The Jobs Go Out Like the Tide, Continued
Wednesday, at a meeting with Hispanic activists, President Obama vowed to keep pushing for what he calls "comprehensive immigration reform." The "reform" Obama wants is one that will enable illegal immigrants to become legal residents, and that will place no meaningful obstacle in the way of others who want to join them.
Obama's comments would be bad enough at a time of economic prosperity. They are little short of astonishing now, at a time when millions of American cannot find work. As VDARE.com's Ed Rubenstein has long documented, immigrants are displacing Americans in the workplace and driving down wages. And it turns out that just as the jobs our trade policy creates are largely overseas, the jobs our immigration policy creates are largely among immigrants. The Center for Immigration Studies recently reported that, despite all of Rick Perry's bravado over job creation in Texas, 81% of all jobs created in Texas since 2007 were filled by immigrants, both legal and illegal. A government serious about reducing unemployment would be introducing legislation to curtail immigration, not expand it.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, for all his faults, never suggested in the depths of the Depression that America needed to bring more foreigners into the country, to compete with Americans for the remaining jobs and to drive down the wages for those jobs. If he had, Roosevelt would have faced a firestorm of controversy, because Americans then thought of their country as a real country, where the economic interests of Americans came first. Today, most of our elites have come to think of America as little more than a shopping mall with a flag, and decades of globalist propaganda has convinced millions of Americans that they are right. So, at a time of deep and painful unemployment, both parties continue to pursue immigration and trade policies that destroy American jobs and drive down American wages, with relatively little controversy.
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"...most of our elites have come to think of America as little more than a shopping mall with a flag..."
Not completely true, Mr. Piatak. They consider it a shopping mall with a flag AND a vision statement hung on the wall of the foodcourt. It is a propositional nation afterall!
After I commented about the dispossession of European Christian on another Chronicles essay, I read your's and am reminded that Christian Americans too are facing their dispossession.
I have copied a comment I made in a different thread that is more appropriate here:
Ron Unz, in “Republicans and the End of White America” in the October issue of TAC, proposes setting a high minimum wage ($10-$12 per hour) that would eliminate low paying jobs now filled by immigrants, legal and illegal. This sounds like a tariff on wages, intended to raise the income of the very poor and eliminate jobs of recent and future immigrants, thereby slowing down immigration. Any comments on how this would or wouldn’t work?
It's probably a tangential concern, Mr. Van Sant, but I do recall that some on this website have lamented that children no longer do part time or summer jobs.
A rise in the floor pay would be a tariff on less productive workers, which does include unskilled Third World migrant labourers (making your suggestion perhaps valid), but it also includes the very young. I'd imagine 14-21 year olds may have a hard time getting any part time occupation at $12/hr, because the employer won't get back the money they spend on those kids, right? Don't get me wrong - young folks innately slack at work, and the sting of 12 dollars an hour might eliminate any sentimental weakness their employers have for them.
Again, a tangential concern only and not related to your core point.
Mr. Sanjay, the idea of raising the minimum wage is not mine. I agree with you that it has adverse consequences. I think a better way to eliminate jobs for illegal immigrants is to prosecute businesses that hire them. The jobs will go away and so will the illegals. Businesses will have to raise wages to attract American workers. We may all have to pay higher prices, but it will be worth it. Higher prices to pay for higer wages will be more efficient than higher taxes for government handouts.
Firstly, I have nothing against minimum wage myself.
Secondly, I don't think rise in minimum wages would affect prices. Intuitively, it seems unlikely. Prices are affected by a hundred things, and can't really be pinned down to one thing.
Most of all, it's rather hurtful to hear certain people (I think you know who) say minimum wage causes unemployment. Not necessarilly on moral grounds, but because it's a bad form of debate. What they mean to say is that it causes more people to bid for a vacancy at a given point of time. That is totally not the same thing as unemployment.
Obama's open immigration policy especially is hurting black Americans. Out here in California, blacks are being ethnically cleansed from their long-time homes in San Francisco, Compton and even Watts. For decades, blacks were 7% of Californians. In the 2010 U.S. Census, that dropped to 6 percent.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, claims to represent the poor. But according to one black leader, blacks are leaving her city "in droves." Like Obama and almost all Democrats -- and Republicans -- she really represents not her constituents, but big corporations and the Eastern Elite.
"droves" reference: http://sfbayview.com/2011/black-population-drops-to-3-9-in-san-francisco/
I have no problem with the intent of a higher minimum wage, but how would one be established nation-wide? 12 bucks an hour in Lander, Wyoming is much different than 12 bucks in Secaucus, NJ. This speaks to the intended effects against immigration, which I'm just not sure of.
And raising the minimum wage would have some effect on some prices, since it would affect all profit margins with low-paid labor immediately. I think people also argue against raising the minimum wage via rising unemployment because it would decrease the number of jobs, not just increase the interested labor pool. This is to some extent a valid, short term argument. It's feasible such a move would further hurt manufacturing in our country.
It's an interesting topic. I know some places have enacted local "living wages" based on what it costs to live there, e.g., I think Boulder, CO had one. From rumor and chatter, I've heard they were working well, but I have not read much about it.
An excellent article and thoughtful discussion. Steve Sailer discusses Unz on VDARE, voicing principles that I find convincing.
http://www.vdare.com/articles/sailer-on-unz-immigration-the-minimum-wage-and-the-rule-of-law
As a statement of national intent, raising the minimum wage to lower the profit from unskilled immigrants would send a message countering the Davos class propaganda that the MSM has so faithfully transmitted for the last few decades: "Low wages are good for The Economy." Superstitiously reifying "The Economy" as something that must be appeased by sacrificing American citizens' welfare is now taken as the height of intellectual sophistication ("I got an A- in Econ 101!"). Actually it’s the depths of naiveté. The simple reality is that poor-paying employers, such as, say, lemon growers, profit by passing on the costs imposed by their immigrant workers to schools, emergency rooms, jails, and so forth: in other words, to you and me.
Professor Kopff, thank you for the link to Steve Sailer's VDARE piece. That's the kind of information I was looking for when I asked for comments on Ron Unz's TAC article.
Mr. Sanjay, you may be correct that higer wages may not lead to higher prices, but I think for labor intensive work (i.e., where the major cost of production is the cost of labor) an increase in the minimum wage would lead to higher prices, unless the wage increase was offset by higher productivity. (Steve Sailer alludes to that when he mentions substituting lighter aluminum ladders for heavy wooden ladders, which increased the productivity of the fruit pickers.) I imagine that most of the people who would benefit from a higher minimum wage are engaged in labor intensive work.
Mr. McCabe, for federal employees the government has established "locality" pay, which supplement's an employee's base pay. The same technique could be applied to a federal minimum wage, which would account for variations in the cost of living across the country.
Frankly, I do believe that extremely flexible pay is a good idea.
Look at the Poltermodel in Netherlands or the post-1937 Corporativist model in Sweden. Wages and salaries are reduced very quickly and raised very quickly according to the needs of the time, without third-party government legislation since there are already recognized bargaining institutions. Who can say this is a bad idea? Who can say labour and line staff are mistreated in Netherlands or Sweden?
It's not a matter of low or high pay for work, but how easily they can be changed.
Hong Kong doesn't have a monetary policy, and it just pegs the Hong Kong dollar to the American one at 7.5 HKD/$. Result? Low inflation and low unemployment. Why? There is no uncertainty about inflation, unlike the situation created by the Federal Reserve or the Bank of England in the past in the UK or US. This way, people across the entire organization don't resist paycuts or raises due to inflation/recession fears. 20-25% cuts and raises are common in Hong Kong and pay rapidly fluctuates in both ways. This way, recession doesn't result in permanent mass unemployment, but temporary wage adjustments.
An increase in the minimum wage would make black unemployment even worse than it already is. Back in 1977, Walter Williams wrote pioneering research on how black unemployment levels actually were lower than white levels before minimum wage laws, then rose to be much higher.
A recent interview with him:
http://conhomeusa.typepad.com/bigideas/2011/06/walter-williams-race-economics.html
I continue to be amazed at the idea that placing tariffs will solve the problem of American loss of industry and jobs. Tariffs do not and cannot create prosperity. What we have now is not free trade and merely placing tariffs cannot be the remedy. Such a position vastly under-estimates the power and agility of the great concentrations of capital that characterise the American economy more than any other. When tariffs were a boon to Northeastern capital and a burden on everyone else (guaranteeing capital a seller's market and causing higher prices for everyone else) we had tariffs. Now that "free trade" (which is not free trade in the classic sense at all but arbitrage of capital and labour) is profitable to great capital and a burden to everyone else, we have "free trade." The fundamental question is not trade policy, something that can be perpetually adjustable, but who has the power. Wall Street would very quickly adapt any tariff policy to its advantage. As long as Wall Street can buy any politician and scare the masses by manipulation of the economy, there can be no solution. It has already been demonstrated that most of the jobs created by the "stimulus" went to imported foreigners.
To have an economic policy in favour of Americans, we must first have a country controlled by Americans. The way that both parties and nearly all the public, without a murmur, gave billions to bail out the bankers and speculators who had caused the panic, tells us that Americans are no longer a people capable of understanding and enacting what is in their interest. Enacting tariffs would inevitably become a log-rolling conspiracy just as corrupt as every other measure passed by the best Congress money can buy.
There goes Professor Wilson throwing a wet blanket on all of our utopian schemes. Americans will never control America. There are too few of us left and we're disappearing fast. It's back to prayer and fasting. Only divine intervention can save us.
The rich will always have power over the poor. The whole point, Mr. Van Sant, is to ruin the current plutocratic apparatus and replace it with a less deracinated and revilesome one.
But Dr. Wilson, in the present global economic circumstances, a president who would adopt a fiscal and monetary policy built around self-preservation would quite possibly make use of tariffs to do so and just this thumbing of the nose of people who have screamed "FREE TRADE" for decades would, I think, represent a rather satisfying blow.
Speaking of the pre-1970's, though, not that there weren't PLENTY of crooks, but at least the living standards of the working- and lower middle classes didn't rresemble true pauperism. Today that is not the case. I would submit that fir whatever reason, in the age of tariffs, the interests of Wall Streer were at least MORE aligned with the interests of everyone else than they are today.
(Think about it: in the mid-century, the industrial giants actually produced and sold things to make their fortune, even if the initial outlay they had acquired by mob activity. Today the most profitable long-haul money-making schemes are an indirect form of inflation-inducing: asset and instrument speculation--in a word, coin clipping.)
Dr Wilson is correct about the large concentrations of capital. It is the height of absurdity for free marketeers to condone the bail outs (socialism for concentrated capital and free markets for everyone else) while asking those who put up the money to make more sacrifices. Too big to fail and too small to matter, is the mantra of the GOP. The Democrats are of course similar but instead of huge concentrations of global corporations calling the shots, they prefer huge concentrations of "government" calling the shots. It is similar to the suggestion of pouring gasoline on a house fire: so long as the small owner of property is reduced to servitude, it doesn't matter who he calls master of his ashes.
I’m wondering; since some of the people writing here can’t do so without hurling invective and insult, direct or implied, should I respond in kind. If I suggest that Mr. Jacobi is cognitively challenged, will that advance the discussion? From my “aseptic cocoon” I can read, think, and study. Go read Adam Smith, particularly on comparative advantage. Better yet, re-read my comment on the attorney. The “we” are employers. Do you have to be Leibniz to be smart enough to figure that out? I suppose you’d pay a secretary and a Para-legal $100,000 a year each because they’re such fine Americans. Do you run a business, or are you like Obama, without even a clue of how this all works, but full of smug, ignorant comments to make to those who do. You probably think that throwing baseballs through bay windows is a good thing because it provides work for the glass replacement business, and crime is good because it keeps policeman employed. Maybe we should bulldoze homes every few years so contractors will have work building new ones. All three of these devices will increase employment. Just think how many more policeman we would need to employ if we could triple crime. If we could get every schoolboy to hit a baseball through a neighbor’s window we could give the glass repair company more work than it could handle. It, too, would have to hire tens of thousands more workers. And just imagine our lucky builder. Do any of you laughing at me believe any of those three strategies to be worthy of consideration in solving our current crisis? If not, explain to me why. Each one would ABSOLUTELY create jobs. Since you believe laws and taxes can create jobs, let’s pass a law raising the minimum wage to $20 per hour and require all unemployed persons who can document that they are actively seeking work to be compensated equivalently. Then the crisis would be over. We can just set our tariffs high enough to raise the necessary revenue and it won’t cost Americans anything. That would solve the problem of illegal aliens, too, since Americans would now have the jobs and money they needed and the landscaping and fruit-picking would just provide us with cheaper labor than we’d have to pay citizens, who’d all have high-paying jobs, or high-paying job searches. Now that I look at it your way, and ignore “theory,” relying on action, I see what a fool I was. I’m so sorry. It’s all so easy and I’m so stupid. Well we’ve finally settled that. And you are making it difficult because you find no need to discuss. I am “morally worth” $5,000,000. Suppose you do the right thing and give it to me. Or are you one of those greedy, immoral Americans who just cares about himself, and not me.
Mr. Schulz; please capitalize Bengali. I so tire of people who think electronic communication permits illiteracy. And last time I looked, there was no law prohibiting Americans from buying American; or do you believe the Federal Government should be permitted to tell us from whom, and what, we are allowed to buy, and what wages and prices will be?
Mr. Van Sant, since you respond to me seriously and courteously, I shall engage your questions likewise. Few of us are inventors. Those who do invent (or are entrepreneurs-I include them in the same overall class) create work for the rest of us who are not. They do create jobs, and lots of them, as 80% of us are employed. I trust you also realize that many more of us would be employed were it not for the actions, regulations, and laws passed by the Obama administration, and prior administrations and Congresses. Those actions, along with a terribly misguided war (that ignores the wisdom of our founders and the spirit of our Constitution) of unimaginable cost, not cheap products from China and Mexico, are responsible for our current crisis. There is a case, and a good one, to be made for subsidizing some manufacturing. We need to be able to produce weapons for our defense without relying on foreign suppliers and manufacturing. The most efficient way to do that is not by employing tariffs, though.
Not all jobs, in fact, not most jobs, require advanced degrees, or even degrees. That is another topic. The cult of “education” must collapse. It will not be able to support itself forever. People will eventually discover the bill of goods they’ve been sold. That said, when the steel industry collapsed in Pittsburgh, few people were told, because it wasn’t considered newsworthy, that 21% of the residents of Allegheny County were functionally illiterate, the highest rate in the nation, and were, as a result, unable to find jobs. They joined the permanently unemployed. Most were also “too proud” to acquire the education they had ignored so as to be able to take jobs for less than the $40-50,000 per year, plus benefits (40% more) they were being paid 30 YEARS ago. And their employers did ask them to take a pay cut, and they refused. Now their jobs are in Japan.
And this remark is not directed to you, Mr. Van Sant, will whoever laughed at me for my claims above about pay-cuts remind me again that I don’t know what I’m talking about? And also remind me that airline pilots were not offered a pay cut in place of layoffs, and… autoworkers haven’t been offered, and accepted pay cuts, and… but I’m so stupid, as we’ve already made clear.
Back to you, Mr. Van Sant. Most manufacturing jobs were lost because the workers priced themselves out of work. Their employers grew tired of their ever increasing demands (without corresponding increases in productivity) and endless negotiations and decided to make money some other way. Just as teachers in Pittsburgh make $65-85,000 per 1080 hour year for failing to teach, and bus drivers here can make $100,000 without showing up on time, or even at all, with pensions and legacy costs that are among the highest in the nation. The system has been contracting for years now and will probably collapse completely in just a few more. But then that, too, is probably the result of being forced to compete with Chinese and Mexican labor. (Again, that remark is not directed to you, I just couldn’t resist throwing it in for some of the others here who don’t feel any need to take me seriously.) The average American worker who is not unemployed because of the Obama gang and all the Congresses of my lifetime, and before, is so because he is an ignorant, uneducated idiot who thinks he is worth a King’s ransom because he is an American, and therefore the greatest person in the world. And no, I have little sympathy for those who have cast themselves into the deep because they want, want, want, and refuse to learn, or to pay attention to those who warn them and try to educate them. Not only are a fool and his money soon parted, so is a fool and his job. The fact is that if Americans were willing to work for reasonable wages, instead of their inflated opinion of what they are worth, we would still have a manufacturing base. Capital investment allowed us to be much more productive than foreign competition in spite of their lower labor costs, but when an employee is demanding to be paid $100,000 a year for unskilled labor (jobs anyone can do), his job is not long for this world. Now other countries have been able to make extensive capital investment, making them more productive.
I am not suggesting that all jobs should be knowledge jobs, or that we should be social Darwinists and try to rid ourselves of those with less education. When you have worked in education, as I have in both high school and adult education, you discover quickly how few people possess even basic knowledge, or the desire to acquire it, how proud they are of their ignorance, and how unwilling they are to make any effort to change that. They think it unreasonable and un-American that they should have to possess any skill, ability, or knowledge to get along in this world. They are owed because of the country of their birth. So to answer your question; Americans must be educated at least to realize that they cannot demand to be paid more than the value of what they produce. Although I don’t know, I strongly suspect that we would not have lost manufacturing if workers had been willing to work for the average prevailing wage for unskilled or semi-skilled labor at the time, instead of twice or three times that. I may not have been clear. If we want high paying jobs, in the sense of much better than average wages, we need to produce something of greater than average value, such as programming, or chemical and biological research, engineering, product development, and the like. Those of us who just do an honest day’s work must content ourselves with an honest day’s pay. Then, if we’d stop voting for the nanny state, and trying to steal at the ballot box what we don’t care to work for ourselves, we’d end up employed, and at a favorable standard of living, just not a luxurious one.
I also believe you to be mistaken about foreigners working for lower wages. I am only able to provide anecdotal evidence, but I work with foreigners helping them to improve their English language skills. I work with Asians and Europeans (no Hispanics at the moment). In every case they are employed here at the same, or greater wage than their American colleagues. They are employed because of their knowledge/skill-set, not because they work for lower wages. I don’t have data about foreign programmers and scientists, but I would suggest an argument. If, as I just noted, some are paid just as well as Americans, why wouldn’t other foreign workers withhold their services unless they were paid as well? They can easily find out, just as I have, that others from their respective countries are earning equal wages. If there are Americans able to do those jobs, companies would just hire them instead, and not make the considerable effort require to get exceptions to immigration quotas.
Mr. McCabe, I also take you seriously. Thank you for asking questions and challenging me, not just making glib statements and ignorant comments. You are correct in saying I do not acknowledge putting a tariff in place to level the playing field. I have tried to make clear that tariffs do not do so. They change inputs, yes. They create more favorable conditions for some, yes. They simultaneously create unfavorable conditions for others. The resulting playing field is not level; it just has a different tilt, or warp. Some will be better off; many more than some will be worse off. Free trade does not seek to even out a playing field. It seeks to make us all better off by letting each of us, in whatever country we happen to live, produce what we are able to do best, compared to everyone else, and trade with whomever is willing to buy from us at the price we ask. You say, if I understand you, that we are not paying less for what we buy from overseas, but that we pay as much and increased profits go to investors. I’m not inclined to believe that, but I don’t have any data to refute it. If you have documentation, I’d appreciate knowing about it.
I think I have to admit that much of what I am saying can be described as “theoretical” in the sense you mean; I am thinking through how things work in order to describe the process. I was being stubborn about that because a person can find actual cases where what I describe in theory is what actually happened (happens) in practice.
What determines prevailing wage is too complex to describe briefly, but people in Taiwan do not have more influence on it than people in Louisiana.
Mr. Reavis, thank you. I sincerely appreciate your kind remarks, and the fact that you, like Mr. McCabe and Mr. Van Sant, have taken me seriously and engaged me respectfully. You need not worry that I will “end up like them.” I do have better sense than that. What I am equally concerned about is our enacting bad laws based on well-intentioned feelings. Liberals have been doing that for years with disastrous results. One is not immune to that just because one is a Conservative.
As I had already composed this before reading Prof. Wilson's comment, I have just posted it as is, but I am greatful for his comment.
Mr. Hyams,
Please keep posting your fine comments. I enjoy reading them as I am sure other lurkers do as well. Reductionists are everywhere these days, poets are in season and all lovers are for sale or rent. The Chronicles crowd seems like a motley crew and rowdy bunch compared to their lifeless counterparts droning on about jobs,the political duopoly and globaloney. Yet, it is actually closer to a mirage of colored leaves who spent their youthful vigor dressed in hopeful green,serving stock they inherited for only a very brief life. Towards the end, it is better to admire their collective splendor than number their individual shapes. For folks like us, it is about the only beautiful thing left in the world of culture and journalism.
Mr. Hyams, you wrote: "And last time I looked, there was no law prohibiting Americans from buying American;"
And the discussion ends there.
I think that the one blind spot often missed by so many of us is that there is the bottom-up side too. In people's otherwise justified anger at the elite, sometimes the elite is blamed for everything under the sun. What about the masses?
Why is everything bad deemed to be a top down, elitist imposition from a small cabal of powerful people? Why is everything good allegedly only from the masses and the grassroots?
If there was a categorical imperative for all ordinary Americans to support American jobs for American people and American goods for American people, why hasn't there been a mass consciousness among 300 million people to only buy and support American? Why aren't all the 300 million Americans doing what is expected of them from this publication?
The truth is that the only true form of domestical industrial protectionism is to put a brain chip implant in the brains of hundreds of millions of people, and create a single remote switch with a button that says, "Buy American". It won't work otherwise.
Because protectionists and economic nationalists are truly about attempting to change human nature.
"Why aren’t all the 300 million Americans doing what is expected of them?"
Mr. Sanjay,
It seems to me most of them are doing what is expected of them -- transitioning to a multi-cultural, global, economic, borderless, polyglot,boarding house devoid of any cultural or ethical tradition. Isn't this what libertarians believe is consistent with human nature and the expansion of individual freedom to the ends of the earth?
Mr. Reavis,
Thank you, thank you. Your post was beautiful. It meant so much to me to read it. And I agree. Most Americans are transitioning. I believe it is possible to trade with Asians and Mexicans without abandoning our own culture and traditions. I do so regularly. Think of the Amish, who live among us without abandoning their beliefs and traditions. Don't most of us find them amusing? We, most of us, having no true education, cannont understand those with a living tradition that defines them and makes them human beings, not consumers. Most Americans are what they drive, wear, eat, and watch. Take that away from them and they are nothing more than a mass of cells. And that is precisely what is wrong with Libertarianism and why I abandoned it when I was an undergrad.
They certainly aren't doing what protectionists expect of them. And that's what makes protectionism so paternalistic. Because it involves disciplining and changing people's behaviour. As if they are children.
Disregarding the whole debate as to whether tariffs are a good thing in the long run, and they may well be the right thing - why are anti-trade views held up as a pro-masses, anti-elitist perspective?
Without trying to score any points, it really does seem like it is a way of saying, "These people need to learn what is good for them." That by itself may not be a bad thing.
But only the protectionist Ian Fletcher goes straight ahead and says, "People do not know what is good for themselves." The rest seem reluctant to say so. Why this pretense of a mass movement here? The mass behaviour goes in the opposite direction.
Mr. Hyams seems not to have noticed that my post was about immigration, not free trade. No matter, libertarians favor both, for the same reason: they do not believe that something as trivial as the nation should have any impact at all in economic matters. In their view, we aren't a country, where countrymen have claims on each other, but an aggregate of consumers, or, as I put it in my post, "a shopping mall with a flag."
Mr. Hyams returns to the libertarians' favorite villain, the overpaid American. If only Americans weren't so greedy and were willing to work for the going wage in China (where the average hourly labor cost was $1.36 per hour in 2008), we wouldn't see jobs going overseas. In actuality, Americans aren't all that well paid. As Paul Craig Roberts pointed out in a recent column, America has the 14th highest wages in the developed world. Most of the countries ahead of us, though, have a border adjusted VATT, which functions like a tariff.
Mr. Hyams needn't worry too much about overpaid Americans. Thanks to free trade and mass immigration, American wages are falling. I submit Mr. Hyams' post as Exhbit A to Prof. Wilson as further proof of why economic nationalism is a vital component of a healthy American patriotism.
I must comment, though, on one of Mr. Hyams' more humorous points: "And last time I looked, there was no law prohibiting Americans from buying American." No, there is no law, but thanks to free trade, it is impossible to buy American in any number of areas, because the industries that produce those goods no longer exist in America.
Under the tariff, we had a prosperous, self-contained economy, under which fathers were able to support their families, families were able to live in stable communities, economic ties bound Americans more closely to each other, and America was largely economically independent from the rest of the world. Unfortunately, with the Kennedy Round of GATT in the 1960s, we began to abandon the tariff for "globalization," based in part on the belief that we were so prosperous that we didn't have to worry about foreign competition. Britain before us entertained similar delusions, only to be surpassed as an industrial power first by protectionist America then by Germany, which wisely followed America's protectionist policy.
Without the tariff, we now see two parents working as the norm, entire communities deveatated by the loss of the manufacturing jobs that used to sustain them, and America increasingly dependent on foreigners, both because of the goods we now need to import and because of the debt those foreigners owe. Without a tariff or its equivalent, we will continue to see massive outsourcing, as service jobs now done by Americans will begin to be done by foreigners, as is already happening to some computer programming, accounting, and engineering jobs. Indeed, as Paul Craig Roberts has patiently documented by his study of monthly employment figures, America does not create any jobs in sectors of the economy subject to international trade.
I am sorry, but I simply have no patience for those regurgitating the ideology that has so devasated my country. If I want to see the fruits of free trade, all I need to do is open my eyes and look around. I wish more Americans would do likewise, and ignore what the media and the academy keep telling them about how wonderful globalization is.
Mr. Hyams, per your request:
Enjoy this link.(my apologies to the editors)
Changes in income disparity can be seen in this graph that very closely correspond to the following underlying phenomena that contributed to many problems in our country, only one of which is greater income disparity/consolidation. These changes were that in 1979, America was the largest lender nation in the world. We had the productive means (built during the time period shown before, where income disparity was relatively stable and less wide) to produce a surplus that could be lent out to turn risk into returns. This surplus, risk and return was the combined result of distributed means of production across a relatively prosperous people, where any average guy who would show up on time and work hard could probably also earn enough to support a family and live mixed in with a neighborhood of people sort of like him.
We are now the biggest debtor nation in the world. What happened roughly in between was that the financial sector of our country started to become a bigger slice of our GDP while influencing more and more aspects of law. Their risk became underwritten by bailouts using our money, small at first, then much bigger. They paid for loopholes to allow capital to leave the country free of charge. They paid huge sums of money to purchase family companies (it's easier to leave cash to kids than to somehow distribute a company to them), and they shifted the means of production overseas while lowering quality and barely lowering price.
A lot of other things happened too in places like personal debt, fixed benefit plans, etc, but you asked for documentation that margins have been increasing as labor costs went down from international labor arbitrage (intentionally gutting our manufacturing base), and I guess drastic income increases to the people who own the companies shows it.
As for a lot of your points, I agree with them. There were many in our country who were getting paid perhaps a little too much for what they were doing, even if we allow a "prevailing" wage to only be set and prevail within our borders. But those corruptions do not explain the whole picture, and in fact, I would bet a sophisticated and thorough analysis would show that they were rather small parts of this larger trend above.
“People do not know what is good for themselves.” The rest seem reluctant to say so.
I would go further and say even when people do know what is good for them, it is most difficult to achieve or sustain. The fallacy of free markets is to reduce markets to one idea -economic freedom and then assert that economic freedoms are the only freedoms at stake in market decisions. But enough of this rehashing old debates. If anyone can get hold of Brent Bozell's essay,Freedom or Virtue, the old debate he had with Frank Meyer in the pages of NR
who invented the fusionist coalition between anarchists and traditionalists,can understand why it is breaking up before our very eyes. The problem is thought to be social when it is theological. There is no reconciling secular economics with the Christian faith anymore than one can concede the rights of individuals as superior to the common good.
Dr. Wilson attributes to economic nationalists “the idea that placing tariffs will solve the problem of American loss of industry and jobs.” He objects, “To have an economic policy in favour of Americans, we must first have a country controlled by Americans,” because “The fundamental question is not trade policy,… but who has the power.” There are economic, political and (as Mr. Reavis points out) theological aspects to our situation, which influence one another mutually. Dr. Wilson’s believes that “Wall Street would very quickly adapt any tariff policy to its advantage,” but tariffs encouraged the growth of a manufacturing sector that (with the agricultural sector) represented a countervailing force against finance capitalism. Manufacturing and farming shrunk under the “free trade” regime that grew strong after the Kennedy Round of GATT and left us with Wall Street’s overweening power.
There is also a question of national culture, the morale of a virtuous people, i.e. virtuous in the republican sense. Julius Evola argued in his pamphlet “Orientations” that a nearly perfect constitution for a corrupt people would not work, while a faulty constitution could work for a healthy one. The political question is how to preserve what we have and advance it in the right direction. It would help to have presidents like Calvin Coolidge or Grover Cleveland, to give both Republicans and Democrats their due. (Dr. Wilson might prefer Andrew Jackson as President and Roger Taney as Secretary of the Treasury.) The tariff regime also worked for those ruled by a Hohenzollern and governed by a Bismarck. It probably did not hurt that Americans inhabited one country and Germans the other. The picture that Mr. Piatak painted of life under the tariff is not only true of the Nineteenth century or the 1920’s. It was still alive and thriving in the 1950’s. That is why I do not accept Mr. Sanjay’s idea that economic nationalism and a national commitment to “Buy American” is against human nature (and so impossible). As the Episcopalian responded to the Free Will Baptist who asked him if he believed in Infant Baptism, “Sir, I not only believe in it; I have seen it.”
I would like to second Dr. Wilson here that tariffs are highly problematic as a tool for prosperity. Mr. Hyams, it is not that what you say has no value, it is more that it reads like "my random thoughts on economy". Mr. Piatak, yes there is the problem of the demise of America that we once knew through outsourcing, wars and illegal immigration, (I love the shopping mall with the flag imagery) but tariffs are not going to resolve this. I am also amused that libertarian economists continue to be denigrated here as wacky and zany fools thus neglecting certain of their useful methods that would help the paleos come up with coherent antidotes.
Tarrifites seem to be under the impression that the United States wallowed in prosperity from the imposition of the protective regime in 1861 until that evil bogey "free trade" came into force in the 20th century. In fact, the tariff regime was marked through the 19th and 20th centuries by periodic depressions, unemployment, and widespread poverty. If the United State had maintained free trade AND a restrictive immigration policy during that same period we would have now a flourishing economy in which AMERICANS enjoyed high wages. The same capitalists who imposed the protective regime also fostered the importation of cheap labour by the millions in order to keep down the wages of Americans. (The same Republicans who enacted the Morrill Tariff in 1861 also passed a Contract Labour law to facilitate bringing in immigrant gangs under controlled conditions. They also imposed a national banking system which carterlised the banking industry and Hamilton's permanent national debt.) Their tariffs and their control of transportation also decimated the family farm, which was the characteristic American way of life before the tarrif regime.
The claim of protectionism as the "American System" was and always has been a fraud. Historically protectionists have always known that they were going for a policy that would make them wealthy. The supposed general benefit was just window-dressing for the suckers. Tariffs can create genuine prosperity no more than government spending can. All they can do is the same thing that other government actions do---shift wealth to favoured interests from less favoured ones. Else no government action would be needed.
In our present situation, it may be that some tariffs would help build some industries, although in our present situation it also unlikely that such industries would do much for AMERICAN workers. I don't want to rain on anyone's parade who is honestly seeking improvement for American working people. However, I believe protectionism is dangerously naive. We would do much better to push for controls on importing people and exporting capital, and prevent selling resources to foreigners---which our Founders would have considered treason.
Pardon me, but I can never remember how to spell that !@#$%^& word
t----f.
"Go read Adam Smith, particularly on comparative advantage. Better yet, re-read my comment on the attorney."
What's the good of reading about 'free trade' when trade is something carried out and lived through not merely read?
You'll forgive my poor understanding I'm sure, but I fail to grasp how the interested, purely mathematical and long antiquated scribblings of an eighteenth-century Scottish lecturer of moral philosophy on British commerce in bushels of corn, livestock and woollen garments with adjacent European nations, written with a view to establishing a "perfect system of liberty" (see, I have read the bugger), a work of tabulated gibberish and dialectical suppositions, limited to the needs and numbers of the mid 1770's, I say I fail to understand how this work or any of the like species can engage we who are afflicted with the evils his theory, and his age, and its exorbitant materialism let loose.
It's a strange thing, inexplicably so, that many moderns - even old men whom the years have given hoary heads and wizened faces - persist in believing the infinity of Progress when this infallible golden age which their forefathers heralded, has witnessed the virtual destruction of all high culture and society, the end of great men and wonderful works, and of all values except the value of nothingness. Whence arose this faith in the phantom of Progress? Not from those who experience life, that's certain enough.
Now, those hasty readers of mine may be thinking, "What in the world has Progress to do with Free Trade? This Australian is surely raving!". Not so sirs, not so. What foundations does the theory of Free Trade pretend to be established and corroborated by? The infinity of growth, the limitlessness of riches and of mechanical ingenuity, the perfect unregulated inerrancy of money transactions and of flawlessly rational consumers co-operating unknown, and almost unseen, with one another to effect an harmonious economy where everyone is, ultimately and proportioned to their honesty, hard work and powers of invention, the gainer and no one loses. The infinity of growth is the monstrous child of the infinity of Progress. There are limits to growth, as there are limits to everything. Since WWII and the 1960's, all 'advances' have been little more than the popular distribution in modified form of earlier creations. What's the i-Phone if not a newfangled walkie-talkie? How substantially does a middle-class home of 1950 differ from today? Where are the lunar colonies and hydrofoil-like hovering motor cars we were promised? I want my lunar colony and I want it now!
And what's this 'pie' I always here about? All we need do, they say, is grow the economic pie and more people will taste of its sustenance. There is no pie! You can't grow an economy for ever, because there aren't the natural resources to sustain a thing of that size and complexity, especially with so many dumb two-legged feeders. In any transaction, someone must lose a little or a lot. Nothing it free, let alone trade. 'Free trade' worked in the 19th century in so far as it promoted the interests of the British Empire and Southern US agricultural exporters. If you haven't noticed, neither of those two phenomena, the empire or Southern agriculture, are alive today.
"I am also amused that libertarian economists continue to be denigrated here as wacky and zany fools thus neglecting certain of their useful methods that would help the paleos come up with coherent antidotes."
Mr. Baily,
Denigration ? No! Limitations ? Si! Most Chronicle folks I have met understand there are limitations to the concept of freedom. My remarks were actually directed more towards my fellow Catholics who want to bring the money changers back into the Temple and make avarice an eighth sacrament. Years ago the old whore house outside Las Vegas, The Chicken Ranch, was confiscated by the IRS and sold at public auction for failure to pay taxes, years later Enron officials were prosecuted for defrauding laborers of their wages and just recently the Supreme Court decided to hear oral argument in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church v. EEOC, wherein our DOJ has filed a brief in which their stance for freedom goes beyond even what Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the ACLU has suggested in their amicus brief. All could be considered limitations and exercises in freedom. Freedom to marry has a different quantitative aspect for certain Moslems and Latter Day Saints than it does for traditonal Christians.
Truth is almost always proportionate to the good it reflects or in things beautiful radiates a certain but modest splendor. On the lips of certain libertarians, like yourself, freedom is something to be cherished and protected as the only source of love and authentic charity. For others, it is a cold calculating means to commit any or all seven deadly sins in sequence or unison in a secular act of faith and hope that some good will eventually result. I hope this clarification will restore, at least in your eyes, my respect for freedom.
Mr. Piatak, my apologies. I should have stated that my comment was carried over, following Mr. Van Sant, from Dr. Fleming's column. You are correct that I paid no attention to your actual writing about immigration. Nothing I wrote was addressed to that topic. I do wish to say that, although I am not prepared to provide data, that a great many manu. workers were extraordinarily over paid. The effects of overpaying steel workers and autoworkers, just to name two large classes, has effects throughout the economy due to the multitude of industries related to them.
I believe I have commented enough on tariffs and free trade.
Mr. Bailey, I'd appreciate it if you would elaborate. I think nearly all my posts were directed specifically at the tariff and free trade. I don't think they were "random thoughts." I want my posts to be both understandable and to contribute to the discussion. If you would please tell me why you responded to them as you did, it would help in future posts. Thanks.
I don't know how to respond to Mr. Arnold's comment other than to say "Why read anything at all? Why even comment on these sites?"
I do have a question for Dr. Kopff. You dismissed and mocked my "fairy tale" about tariffs. Why do you treat Dr. Wilson's comments with respect. Don't tell me you've exhausted your fund of insults. What can it be?
Sorry Mr. McCabe. I forgot to thank you for the link. I shall study it. And again, thanks for taking me seriously.
I am also amused that libertarian economists continue to be denigrated here as wacky and zany fools
Many of them in fact are.
thus neglecting certain of their useful methods that would help the paleos come up with coherent antidotes.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
On the lips of certain libertarians, like yourself, freedom is something to be cherished and protected as the only source of love and authentic charity.
These people may call themselves libertarians and they may bend over backwards to espouse all the correct positions as would an ideological libertarian, but they are deluded, either regarding what libertarianism is or regarding how far a Christian is permitted to espouse a particular political theory.
It is interesting that "Christian" libertarians are willing to sip the intellectual poison left behind by people who denied the existence of society and a perennial moral order. On occasion the practical positions that disseminate from such anti-governmental theories happen to be useful in our day, when Western governments have abandoned their social and moral obligations and set out destroying Christian society and Christian morality, i.e., it is certainly worth our while to tear down such states and such political constitutions.
On the other hand, a Christian right-winger would be just as foolish trying to co-opt the pagan New Right, whose obsession with society and perennial moral order in humanity cause it to seek a "primitivistic" universal continuity that transcends Christianity (the Christian, of course, knows that no such continuity exists).
Hit "send" too fast.
My point is, I do not think that we as Christians, as conservatives, can possibly be soft enough on libertarian philosophy, especially when we need to set an example for otherwise right-thinking Christians who drool over libertarian thinkers.
can possibly be soft enough
Make that CAN POSSIBLY BE HARD ENOUGH.
Now if you'll all excuse me, I need to go for a CT scan, I think...
The disagreements revealed in our discussion here are due to the nature of the problems we are discussing. In his book, Guide for the Perplexed, E.F. Schumacher discusses the two types of problems that we encounter: convergent and divergent. There is a single solution for a convergent problem. The solution is based on a formula or scientific principle like calculating the escape velocity for a moon shot so you can in turn determine how much thrust you need, etc. We are discussing divergent problems that involve opposing or conflicting values. There is no single solution to a divergent problem. Tradeoffs between or among the conflicting values, say freedom, justice, charity, and compassion, have to be made. Schumacher says we cannot solve divergent problems, we have to transcend them.
I believe it is clear that what we have been doing regarding our economy, immigration, etc. is not working well for most Americans. We need to do something else. My objection to Professor Wilson’s argument is that it appears to leave little or no room for action. Maintaining the status quo is a choice, but not the one most of us would support. So what do we do? Any beneficial solution to our predicament must address multiple problems. I believe it should address the issues that Professor Wilson raises, as well as those of concern to Mr. Piatak (and likely other issues as well). What would that course of action look like?
My only objection to conservative thinkers in the field of economics is they tend to believe all thinking is theirs by right. That economic considerations are both queen and king of all political discussion. Or as the poet put it:
They thought all chopping was theirs of right.
Men of the woods and lumberjacks,
They judged me by their appropriate tool.
Except as a fellow handled an ax
They had no way of knowing a fool."
The claims of the free market are strong: satisfaction of material wants IS a good; the qualities of intiative and self-reliance, an amwareness of personal reponsibility --the sheer pleasure of freedom; these are also goods. Again the poet:
My right might be love but theirs was need.
And where the two exist in twain
Theirs was the better right--agreed."
BUT THEY ARE NOT THE ONLY GOODS NOR EVEN THE GREATEST GOODS.
But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes"
To reduce a culture to ecomomic considerations alone, as has been done to our public politics, is to suggest that men and women should learn to live on bread alone. Other than excluding the Kingdom of Heaven, open to most, rich and poor alike, through only a narrow path, perhaps this is all fine and good. Certainly the atheist would believe it so but for Christians it is apostasy of the worst sort. I hold no animosity towards those who pursue such a path I just wish they would quit pretending to represent that vast "democracy of the dead" who were our Fathers in Faith.
mr. reavis: if, as you claim, conservative thinkers suffer from economic myopia, what if anything cures the abnormality when focusing on other topics?
"what if anything cures the abnormality when focusing on other topics?"
Oh, there are so many ways to recover from addictions I would be afraid to recommend just one but the following steps are said to have helped alot of people who sought recovery and help.
1)admitting that one cannot control one's addiction;
2)recognizing a higher power that can give them strength;
3)examining past errors with the help of a wise friend or companion;
4)making amends for these errors;
5)learning to live a new life with a new code of behavior;
6)helping others who suffer from the same addictions.
For instance neo-cons would first need to admit they were wrong about spreading peace and democracy at the point of armed attack, sell their magazines after admitting they were wrong about absolutely everything -- no $ 20.00 dollar oil, no peace in the Middle East, no weapons of mass destruction, no Iraqi oil paying for the war,... etc.
They would need to return to the faith of their fathers recognizing a higher power than themselves, seek the help and counsel of Pat Buchanan, Tom Fleming, Clyde Wilson and the others they attacked as "unpatriotic folk" for offering more sober opinions, perform community and charitable service at Walter Reed Medical Center for the rest of their lives, and write ocassional articles for better publications from time to time offering their help to others in recovering from pre-emptive war addiction.
I am sure there are other ways or recovery such as confession and penance but the above steps seem to be popular ones in America at the present time and have been shown to work with some success.
neo-cons would... need to return to the faith of their fathers
*looks around*
Umm... are you sure about THAT one, Maître Reavis ?
*ducks*
The rest of your points are right on the money.
Mr. Moses,
Not a few of these bottom feeders are already on board with the current cast of GOP candidates. I wish Tea Party types would quit asking for these candidate's tax returns and medical records, and instead request their proposed cabinet and staff appointments.
Also the neo-cons I was referring to were of the catholic variety who during the run up to the Iraq war all ran over to Rome to lecture the Holy Father on the "new realities of just war theory", (he didn't but it) used their weekly columns in various newspapers and dinky magazines to rev up the war fever at home, and then coveyed up like a bunch of quail over at First Things and said nothing when contrary to their misplaced hopes, the body bags started coming home, the price of oil started rising and instead of promised peace springing up, a nasty little war broke out lasting for over ten years instead of ten months!
I agree with Mr. Piatak's dissatisfaction with the way many view economics as some single value identity trumping a more rich national identity of citizenship. However, I am still not convinced that being more aggressive with a minimum wage would be totally beneficial. (I found VDare's article -- by Sailer, not Rubenstein? -- to be only mildly convincing.)
It would put pressure on whatever remaining manufacturing jobs that are left here by increasing international labor cost disparities that are already huge and hard to deal with.
It would probably mainly affect service-related jobs that couldn't be moved, like working at Starbucks or picking crops in California.
It would send wage shocks on up the wage chain as well, which would probably cause some additional unemployment.
Would it really limit immigration or just end up paying immigrants more for the same work they're already doing?
Perhaps these are short term concerns felt more in a hurting time.
In reference to some comments, I had to hire a couple technical, masters level analysts last year and only had maybe one American in the pile of resumes to interview. This is not a function of affirmative action or working for less. The supply is simply not there. I have also had similar experiences painting houses for 10 bucks an hour. I fear we have an identity crisis that cannot be solved by money.
Mr. Reavis, did not National Review's Bill Buckley, the leading neoconservative and a Roman Catholic, refuse to give support for the Iraq War? He was on the same page as the papacy on the Iraq War, although he had his own reasons - he didn't consider it very pragmatic.
Mr. Hyams says the steel workers were "too proud", and puts it in scare quotes. Were they "too" proud? Or is it just that they dared to be proud at all? I wondered what it is about their pride that offends him, until I read that Mr. Hyams "worked in education" - which explains his estrangement from men who can take pride in what they do.
Did steel workers and millions of other formerly decently paid American workers "ignore" education, or had they received all the education they needed to succeed, in what was, in their youth, a well rounded economy which included jobs for every conceivable aptitude, education level, and proclivity? And, as an aside on the collapse of the steel industry: it was government, during WW 2, that forced the steel companies to recognize the United Steel Workers of America; thus, the power (for some) to make large wage demands was handed to them to support government policy, not in response to their alleged greed.
With apology to Mr. Piatak for straying somewhat from the topic of jobs creation, here are some facts one needs to keep in mind to begin to know where to lay the blame for the rotten deal under which American workers currently toil, as reflected in the chart on income maldistribution in Mr. McCabe's link above:
1.) While wages and salaries are down over 5% as a portion of GDP since the Second World War, corporate profits have gone up as a portion of GDP over the same period; from 1974 to 2009, there was virtually no rise in real wages;
2.) During this period, productivity also grew faster than wages. The U.S. worker is in a virtual tie for sixth place in terms of dollars of GDP produced for each hour of work, ahead of Germany and the UK, and well ahead of Japan. Our "overpaid" people produce at over the twice the rate of the storied drones of Korea. But instead of receiving a just reward for working himself to a frazzle for his owners, the time honored and logical link between productivity growth and wage growth has been severed.
All observers of economies agree that productivity and especially productivity growth are the engine of prosperity. If American hourly wage earners had been getting the same percentage raises as their CEOs between 1980 and now, they'd be making over $200,00 today.
None of this constitutes talking in terms of American exceptionalism, and certainly does not base claims on any feeling of moral superiority. It's all there in hard economic facts.
I see Mr. Jacobi hasn’t learned his lesson. He’s typical of my students. They also find it beneath them to learn from their superiors in knowledge and wisdom. After all, they don’t need to. They’re Americans. We’s the best!
My working in education explains a lot. Of course, I didn’t see the need to reveal that I ran my own business for 18 years, or ran a non-profit for two. Or that I studied economics at the graduate level. Who needs to know anything when making a comment here, I am fast learning. I suppose I should be able to ramble on about anything at all. What does it matter? I take pride in not being either a fool, or an ignoramus, something you’ll have to study for a while to be able to do. I wonder how many unskilled workers you knew who were making $40,000 plus benefits in 1980. Better yet, how many refused to obtain any additional education so that they could find work after their muscle work ended.
Only tortured logic, and I suspect Mr. Jacobi has no facility with logic whatsoever, could conclude that the government mandate to recognize the USW relieves the workers, or the leadership, of any and all responsibility for their negotiations and the consequences.
And if the American steel worker’s wage had kept pace with the CEO’s as a percent increase, he’d be making, oh, what, about $300,000-400,000 today. Sounds reasonable to me. Most attorneys don’t make that much. We all know how little education and skill an attorney needs. Many Wall-Streeters don't make that much, either.
You invoke the usual fallacy (there goes that logic again) of using averages to address specifics; the tactic that enables fools to claim that women only earn 85% of what men do.
When I was growing up my mother told me if I couldn’t say something nice to people, don’t say anything at all. Since that obviously doesn’t prevail here may I suggest that if you can’t say something intelligent, say nothing. As Mark Twain said, “It is better to keep your mouth closed and appear stupid, than to open it and remove the doubt.” I’d bet he’d apply that to writing, too.
I should like to address Mr. Piatak’s issue of immigration. There seems to me to be a great deal of opposition to immigration expressed in the pages of Chronicles, and on this website. In its essence, it expresses a claim that we Americans are a European people who are continually diluting themselves by allowing non-Europeans on our lands. These non-Europeans are corrupting our culture and our economy, and we must put a stop to them. Mr. Piatak has no use for this corruption, or for those, he presumes me to be among them, who justify and support it.
Though I believe I find at least as much wrong with my country as Mr. Piatak does, I do not consider immigration, per se, to be the problem. The United States is, as I hope I do not have to explain to readers of Chronicles, different from all other countries presently existing, or having existed, in being, not a tribe grown large enough to be a nation, but a people united by an idea. We live, not according to the customs of our group, but according to the principles of our Declaration of Independence, and the law of our Constitution. These are great ideas to which people from any tribe or culture may aspire. Those who do so come here longing to be free. As citizens, we ask them to assimilate; that is, demonstrate that they have learned and accepted our laws, and the responsibilities entailed by them, and will live, not according to their old ways, but according to ours. In doing so, they adopt our way of living, our law, as their own. They become Americans, not by sharing blood, but by sharing mind. I hope I don’t need to add that they can do so while retaining the exercise of, and pride in, the traditions of the culture and country of their origin, in the proper sphere.
I do not know the history of immigration in this country, but I shall presume that, given that it is a problem now, and seems not to have been at the turn of the 20th Century, that it is not immigration itself, but its corruption, that is the problem. This is the case with so much, nearly all, of contemporary life. Today millions come here, legally or not, to seek a better standard of living, not freedom. They come, not in search of an ideal, but a meal. We have decided to accept this at the level of official policy. Even when talking of immigration problems, we do so while allowing that coming for a meal is as good a reason as coming for our ideal, and we assume the only problem is the numbers, and the breaking of laws. There is the oft repeated “taking jobs from Americans.” Is this really a problem? How many people who speak, at best, broken English, and possess no skill set except the ability to rake, lift, pick, and mow are really taking jobs from us? Do most unemployed Americans complain that they cannot do landscaping because of all the Mexicans? I haven’t heard any. How many Americans want to pick fruit? There are undoubtedly a great many aliens doing low skilled labor in factories, and lifting and stocking in retail establishments. But here the real problem is the minimum wage pricing Americans with no skills out of the market. The illegals will work for less because they’re outside the law. If minimum wage laws were repealed, that would change. Would you prefer hiring someone who did not speak the language and was alien to you if you could hire a citizen who spoke English for the same wage? Like gun control laws, stupid legislation never has the intended effect. People are always sufficiently enterprising to find alternative means to an end. And as some politico said earlier this year, all building a thirty foot high wall along the border would accomplish would be an increase in the sale of thirty-five foot ladders. We have created incentives to hire illegals instead of Americans and are surprised at the result. If illegal aliens couldn’t find jobs, they wouldn’t risk life, limb, and loss of family to come here. Problem eliminated. Alternative; place a permanent standing army around the perimeter of the country and at all seaports and airports. Is this really what we want? And how will we pay for it and still have good paying jobs for our citizens?
It is these other corruptions that are the source of our problem. Few Americans value their liberty. Most are in favor of the nanny state in most of its manifestations. They vote for it in every election, and vote against candidates who would dismantle it. They are for minimum wage and living wage laws. Wage and price controls sound good to them. They think the government should keep people they don’t approve of from making too much money. They are certain they know what too much money is, and that they don’t make too much. They buy every perversion Hollywood sells them, and with enthusiasm. They use vulgar language, listen to more vulgar “music,” wallow in ugliness, enjoy violence, and worship ignorance. They admire Hugh Hefner. They are consumed by bread and circuses in the form of football and basketball, and admire the unsportsmanlike conduct that is the norm there. They demonstrate their approval by continuing to patronize the spectacle. They may cringe at Robert Mapplethorpe, but love Andy Warhol. They live in a sewer and rebel at the suggestion that they should move. Their ideal is not freedom and excellence, but a high standard of living. They want to consume. They are also sympathetic to others who come here to do so, as long as the newcomers don’t prevent their own consumption. They are ignorant and gullible and easily swayed by pols pandering to them. Legislation, enforcing immigration laws (like enforcing drug laws and gun laws, much easier talked about than done), and other halfway measures are completely misguided. The problem is the corruption of the American soul, the abandonment of the American Ideal and the Constitution. Until we all want that back, or at least enough of us to keep Liberals and Progressives out of power, nothing is going to change.
Mr. Hyams, you appear to believe that America is a “propositional nation.” Since its establishment, Chronicles has been arguing that America is no such thing. You also appear to be confusing “education” with “job training.” Even monkeys can be trained to do a job, but no amount of training will make them “educated.”
Admitting that you do not know the history of immigration, I suggest that you educate yourself. You could start with the immigration act of 1924 and then the immigration act of 1965, which has led to the immigration problems that we have today.
When you say that “it is not immigration itself, but its corruption, that is the problem,” you are on to something. Think of today’s immigration as a cancer. Unfortunately, the cancer is so widespread that it may be untreatable.
Mr. Reavis, did not National Review’s Bill Buckley, the leading neoconservative and a Roman Catholic, refuse to give support for the Iraq War? He was on the same page as the papacy on the Iraq War, although he had his own reasons – he didn’t consider it very pragmatic.
I don't know but I suspect he supported it initially and then backed off the invasion as the idylic predictions turned into realities of a nasty unnecessary war. I never met Mr. Buckley but my impression is that he found little in the papacy to take seriously. He always struck me as more clever than courageous and more of a mother than teacher for the coalition of conservatives he assembled. Taki has spoken well of the man which is enough for me not to despise him and to view his public betrayal of friends and companions as more of a "strictly business" practice rather than a heartfelt heeve-ho of the solely selfish kind. I must say,however, I admire the folks he left behind more than the folks he left in charge.
Mr. Van Sant, you are correct; I've been sloppy in my use of "education." Certainly most jobs can be performed without a true education. What I should have said was that for functionally illiterate people, a basic level of education: reading at the 8th grade level, say, writing, at the same level, and math, probably at an even higher level, is probably necessary for them to find work at a wage that will support a family.
I'd also like to address another point raised by Mr. Piatak. I don't think the two-worker family is the result of job loss and wage decline as much as the necessity of paying ever higher taxes (in all their manifestations) to support an ever expanding government, and the people who live off of it.