Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Who is the Cheap Labor Lobby?
Front Page Magazine ^ | January 24, 2003 | Ellen Almer

Posted on 05/30/2006 2:40:17 PM PDT by A. Pole

Despite the endless blathering and squirming to the contrary on the part of Wired Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, the Cato Institute and other institutions that normally proclaim the truth of free-market economics, the Law of Supply and Demand applies to labor as much as to any other thing that is bought and sold. That is to say, if one increases the supply of labor relative to demand, its price will fall. That price is your salary, friend. And mass immigration is inexorably driving it down. Well, maybe not your salary personally, if you are lucky enough to work in a sector of the economy that is sheltered, for some reason, from the effects of immigrant labor, as lawyers are by the fact that few immigrants have American law degrees. But it is the salary of your neighbors, and it is being depressed by an influx of cheap labor. There is just no way around this basic economic fact. If there is, then free-market economics is a lie.

Yes, immigrant labor expands the economy as a whole by adding more producing workers. But a big aggregate GNP isn’t prosperity: just compare Switzerland, which is tiny but rich, with India, which is huge but poor. Per capita GNP, which produces per-capita income, is prosperity, and immigration does nothing to increase that. True, it might, if immigrants were on average more productive than native Americans. But they’re not. Every measure – by the Census Bureau and others – shows them as being massively poorer, less educated, and less likely to attain middle-class status than native Americans.

America was founded on the concept – well understood by Alexander Hamilton and the other economic sophisticates among the founders – of a middle-class society, i.e. a society organized to minimize the number of people who constitute cheap labor. Cheap labor was the proletariat which drove Europe’s class-ridden and undemocratic politics, the nightmare of revolution and reaction America was founded to escape.

Contrary to libertarian myth, America’s economy was never, ever, based on a totally free market in labor. It was based on a labor market constricted by limited immigration and a small population relative to national resources, and a free market in everything else. This was designed to produce high wages. We have always been an explicitly high-wage nation relative to other societies, and this did not happen by accident. (This is the key story in Pat Buchanan’s book The Great Betrayal, and he is right about this, even if he is wrong about other things.)

Labor is the one and only area in which no rational society should want to construct a free market, because free markets make things cheap, and high wages equal a high standard of living. Before anyone pounces, I realize you have to define this a real, not nominal, wages and that there are all sorts of technicalities to this issue. But the principle is rock-solid. Labor is fundamentally different from all other commodities because its well-being is an end in itself, not a means to other ends. And before anyone pounces again, I am advocating controls on the influx of foreign labor, not unions or limits on which jobs Americans can hold.

We used to have a commitment to a middle-class, bourgeois society. We have now lost that commitment at the moment when we are busy congratulating ourselves on how supremely capitalist we have become. We are importing a proletariat when we should be abolishing poverty.

Rather than making a profit through superior technology and management, as American business has surpassed the entire world in doing for 200 years, an increasingly large sector of corporate America just wants to take the lazy road of importing cheap labor to work for them. This is not economic progress; it is retrogression. It is a formula for becoming Brazil.

Some of cheap labor’s biggest lobbyists:

1. The high-tech industry. Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, the pre-eminent figure in the high tech industry, is a passionate and vociferous supporter of cheap labor, primarily because overseas-trained engineers from India, China and Pakistan are cheaper than American tech workers.

2. The meat packing industry, especially pig and chicken slaughtering. This industry, of course, has a long and storied past of using cheap immigrant labor. Read Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle from 100 years ago.

3. Clothing manufacturers. Despite the efforts of the Ladies Garment Workers Union to eliminate sweat shops some 60 years ago, they are still alive and thriving in the states, employing mostly Asian women who work in terrible conditions.

4. Unions. These supposed advocates of the American worker and longtime opponents of importing immigrant labor are now part of the cheap labor lobby because they primarily serve the interests of union bosses, not workers. Bosses want more poor workers so they can have more members. They don’t want to see their members graduate to the middle class, where people generally don’t feel the need to belong to a union.

5. The hotel and restaurant industry. Another big business interest whose employees are primarily cheap labor from Latin America.

6. The ultra-wealthy – both liberals and nominal conservatives. They believe that only foreign workers are willing to work as their nannies, landscapers, and housekeepers.

7. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, led by Grover Norquist, formerly a vocal spokesman for many conservative issues. This group has led the charge in convincing Congress to expand the awful H-1B visa program. They argue that more H-1B visas granted to foreign workers will alleviate a mythical shortage of skilled technology workers. The H-1B visa program allots 115,000 foreign worker visas annually, but the Chamber of Commerce said that isn’t nearly enough.

8. The governors of certain rural, Midwestern states (such as Iowa) whose populations are shrinking, prompting a cry for an influx of new residents. Of course, these governors do not consider attracting native Americans by offering a growing economy a better solution.

Cheap labor is not real capitalism, it is corporatism, for cheap labor is subsidized by the government, which ends up paying the health and welfare costs of these workers. All taxpayers bear the cost.

Let’s get clear about one thing: there are no jobs that Americans “won’t do.” There are jobs that Americans won’t do at the wage being offered. If you offered me enough money, I would bus tables or clean bathrooms. When I was younger and without work experience, I would have done so gladly. If employers can’t fill these jobs, this is their own fault for not offering enough. They have no intrinsic right to be able to fill positions at the price they feel like paying, any more than you or I have the right to buy a car or a TV at the price we feel like paying. I will concede there is a shortage of labor in this country when the cheap labor lobby concedes there is a shortage of Lear Jets, which I would dearly like to own.

Who’s fighting the cheap labor lobby? For one thing, the 235,000 members of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.-USA and the American Engineering Association. Last summer they chastised Congress for facilitating the cheap labor lobby when there were so many unemployed American engineers with training in high-demand skills such as C++ and Java. According to the IEEE-USA, the unemployment rate for electrical and electronics engineers was up to 4.8 percent by last summer, compared to 4.1 percent for the first quarter of the year. In addition, the jobless rate for computer scientists was 5.3 percent, up from 4.8 percent in the first quarter. Among older engineers, who can easily be scrapped for new foreign workers, the rates are much worse.

At the time, LeEarl Bryant, president of the IEEE-USA, told the Boston Globe:

"It is time for Congress to take a closer look at the problem of engineering unemployment and eliminate the government subsidies and incentives that encourage corporate management to treat US engineers as a disposable labor commodity rather than an essential investment in our nation's future.”

It is not simply laid off workers who see the problem. Norman Matloff, a computer science professor at the University of California at Davis, has studied hiring at high-tech firms. Using hard data, he has concluded that companies overwhelmingly hire cheap foreign labor over American engineers applying for the same jobs. He debunked the myth of a “desperate software labor shortage” when he appeared before Congress several years ago.

One of the cheap labor lobbyist’s most devious tactics is supporting immigrants rights groups. This is a practice favored by Bill Gates, who contributes large amounts to “open borders” and immigrants rights groups.

One irony is that many of the immigrants who are harmful additions to the American economy would actually be beneficial back home, where the level of economic development is much lower. The Indian government isn’t that happy about seeing its best and brightest end up in Silicon Valley. We should sympathize entirely with their desire to have them back home where they can do some good.

But in Iowa last year, that state’s residents risked the retribution of the left by speaking out against a plan by Gov. Tom Vilsack, a Democrat and cheap-labor lobbyist. His “New Iowans” proposal to bring immigrants there to fill jobs caused a swift and strong backlash, with many Iowans complaining that immigrants would take their jobs and drive wages down. Indeed, liberals and the cheap-labor lobby quickly attacked, citing Iowa’s overwhelmingly white population and accusing its citizens of racism and fear-mongering. However, once his constituents voiced their opposition, Vilsack quietly reversed his position on mass immigration to the state, emphasizing instead the part of the plan that encourages former Iowa residents to return to the state.

Ironically, cheap labor will ultimately be the undoing of American unions, one of cheap labor’s newest devotees. In the hotel and restaurant industry, a new set of workers has collectively negotiated lower wages and worse working conditions for its rank and file members, an inevitable consequence of a shift in the supply-demand balance with respect to labor that unionization cannot abolish. The same pressure, more or less intense in some industries, in some regions, and at different points in the economic cycle, is inexorably at work against the rest of the labor force.

And that includes you.


Note: My thanks to Diana Hull, of the group Californians for Population Stabilization, which has done extensive research on the detrimental effects of immigration on that state. Also, thanks to David Simcox, chair of the Policy Board of the Center for Immigration Studies, who wrote an excellent article on the subject of labor and the role of unions in The Social Contract.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs
KEYWORDS: chamberofcommerce; cheaplabor; corporatesocialism; engineers; h1b; immigration; jobs; justice; labor; labour; market; money; trade; wages; work
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-80 ... 281 next last
To: Luis Gonzalez

Define Nationalism and indentured servitude.


41 posted on 05/30/2006 3:53:29 PM PDT by Candor7
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 34 | View Replies]

To: BeHoldAPaleHorse
The answers are revealing--once you scrub away the PC language, their definition of "overpopulation" frequently comes down to "there's just too many brown-skinned folks around here for my taste."

So what precisely are you saying...that there are just too damned many well-tanned Surfers Across the USA?

Kimmit, you sound precisely like Karl Rove, attempting to "guilt" a far better man than he, who opposed him on the issue of Border Enforcement and Illegal Aliens,... J.D. Hayworth.

God willing, he will be our next president. And Karl Rove's shadow will never again fall inside the White House lawn....except from outside the security fence, with his face pressed yearningly in the bars.

42 posted on 05/30/2006 3:56:39 PM PDT by Paul Ross (We cannot be for lawful ordinances and for an alien conspiracy at one and the same moment.-Cicero)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies]

To: BeHoldAPaleHorse
Besides, "revolution and reaction" generally refers to the 1848-9 troubles in Europe,

And French Revolution does not? And English Revolutions and countless others?

43 posted on 05/30/2006 3:56:48 PM PDT by A. Pole (GWB believes that "guest worker" program will satisfy economy needs for cheap and plentiful labour.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 23 | View Replies]

To: A. Pole
Who is the Cheap Labor Lobby?

One group:
The fly-by-night roofing contractors using (presumably) illegals
in Mid-Missouri following the hail-storm damage of March.
44 posted on 05/30/2006 3:58:38 PM PDT by VOA
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Candor7

Simple question...define assimilate.

You set it up as a requirement, now define it.


45 posted on 05/30/2006 3:59:03 PM PDT by Luis Gonzalez (Some people see the world as they would want it to be, effective people see the world as it is.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 41 | View Replies]

To: Paul Ross
So what precisely are you saying...that there are just too damned many well-tanned Surfers Across the USA?

No, I'm saying that there are some folks who think there's too many brown-skinned folks around.

Interestingly enough, I didn't throw that stick at you...but you yelped as if you were hit.

46 posted on 05/30/2006 3:59:53 PM PDT by BeHoldAPaleHorse ( ~()):~)>)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 42 | View Replies]

To: narby
Thats right, freedom isn't free or have you noticed?

BTW I immigrated from Canada, where the very model of multiculturalism, now espoused by those in the USA who wish to socially engineer a modern form of slavery ( labor pool)screwed Canada over for 40 years. Thats why I left Canada, it doesn't work. I earned my citizenship in this country, and expect others to do the same, instead of invading it.

Send em ALL back, and damn the modern day southern aristocrat plantation owners who would sell our nations society down the tubes so they can get rich on the sweat of people who are not free men and women, and have no wish to be. They just want the money and are willing to pimp away any chance of freedom for it. Definitely NOT citizen material.

47 posted on 05/30/2006 4:01:11 PM PDT by Candor7
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 33 | View Replies]

To: Luis Gonzalez
How much money is enough money to bus tables or clean bathrooms?

As much as the market would determine if significant immigration from Third World countries did not take place.

I guess $15 per hour, maybe?

48 posted on 05/30/2006 4:01:12 PM PDT by A. Pole (GWB believes that "guest worker" program will satisfy economy needs for cheap and plentiful labour.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 29 | View Replies]

To: A. Pole
And French Revolution does not?

Generally, no.

And English Revolutions and countless others?

Those were matters of which set of elites would be running things--generally, based on religion and not wealth (or lack thereof).

49 posted on 05/30/2006 4:01:49 PM PDT by BeHoldAPaleHorse ( ~()):~)>)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 43 | View Replies]

To: Candor7

Define Assimilation


50 posted on 05/30/2006 4:02:02 PM PDT by Candor7
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 41 | View Replies]

To: A. Pole
I guess $15 per hour, maybe?

At those rates, you would have a choice.

Choice #1: a cheeseburger would cost $10.

Choice #2: you would get the choice of cleaning the restroom before or after you used it.

51 posted on 05/30/2006 4:04:28 PM PDT by BeHoldAPaleHorse ( ~()):~)>)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 48 | View Replies]

To: BeHoldAPaleHorse
"And French Revolution does not?" Generally, no.

A complete nonsense! Using silly phrase:
"revolution and reaction" generally refers to the 1848-9 troubles in Europe
will not erase mountain of historical experience.

The revolutions and reaction took place countless times over centuries of human history.

52 posted on 05/30/2006 4:17:31 PM PDT by A. Pole (GWB believes that "guest worker" program will satisfy economy needs for cheap and plentiful labour.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 49 | View Replies]

To: BeHoldAPaleHorse
I guess $15 per hour, maybe?

At those rates, you would have a choice.

Choice #1: a cheeseburger would cost $10.

How many hamburgers can be served by one person in an hour? According to you only couple.

Read my tagline.

53 posted on 05/30/2006 4:20:20 PM PDT by A. Pole (If the lettuce cutters were paid $10 more per hour, the lettuce head would cost FIVE CENTS more.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 51 | View Replies]

To: narby

When you speak about immigration you use the trick so loved by the left and simply leave out the word illegal. Legal immigrants have always been welcome in this country to one degree or another but allowing open borders with no controls on who enters not only welcomes those who want to work here but those who have other business in mind. Most Americans are concerned by illegal immigration because they recognize the kind of immigrants we're getting with our open borders not only put a strain on our social services which citizens pay for but also recognize the cognitive dissonance of an administration which is waging a war on terror but leaves our Southern border unprotected.

Rush was correct to challenge the E-mailer. Free trade does not imply free movement of peoples else that would have been included in the treaty. Attaching your definition of open borders to free trade agreements such as NAFTA is disingenuous. However, the bill in the Senate could be termed the free movement of labor amendment to NAFTA so I take it you support that bill. Again, I will note that this movement of labor only flows one way since it's not possible for me or you to get a job in Mexico with the possible exception of working directly for an American firm there.

Your point about making the illegal immigrants America loving english speaking conservatives is laughable. Bush has indicated he won't sign the bill making english the official language (which was political pandering at it's worst anyway) and poor immigrants naturally tend towards the party that will give them the most benefits (at the expense of taxpayers). Guess which party that is. There never was a scenario wherein these immigrants will become Republicans.

One final point. The employment rate is not based on the number of people eligible to work, it's based on the number of people in the workforce and those actively pursuing work. Quoting our low unemployment rate as a reason to keep the borders open is a specious argument.


54 posted on 05/30/2006 4:29:53 PM PDT by saganite (Billions and billions and billions-------and that's just the NASA budget!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 30 | View Replies]

To: Candor7
BTW I immigrated from Canada

I understand your position. Dealing with INS is a pain the brookdale. Some of my co-workers are in your situation and it's a pain for them.

damn the modern day southern aristocrat plantation owners

I assume you mean SouthWestern farm owners. Actual southern plantations disappeared a long time ago.

I've met some of the farmers in Yuma AZ that depend on migrant workers. Those farmers are about third generation in that area. What you ask is that they put themselves out of business. Should one of them decide to pay enough wages to attract legal residents, they could never sell for enough to cover costs. Should *all* of them pay such wages, the farming will just be done a few miles south of the border, where there would be no such problem, and they are again out of business. These farmers have been here for generations, and it places them between a rock and a hard place to write laws that will close them down.

Oh, and these farmers. They're latino. They were born here, and speak great english, but they're latino heritage. You would have to force them to stop paying people to do the same jobs that allowed their great grandfathers to immigrate here decades ago.

55 posted on 05/30/2006 4:32:22 PM PDT by narby
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 47 | View Replies]

read later


56 posted on 05/30/2006 4:39:40 PM PDT by rattrap
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: BeHoldAPaleHorse
Interestingly enough, I didn't throw that stick at you...but you yelped as if you were hit.

Nope, but I thought it was really interesting the way you are so busy throwing that stick around at other FReepers...and how similar it is to the same castigation used by the White House cadre against principled defenders of Sovereign Borders and National Security. Very interesting.

How often have we seen it espoused by the liberals, frequently democrat or worse, that constantly accuse Conservative Republicans of being racists. Never mind that the Democrats were the defenders of slavery and Jim Crow right up until the 60's. Or Robert 'KKK' Byrd.

57 posted on 05/30/2006 4:48:06 PM PDT by Paul Ross (We cannot be for lawful ordinances and for an alien conspiracy at one and the same moment.-Cicero)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 46 | View Replies]

To: A. Pole

I used to work for a large Wall Street investment banking firm. When downsizing took place in 2002, there were few American workers left in the IT support group thanks to the H-1B visa program. The majority of workers remaining in IT support are now foreigners on work visas. American workers were forced out in favor of cheap, easy to exploit foreign labor. Of course, a large portion of the savings went towards a huge bonus for the CEO and not back into the company.


58 posted on 05/30/2006 4:50:11 PM PDT by ScottfromNJ
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: BeHoldAPaleHorse
So what precisely are you saying...that there are just too damned many well-tanned Surfers Across the USA?

No, I'm saying that there are some folks who think there's too many brown-skinned folks around.

So your'e saying you're not one of "those folks" but that they exist...somewhere.

Mercy! I sure hope I don't run into any such bigotted anti-surfers!


59 posted on 05/30/2006 4:55:53 PM PDT by Paul Ross (We cannot be for lawful ordinances and for an alien conspiracy at one and the same moment.-Cicero)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 46 | View Replies]

To: Paul Ross
So your'e saying you're not one of "those folks" but that they exist...somewhere.

I've run into them far more than you, as I am one of the brown-skinned folks they think there's too many of.

60 posted on 05/30/2006 5:02:07 PM PDT by BeHoldAPaleHorse ( ~()):~)>)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 59 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-80 ... 281 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson