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To: A. Pole; Puddleglum
If labor is treated as a commodity and trade is free (no tariffs) the comparative advantage principle will lead to the replacement of American educated workers by Indians, Chinese working from their home countries.

A main reason I am so opposed to the temporary visas is because there is no free labor market.

For example, if IT outsourcing is creating a labor demand in India and China, two things should happen as a result - rising salaries in those countries for IT workers and immigration of IT workers from the US to India and China. For a true free market, an IT worker making enough for a certain quality of life here would be willing to move to make a living elsewhere in the world if the labor market was moving there; AND the country would allow his immigration. Neither is really true. In addition, most of these "low wage" countries have tightly controlled economies with subsidized and socialistic protections aimed solely to take advantage and undercut certain industries.

The ONLY choice most IT (experienced) workers have is to retrain in another (non-targeted) profession for the same quality of life, or lower his quality of life to take a job that does not require significant skills/education/training.

I strongly believe the IT imbalance created before the tech bust/recession was based on faulty information and policy.1, 2 I plan on making Sen. Specter pay for being an accomplice, and not being in the forefront of fixing it.

87 posted on 06/25/2003 8:16:02 AM PDT by optimistically_conservative
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To: optimistically_conservative
I plan on making Sen. Specter pay for being an accomplice, and not being in the forefront of fixing it.

Just in case the Secret Service is reading this forum ... I mean that purely in an electoral way.

88 posted on 06/25/2003 8:30:55 AM PDT by optimistically_conservative
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