Posted on 02/20/2004 11:22:20 AM PST by Spiff
Jim Behnke
Sierra Vista Herald/Review
Opinion
When I was a kid, we only had one parent working - my dad - and we always seemed to have enough. Not plenty, but enough. This is particularly amazing in view of the fact that my dad was a preacher - you know how they overpay those guys - and had five children. Today it seems both parents have to work full time, and even then lots of families barely scrape by.
The latest issue of Time magazine has a book review about this subject. The book was written by David Shipler and reviewed by Richard Lacayo. It is titled "The Working Poor." Since I have not had a chance to read the book, I will refer to what Time magazine has to say about it. The author states that "low-wage employees have been testing the American doctrine that hard work cures poverty." He states that a lot of people are living on the edge of household financial disaster and cannot escape their poverty because there are a lot of things that keep them there - a low minimum wage, convenience stores that advance them cash at 20 percent interest on a two-week loan, unscrupulous bosses who falsify time sheets so they work longer hours for the same pay, garment workers paid by the piece, exorbitant housing costs just to mention a few. These are the working poor, and "they spend everything and save nothing." Shipler had solutions such as a higher minimum wage, better job training and medical coverage. But he predicts nothing will be done as these folks carry no weight in the political process. It's not a bright outlook for the working poor.
But what Shipler did not mention and I will is that things are going to get worse, and it is all because of illegal immigration. The government admits there are 10 million illegals in this country and knowledgeable people put that figure at closer to 20 million. Now at a time of abundant cheap labor and a 6 percent unemployment rate on its way to 7.9 percent, President Bush and many members of Congress want to bring in more cheap labor, albeit legally and for a period of three years. But the result will be the same. An overabundance of labor will only drive down wages making the poor poorer.
In Los Angeles, there are documented cases of illegals willing to work for $2 an hour. In another case, one of our own people, a Mexican-American asked her boss for a pay raise and health insurance and was told to be quiet or he would hire an illegal to take her place. The hiring halls in Phoenix are jammed with illegals looking for work and unscrupulous employers hire them because they don't have to pay taxes or health insurance and there are plenty more to take their place if they don't like what's going on.
Bill O'Reilly of Fox News is correct when he predicts that the new legal immigration proposals will bring in another 50 million people, this at a time when hundreds of thousands of Americans are unemployed, and the jobs we do have are being outsourced to India, Mexico and a host of other cheap labor countries. Bringing in more cheap labor will only acerbate our problems and will be a recipe for disaster for these United States not too mention the impact 50 million people will have on our hospitals, schools and police services. (According to the Border Patrol, 7 percent who enter our country illegally now have prior criminal records).
And finally, remember, low wages mean little or no taxes paid with resultant low revenues for our state budgets. California has learned that the hard way and the whole country will learn it next.
In the meantime, the poor will get poorer and poorer.
JIM BEHNKE is a Sierra Vista resident who retired as an Army lieutenant colonel. He can be contacted by e-mail at wethepeople33@juno.com. His column runs every other Thursday.
Ironic, isn't it, that Americans in many states pay illegals to do their housework and gardening, and then go out and join an expensive gym. We need to dig our own flowerbeds, water our own grass, and raise our own children, for crying out loud.
I was 57 before I had any clothes at all.
That depends on where you live. Here more people actually are making minimum wage than they were ten years ago, many of the garment workers were making $8 to $10 an hour back before NAFTA --- that wiped out 14,000 jobs, very few jobs moved in --- and now if those people are working --- and many never will again, they make minimum wage. Here one out of three jobs pays minimum wage, only one out of three pays over $10 an hour.
What is going on too is that we're importing massive amounts of poverty. The poor today are less educated than ever, we have huge welfare programs that didn't exist before that appeal to many of our new poor, and a lot of the poverty is cultural. Unwed mothers are quite a lot younger than ever in the past --- 20 years ago it was considered shocking for a 16 or 17 year old to become an unwed mother, now it's not shocking to see 12 year old unwed mothers.
Hard work when misdirected doesn't cure anything. Many times people with a good work ethic put a lot of effort into pursuing directions that will never pay off for them, or they just honestly don't know how to be successful. A good grounding in the fundamentals of personal financial management is essential...but no one is ever going to get that from a government school.
By the same token, if we as consumers shop for the lowest price rather than looking at any of the issues that make the price lower, we too are to blame. Walmart, for example, has chosen to maintain it's profit margin by importing chinese goods subsidized by the People's Republic of China.
When we buy that stuff (because it is cheaper) we are voting for their policy of buying chinese. When we shop around for the cheapest contractor to remodel our kitchen, then go ahead with it even when his employees seem clearly to be illegal, we vote for the contractors choice to use illegal aliens. Actually, even when we go to Hollywood movies, watch leftist TV shows because they're funny or even (for some) buy porn, we are voting with our dollars for what they are providing.
If enough of us bought products that met our principled stand, they would win in the market place. It's normal though, and natural, to buy by price. That's why the founders had all revenue for the government come from excise taxes - it helped establish American business from within by raising prices to those from the outside.
In other words, it isn't only the fault of those willing to work cheap, it's also the fault of those willing to buy cheap.
But does he play one on TV?
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