturing jobs are going away.

But even more important, Rushbo drinks the KoolAid of the spinners at Labor: that all those retail, Gummint, and health-service jobs recently filled are the equivalent of manufacturing jobs. Wrong-o, Rush! First off, filling Gummint jobs is precisely what Rushbo rails against most--for who PAYS for them?

Secondly, retail and bed-pan-washing jobs are not exactly the equivalent of stamping, machining, and assembly--neither in pay, nor in skills.

Rushbo also made a point of telling us all about the growth in 'self-employment' recently. Well, some of that is good. But some of that is really, really bad: it's professionals who don't HAVE a real job and are taking as little as 1/2 their previous income on temporary assignments, or on margin-cutting jobs--the programmers who are now doing Ma & Pa work for $20./hour, or getting into "Web Design" schemes.

Finally, the growth in the "service" sector is largely temporary employment--you know, packing Christmas gift-boxes with cheese and sausage at $6.50/hour--or taking on a "temporary" professional assignment at about 2/3rds of your normal income.

Spin is NOT the private property of the Democrats...

[A. Pole]

Carly Fiorina -- CEO of Hewlett Packard -- glibly announced to the world that Americans don't have any right to jobs, or anything else for that matter. And nobody paid any mind to it. I just wonder what the dead Americans who fell to defend the country over the last two centuries would think about Ms. Fiorina's opinions about what rights Americans don't have.

Probably that Ms. Fiorina is forfeiting her rights to live and do business in this country.

[NRA2BFree]

Ross Perot told us...Pat Buchanan told us...And we trashed them...They got trashed so badly that no one else is willng to step up to the plate...So if you thought the New World Order was a good thing, you may as well just set back and enjoy it, if you can...

I'm not surprised at what's happening because I've read THE book, and I know how it turns out, but getting to that point is not going to be fun for any of us. Hang on to your socks, we're getting ready to go for a rough ride. There's no way any of us can stop it either.

[ninenot]

Isn't the leftie argument for illegal immigrants that they do the work Americans won't?

Read a newspaper once a year or so...

This argument is being advanced by George W Bush and his Secy/Homeland Security.

It's the argument that's being used by the slave-wage-payers in agriculture in Cali, Fla., and Tx. (Those last two States ought to sound familiar to someone who knows the Bush name.)