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Newsflash: What’s Good for Immigration is Good for America
Across the industrialized world, governments have dreamed up various
schemes for reinvigorating deflated economies, from blood-sucking austerity budgets to paying for scrap metal. Nowhere is the desperation
more evident than in the rightward shift of immigration policy toward a
convulsive xenophobic backlash. Yet the OECD, a think tank that monitors
rich industrialized nations says in its annual immigration outlook report that
part of the solution to the economic crisis is more, not less,
immigration.
Progressive economists agree that immigrants' long-term contributions to economic productivity on balance far outweigh the feared disruptions associated with migration. More importantly, in an interconnected world, the transnational movement of people is simply an inevitability: overall, according to OECD, international immigration has accounted for roughly 40 percent of recent employment growth in OECD countries.
But neither the potential wealth generated by labor migration, nor the fact that we couldn't stop it even if we tried, has deterred xenophobic sentiment in rich countries.
Another study by the Dallas Fed links economic decline to the increasing nastiness of immigration restrictions. As unemployment rose, the U.S. and several European countries toughened their immigration policies under a phalanx of racial anxiety and political desperation. State and federal agencies tightened hiring policies for foreign workers and moved to further criminalize the undocumented; the United Kingdom imposed stricter language tests and higher fines for bosses that hire unauthorized immigrants. Japan offered to buy its no-longer-welcome guestworkers a plane ticket home.
While such policies are an efficient way to split up families and induce misery and unrest, they end up having little bearing on the systemic dynamics of global migration. On that front, it turns out the recession naturally gives people less reason to migrate. The Dallas Fed notes that "rising unemployment rates across many advanced economies have deterred would-be migrants, leading to steep declines in flows along the major global migration corridors." Immigration flows have slowed considerably in the U.S., and dropped steeply in some European countries.
Restrictionist think-tanks proudly chalk this up to tighter immigration enforcement and harsh crackdowns. Though they still can't explain why about 11 million undocumented immigrants are so reluctant to budge.
Well, we all know it's because they're gleefully stealing American jobs, right? The UFW recently tested that thesis with a clever campaign to recruit "real" Americans to try their hand at backbreaking farm work. So far, not too many takers. For now, says David Scott Fitzgerald of U.C.-San Diego's Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, we can assume that "unauthorized immigrant labor is generally complementary to native-born labor. Unemployed auto workers in Michigan are not migrating to California to pick fruit."
Moreover, the Dallas Fed cautions that hardline anti-immigration policies could breed political inertia that ultimately impedes recovery:
In fact, the immigration backlash could have its greatest effect after the recession ends, when a growing demand for labor could run headlong into labor market restrictions that remain in place. These could impede countries' ability to recruit workers in sectors vital to their recovery and long-run economic growth.
So what if the government treated immigration not as a liability, but a tool in its macroeconomic arsenal?
To Bill Watkins at New Geography, immigration as economic stimulus is a shovel-ready project:
The initial benefits of a new wave of immigration would be seen remarkably quickly. Housing demand would increase, leading to renewed vigor in our real estate markets and the construction industry. Our inner cities would be renewed, as they always have been by immigration waves. New business formations would soar. The tax base would increase, helping to fund debt repayment and baby-boomer retirements.
By contrast, the myopic and politicized immigration barriers promoted by the right may accelerate the downward spiral of exploitation across the entire labor force. Incidentally, that works against the interests of both restrictionists and immigrant rights advocates.
The research of Heidi Shierholz at the Economic Policy Institute confirms that immigration itself is the wrong punching bag for disenchanted native-born workers, pointing out that any negative impacts of unauthorized immigration tend to hit not native-born workers, but rather, other immigrants who came before them.
Americans are right to worry about the declining quality of jobs over the last few decades, but for native workers, immigration has had very little to do with it. Other factors--like declining unionization, the erosion of the real value of the minimum wage, and unbalanced foreign trade--are the real culprits behind broad-based erosion of wages and job quality. Nevertheless, immigration could have a much more beneficial impact on the U.S. economy--and its impact on foreign-born workers already here could be mitigated--with a comprehensive overhaul.
How to make sure immigration fills gaps in the labor market without exacerbating inequality? The OECD recommends full integration of migrants into the workforce, including "lowering barriers - such as limits on dual nationality and extremely restrictive eligibility criteria" and encouraging naturalization. An analysis by UCLA's Dr. Raúl Hinojosa-Ojeda found that common-sense immigration reform could "raise the floor" for the whole workforce, provided that it is supported with rigorous labor standards and protections for all.
But who has time for common sense when folks are busy blacklisting illegals and locking up hardworking people for not having the right papers? For a nation wracked by chronic unemployment, ignorance, it seems, has become a full-time job.
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105 Comments so far
Show AllHere's another newsflash: this argument is poor. Look at your studies--the Dallas Fed? No, they're going to take a pro-labor approach, for sure.
Not that we're going to have a sober discussion about the zero sum nature of oversaturating a nation's economy with surplus labor and the effects of that oversaturation anytime soon.
I can say that every piece like this makes corporations in general and agribusiness specifically very, very happy.
Your behavior is continually shameful when it comes not only to how you treat people, but how badly and viscously you pervert what they say so you can set up yet another one of your exhausting speeches to demonstrate that you have, in fact, read a book or two. If you want to discuss the position, then do that. But your level of immaturity precludes that. There's no way you could know my "position" or politics because you never ask and obviously you don't read posts with any care, you just guess incorrectly and begin ranting.
I don't mind people disagreeing with me. In this very thread up a ways I have that disagreement with a grownup, which you clearly didn't bother to read or understand. I do mind someone who's idea of debate, discussion, and agitation is to constantly stereotype others to fit their simplistic and unformed caricature of political understanding and then "go all adolescent" on them.
Showing "solidarity"? I seriously doubt you know the meaning of the word. Every one of your assertions in this dreadful tantrum are incorrect and willfully so.
Drone, the sad thing is ardent is in his late 50s, I think around 57 or 58.
The behavior he displays here is symptomatic with substance abuse. He makes it very obvious that he is not happy with anything or anyone and uses vitriol and ad hominem attacks to express his rage and frustration. If you'll notice it seems to ratchet up as the evening progresses; probably indicative of increased consumption of drugs or alcohol while posting.
I've seen this very same behavior, usually on less formal forums/websites. I don't know why he hasn't been banned. I have to give it to CD for allowing free speech, no matter how distasteful.
I would've pegged him for another college hothead who took a couple of courses and is now convinced they know everything and that everyone around them is stupid. By and large he probably gets away with it because he's largely a "party line" lefty. Also, we're not overrun yet by poster "flaggers" so he's probably not reported very often, but we do have a few and that number will pick up as November approaches (every 2 years like clockwork, baby!)
As for our dear site's tolerance of free speech, it's the one topic that is both utterly verboten and debatable.
It'd be great to have an "ignore" function on the comment platform like so many other places do. Too easy to kill or derail a thread as things are.
We will never have anything to say to each other for any reason whatsoever. You see what you want to see, read what you want to read. There is simply no point in wasting the time to lay out a position that, frankly, you can't understand. Declare victory and go fuck up another thread somewhere else. What you've done to this one is impressive.
I want nothing to do with you.
For those suffering from schizophrenia, rule number 1: when cornered by one or more rational thinking brains, cut and paste baby, just cut and paste.
I guess you should add "paranoia" to the list.
Ardent, recovery starts with these simple words: "Hello, my name is ardent and I am an......."
I agree that using traditional economic-growth models, massive immigration as a whole is likely to benefit consumption-intensive economies like the United States' more than it harms them. Cheap labor and more young workers to support a generation of retirees, etc.
Unfortunately, a major trade-off is the environmental impacts. More people = more people consuming beef, commuting 40 miles daily, running air conditioners, building homes in the suburbs, diverting rivers for clean water supplies, buying plastic crap from WalMart, and carting home a couple dozen plastic bags each week from their local grocery store (most of which are immediately tossed into the garbage ...)
Call me crazy, but I posit that 150 million additional people will have a permanent and negative impact on our native species and their habitats, our wild rivers, our use of fertilizers and pesticides and other water pollutants, our consumption of energy (i.e., more greenhouse gas production), the magnitude of our traffic jams, the size of the crowds at our wilderness trailheads and national parks. There are just too many of us already.
If we can have massive immigration and also sustain a stable, non-expanding overall population, I'm all for it. If not, I question what we will gain in the long run.
However those are impacts don't show up in traditional macro-economic models. So I guess we're OK then, eh?
Surprised your comment hasn't got more responses. This is precisely the reason most people I talk to want stricter immigration, not only for illegal but even legal immigration.
It's not the 19th century anymore, were not a few dozen million anymore. Our industrial age is over, our natural resources have peaked, climate change will impact many parts of the US in the next several decades (hottest first 6 months on record for 2010, record heat wave in Moscow). Many people I know thru the generations have educated themselves not only formally but also politically, environmentally and spiritually. I believe they see the proverbial writing and are preparing for changes On the other hand, hordes of migrants from 3rd world countries appear on the horizon and the pro-immigrant types expect us to have to reconcile all of this. They do it with the false promises of "worker unity", appeals to white man's guilt and obligation or lofty economic terms that seem to mention "NAFTA" all too often. Many I think are operatives for pro-immigration groups or neoliberalism.
Consider, much of the pro-immigration rhetoric comes from the Catholic Church, neoliberalism dogma or Hispanics themselves.
IMO, and many others I talk to, the current crush of immigrants will NOT have a positive effect on any issue facing our society. It's the obvious omission the pro-immigration camp evades at every opportunity. When asked, "what does this culture bring to our society?" the usual response is "you're a racist".
Immigrants will most likely get the scraps, even a dying empire is better than from where they came. Eventually, it will become just like the place they left or maybe much worse. In most of my encounters with these new immigrants I don't see anything in their countenance that indicates any kind of hope for our society. They're just a different color of the same problem.
You said it well.
(lots of irrational crap follows in the next 10 posts) (oops, am I a closet racist or are these Hispanic Tea Baggers)
The Pope lives in a palace. He'll take Hispanic money.
Funny how well-educated people tend to drift away from being His subjects.
Heck, it doesn't even have much to do with the Catholic Church's long history of oppression, torture, and child abuse. But, you give them 10% of everything you own, they'll give you eternal life. Now, where are you going to get a better deal than that?! Well, shucks, maybe at WalMart.
*yawn*
Racism masquerading as progressivism.
The people who scream loudest about the evil immigrants are also the people to scream loudest that global warming is a hoax, that creationism is scientific, that they must have a right to drive Ford F150s in their suburbs.
The reality is that there is no evidence to support your assertions.
Reading comprehension must have been a problem for you. My comment acknowledges global warming.
Do you really believe that latino immigrants care about global warming, or anything other than what the Church teaches about creation, or procreation for that matter, and that they are going to drive Priuses?
Like I said, "omission" is the common tactic in the pro-immigration playbook. Unfortunately, you have the problem of convincing intelligent, thinking people.
I will ask you: Where is evidence to support YOUR assertions that this new immigrant class will have a positive effect on society? All I ever hear from you, and them, is it's all about our people and what we deserve; same old same old. Like I said, same problems, different color.
I think the folks here that label you and your ilk as enablers of the status quo are quite accurate.
No wonder the liberal/progressive presence in this country is fading away...we argue amongst ourselves on too many issues!
This article totally contradicts a CD article (July 5, 2006) by Thom Hartmann on this subject.
I agree with the author that probably not too many unemployed auto workers in Michigan tend to move to California to pick fruit. But that's an oversimplification. In my field, unemployed engineers step down to take lab technician jobs. Unemployed technicians step down to take assembly-line positions. Unemployed assembly-line workers step down to take floor-sweeping jobs, etc.
My point is, an inflated labor supply in one area can have a ripple effect in other areas.
"My point is, an inflated labor supply in one area can have a ripple effect in other areas."
Well yes. For example, an overinflated captive labour supply in China, which depresses the price of labour everywhere, while inflating the price of capital.
Probably to the consternation of many here -- with whom I will not argue, if anyone is thinking about picking a bone with me -- I support a liberal immigration policy. I'd rather let immigrants aplenty in and grant them the legal protections they require to organize, than try (and mostly fail) to keep them out, consigning them to the shadows of the secondary labor market and thereby dividing and conquering the proletariat.
(Actually, what I'd really like to witness is ecological socialist revolution across the Global South, thus obviating the need to emigrate en masse, but that's a rather pie-in-the-sky wish.)
But unlike the author of this piece, who writes for outfits bankrolled by the "progressive" multicultural capitalist foundations, I will not pretend that such a liberal immigration policy has no depressive effects on wages and working conditions in certain economic sectors. Unlike the "progressive" academic-media-NGO types, I don't cling to the fantasy that every policy I endorse is magically going to result in politically correct results on every count. But for these types, a comforting and self-serving intellectual dishonesty always prevails.
While I disagree, it's with a high level of respect. This is the dilemma in a nutshell. My feeling is that if you become strong enough to get the policy changed at the level you suggest, you're probably powerful enough to start effecting the trade treaties and other foreign policy ambitions that have created this problem in the first place. Nice post, thanks.
"My feeling is that if you become strong enough to get the policy changed at the level you suggest, you're probably powerful enough to start effecting the trade treaties and other foreign policy ambitions that have created this problem in the first place."
Right you are, and such political power is virtually unimaginable at present, which is why more restrictive immigration policies have such seductive appeal, even to many on the "left" (whatever that means).
Thanks for the kind words btw.
So you want to reward the skulking, theiving, line-jumpnig. Outlaws. We still would have to maintain a 100yr long list from the south for imigration. You still want to reward the illegals??
>^^<
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is associated with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization (WTO), and is headed by Angel Gurría, who formerly held the positions of minister of foreign affairs and minister of finance in Mexico.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Organization_for_Economic_Co-operation_and_Development
In this report, "2010 International Migration Outlook: Migration key to long-term economic growth," OECD summarizes: "International migration has fallen during the economic crisis but as the recovery moves into gear, migrants will be needed to fill labour and skill shortages."
http://www.oecd.org/document/41/0,3343,en_2649_33931_45591593_1_1_1_1,00.html
In another report, "Trade, policy and the economic crisis," OECD summarizes "With economic recovery under way, OECD urges governments to continue to resist protectionism and advises policies that support growth, employment and trade."
http://www.oecd.org/topic/0,3373,en_2649_37431_1_1_1_1_37431,00.html
In other words, the Great Recession is over, and human trafficking, wage slavery and child labor in China are good ... for profits, that is.
If capital and goods are free to move, while labour is not, guess what, wage slavery, child labour, all of it, is inevitable.
Apple is free to have its IPods and IPads made by Chinese workers making a pittance, subject to horrendous work conditions, and having to sign all kinds of draconian contracts. Apple is free to then sell those IPods and IPads in the US at high prices. Apple makes a big profit. Apple's shareholders make a big profit. Apple's top executives get really rich.
Meanwhile, those Chinese workers don't get to move to countries with better pay, better labour laws, so unlike Apple, they have no choice but take what they can get.
Who benefits? Apple, its shareholders, its top executives.
And the Chinese workers don't make enough to buy anything made in America. (Do we make anything anymore? Maybe they can buy some derivatives, I think we still make those, unfortunately...)
Inevitable? Thanks Mao. Or is it Benito? Too bad you weren't around to tell Washington, Lincoln, Gandhi, Roosevelt (both Teddy and Franklin), King, and Chavez (both Cesar and Hugo) about the futility of their struggles.
Can't address my arguments can you?
Again: capital and goods are free to move to seek the best prices. Labour is not. What happens then?
damn it, that's the problem. labor *isn't* mobile and won't be anytime soon. maybe try answering your own question.
we have a complex zero sum environment where winners and losers are both at the same time, and we have an issue in which sides are being forced to be taken between two groups of losers and winners.
for "progressives" (ill-mannered or otherwise) the choices here are difficult IF one insists on using the framework of "racism versus nationalism". that's precisely why this framework is chosen, because it results in crappy positions either way. we have staggering levels of misinformation coming as much from the so-called Left as the Right. It seems that one's position "for or against" depends entirely on one's place in the social universe. If you're one of the people who are having to compete with migrant labor OR feeling the effects of wage push-downs because of their presence, you're not going to be well-disposed to arguments advocating for virtually open labor borders that are not reciprocal with other nation states. This is entierly understandable from their point of view.
On the other hand, you have these right wing dildos who in any other context would love the idea that some prices are marginally cheaper now and wages for lower end workers are in decline or flat. but they don't, obviously. and clearly there is a powerful and enduring racism present from the right in the "immigration" wars. after all, if they gave a shit about workers, they'd be the first in line to start reigning in corporate misbehavior and policy that has led us all to this point (which, incidentally, many of them are coming around to).
So "progressives" see a bunch of rednecks out screaming about invasions of brown people and think, "well, since those guys are against it, I must be for it!". The Right for its part is doing the same thing. And all these camps are slitting their own wrists to spite each other.
Our real choices are, as gluelicker started in another section here, how best to protect workers in general, are they not? Right now, we have one group working hard to protect the migrant working class coming in by permitting the influx to continue and trying to prevent the heavy hand of the state from taking out the nationalism and racism of the Right on those workers. Perfectly good goal. On the other hand, you have "progressives" in the trenches feeling a bit abandoned by those same forces for not giving a shit about *their* ability to make a go of it as they get displaced or have their wages driven down in the race to the plantation economy.
You can reasonably support, as gluelicker mentioned elsewhere, the strategy of legitimizing migrants and immigrants and then organizing them into a labor-positive force, with the implicit assumption that when this is done, a larger worker friendly force is developed and thus the exploitation backfires. Once that's done you can use this new found power to attack the structural reasons why this situation exists. It's not a bad position even though I do not think it is the best one.
For others, you can endure the stench of being associated unfairly with the Right and try to contract the labor pool again so wages can rise as the reserve army of labor shrinks. From there, you reorganize domestic working class members into the engine that makes the structural changes needed to get out of this horrifying neoliberal nightmare.
Both roads lead to the same conclusion, ardent's temper tantrums not withstanding. The ultimate point is the best way to stop global corporate power from implementing and enforcing a virutal global feudalism, which we'd all probably agree is where we want to wind up on this issue (other than the *real* right wing trolls).
I choose my position because I think our odds are slightly better for changing American policy (at the heart of this mess) if we can remove one of the most serious wedges out there preventing some form of class consciousness from developing.
No guarantee either way, obviously, but I do know that the complexity of this issue is not nearly given its proper due in so-called progressive circles who are proving as reactionary to issues of race as the right is.
i've come to the conclusion that you have some form of bipolar disorder. first i'm a right wing hack, a nationalist, then some form of something, now a tortured liberal, and whatever clever epithet emerges into what passes for your brain.
so you have an argument on the table and you can't even understand it, let alone address it, but of course, why let a golden opportunity to mark "enemies" and call names?
dude, get some help.
But before I leave, I want to deal with the one sane and coherent point you stumble on in the end and discuss its complete vacuity.
"Actually Labor is rather mobile and that's what we've been discussing, 'mobile labor'. Jesus! That should be obvious."
No, labor is not remotely mobile. Seeing as you're a simple person, you probably mean mobility as purely physical. Mobility also involves the very thing you're railing about. Laws, the use of force and compulsion, travel budgets, cash, etc. etc. etc. In most places, waltzing in and working is something that cannot be done either safely or legally with the exception of a specially protected, globally traveling professional class. Further, let's just asssume people are universally mobile, to the extent that I am just as free as a Latin or Asian to hop over to their country and work those same jobs for peanuts. Why on earth would I want to? Would you? All mobility gets you ina rigged market is the freedom to choose your plantation. Is this what you're advocating?
By the way, I am no longer going to give you the courtesy of allowing you to self-identify as anything other than a pig. In my view, you're nothing but a corporatist.
Most of us have concluded long ago that he hates U.S. citizens, and has no moral integrity whatsoever. Best to ignore him, like any troll.
Let'em fix China! although the Chinese arent as bad as the Mexicans at demanding that everyone speak Chinese or that signs are in Chinese. They tend to quietly assimilate given the chance.
Chinatowns are a relic of 19th century racism. they wouldn't have to happen today.
Yes we should have a say in who comes here and that they try to fit in. We don't the mess France and the EU contries are having with the Muslims, their fatwas, burning, rioting, burcqa wearing nonsence. Bad as Mexicans.
>^^<
Sure.
So, when you are you going to call for bans on Apple IPhones and Ipads?
"Yes we should have a say in who comes here and that they try to fit in. We don't the mess France and the EU contries are having with the Muslims, their fatwas, burning, rioting, burcqa wearing nonsence. Bad as Mexicans."
An utterly hilarious sentence, demonstrating ignorance combined with racism.
Illegal immigration is a tool used by both the right and left to split up working class families. The left cries illegal aliens when white working class people from California and New York move in but have no problems with working class Latinos coming from Mexico. The right cries illegal aliens when working when working class Latinos come from south of the border but are silent when working class whites come from New York and California. A big win for the corporations and a big loss for us.
Where are you clothes made? Where are your shoes made?>
What does that have to do with what I was saying about the politics of immigration?
We'll get right on it... as soon as we get this country straightened out. It won't be tomorrow or next week. but it'll happen.
Then we can bomb the rest of the world into submission like they done it WWll>
>^^<
Everything.
All the political posturing on immigration focuses on labour. It conveniently omits mentioning the freedom of capital to move around.
Where your clothes and shoes were made affects the jobs of working class people, in America, and all over the world.
In other words, you want more slave labor. Got it.
I'm tired of the incomplete sentence, "Jobs Americans won't do...".
The entire sentence is "Jobs Americans won't do FOR THAT WAGE."
Wages are supposed to rise if there are no takers for the job. If people mine coal or do other difficult and dangerous jobs, they will pick vegetables if the price is right.
We need a global economy that doesn't depend on there being some sort of semi-slave class of human beings.
Advertise $20 per hour and see how many show up.
In Minnesota in 2009, 1200 illegal-migrant janitors were fired when they couldn't produce ID. All worked for New York-based ABM Industries, Inc. Within two weeks 1200 U.S. citizens were hired for $13 an hour. There were many more applicants than jobs.
Go sell your socialist propaganda somewhere else ardent.
Don't assume that they're all self-identified right-wingers (although they may well be). Nativist and protectionist strains infect sectors of the "left" (a term which I use advisedly) as well, to what I believe to be its own detriment.
Silly, if they put a 10th of that energy into their cess-pit country back home,, It would be a pardise nobody'd want to leave.
As for all I want is a job! Get to the back og the line, theres 500 to 700 million Americans who never broke any laws who now need those jobs.
>^^<
P.S. also go home, and go to the back of the line of all the honest people filling out paperwork but can't get a turn because theres 15 million illegals already to be delt with.
Where were your clothes made?
Can't answer?
P.S. SEIU makes alot of money keeping Mexicans in line and beliving they make a differance. They allow them to make $6 an hour and charge'em union dues. Taking payoffs from the Corps, and the peasonts, what a scam.
>^^<
Obama has lured Slick Willie into his den to help him in this Jobs, Jobs, Jobs issue.
Willie cannot help him as he is the one who signed the Nafta agreement that has outsourced our industrial base to China. The Clinton Machine took in thousands of dollars from the Red Chinese for their campaign. During WWII the Clintons would have been charged with Treason. Today they are heroes to the Left.
Wake up America.
Please.
1) NAFTA had nothing to do with China. The US govt's lifting of its annual review of US-China trade relations (in 2000?), and China's joining of the WTO (in 2001?), expedited the growth of low-wage export-oriented manufacturing in China, as well as capital flight to China, but did not CAUSE these phenomena. These phenomena have more to do with China's integration into the global capitalist system, as well as the logic of the global capitalist system itself.
2) There is little to no doubt that China's integration into the global capitalist system has wiped out some manufacturing sectors in the US, and put downward pressure on wages and working conditions, but largely or purely domestic factors are equally or more responsible -- factors such as a policy bias toward finance, the toothlessness of labor laws, organized labor's alliance with the Democratic Party, and most of all, capitalism's built-in tendency to automate production. Yes, the manufacturing share of US employment has dwindled drastically, but US manufacturing output has actually risen.
3) Is Clinton taking campaign donations from CCP bagmen any worse than taking campaign donations from Lockheed Martin, Archer Daniels Midland, or General Electric? Talk of "treason" and making distinctions between evil foreigners and virtuous patriots are right-wing nationalist tropes that will get the US working class nowhere, fast.
PS Chinese workers have shown a lot more creativity and courage in fighting the class struggle than their US counterparts (where militant action has been effectively dormant for decades), in any event. From that perspective, maybe we should be grateful that global capitalist production is increasingly gravitating toward China...
Correct as far as that goes, it did nothing for China. But it did alot for and to Mexico, it's foolish at any time to belive too economys that have nothing in common. Not currancy, not language, not evn a desire to intermix cultures.
If picking vegtables is the only jobs we have left, we'd better protect them. As for the 11 million who won't go a simple cross check shows 10+ million on some sort of Welfare, why should they leave?
The reason it's all gone is simple greed, and tax policy. under the pre- Reagan tax policies. fatcats were taxed at 80% or more, the only way to avoid that was to invest, in America either in equipment, or expanding the workforce, or giving workers better benefitts.
With the advent of Reaganomics, the fatcats were buried in money and no idea what to do with it. Untill one bright boy came up with the idea of using the money o build factories overseas, workers at 1/8th the cost. with no medical, no pension, and best of all no enviromental laws!
So we fast-forward to now factories are in place in China and India and other places and guess what fatCats no longer need American Workers. Unions have gotten so greedy that they'll sell their members for a song. As long as the union officers get nice cash payments.
And our Elected Representitives,, well their also bought and paid for, now that tax's on the rich are below 20% and their factories are overseas, they have more money than ever!!
How Americia ends..
>^^<
Who did you copy this from ardent, it certainly wasn't a product of your own fragmented thinking.
"Under the influence of US nationalism there is a complete disconnect in their ability as Americans to show solidarity with the most oppressed workers out there amongst us-"
The author of this Chavez-like statement has little understanding of the American people. We shall see if the American people possess enough courage to remove the vampire squids from their government, or not, but either way the very last thing "Joe six pack" will be doing is aligning himself with some socialist "Solidarity Forever" movement with illegal aliens. Chavez propaganda won't sell here, or anywhere else for that matter.
Reality check here***HUH***
Is this 1840?
Do we have peak oil, peak forests, peak fish, peak climate, peak everything?
Is it just remotely possible that the only societies that survive are those which have their populations in balance with their resources??
Massive unemployment, great; bring in a whole bunch of new people! And, no, it's unfair to ask if they speak English or have any skills beyond potentially working at Walmart or mowing lawns. Canada Australia, and New Zealand aren't out of their gourds to allow free immigration.
Well, people who employ illegals at a fraction of the minimum wage will be happy; people like Walmart who employ at minimal wages and very minimal benefits will be happy too. Yes Walmart are people too, SCUS says so.
(Just an aside, wonder how many illegals feed into Heintz' bottom line?)
From "The Planet of The Apes" "God damn you, God damn you all."
Is it possible that the only societies that will survive are those who's resources sustain their populations. Yeah, I know American Exceptionalism and all -- we *are* entitled to take *all* of the planet's resources. Still how much population can we sustain? Please don't ask the pope, he knows the ranks of his subjects fill from the third world. Someone has to pay for the church! (btw some classify the pope as the last European monarch)
Two alternative proposals:
1. Why don't we survey the planet and offer citizenship to 10,000,000 of the most impoverished people on the planet. (While we fire teachers and eliminate medicare and social security.)
Or
2. Why don't we have a USA national IQ test and the most un-educated and un-productive 10,000,000 get to live in Iraq or Afghanistan, or Vietnam. Must be room there, we've already killed at least 10,000,000 of them.
This article has to be among the very worst garbage ever on CD. Yes, well maybe, progressives have the right to be irrational, too. They're almost human, after all.
I can smell the future: it's not *exactly* "Planet of the Apes" or "On the Beach"; but I'm guessing it's going to be close enough.
A population increases until the death rate equals the birthrate. Geeze, sometimes 2+2 = 4.
Another idiotic post.
Again, where are your clothes made? Where are you shoes made? Do you own an IPod? Do you own an Ipad?
"the very last thing "Joe six pack" will be doing is aligning himself with some socialist "Solidarity Forever" movement with illegal aliens." ...badger's 10:44pm point to Ardent.
I think badger is absolutely correct on this point, though I don't agree with his contention that fellow poster Ardent's 'solidarity' yearning in this connection is [therefore?] "fragmented thinking."
Ardent's vision may be too idealistic, especially for most N. Americans, and so seem unrealistic; but it's certainly not MORALLY fragmented.
As for Hugo Chavez's "propaganda" not selling in the USA (assuming the Chavez Phenomenon remains reasonably liberating in Vz, and continues, w/o standard old line/left wing tyranny, to democratize Venezuela's politics and economy --as it appears to be doing...), how could HG's rhetoric and ideas EVER sell in the present USA?
Sell Chavez, that is, in a country like the USA, where popular tolerance of falsely-benign corporate domination of every aspect of life and thought is now an acceptable existential price to pay for what the consumer population has been hypnotized to loyally believe-in, and worshipfully call, The American Dream.
H. Chavez in Vz may prove to be just another Castro -- but so far he's not moving in a Cuban Direction, despite his professed admiration for Fidel & Co.
So far, he's provably helped liberate the oppressed masses of Vz from a centuries-entrenched oligarchy; and increasingly helped empower a majortarian governing core of citizen in new political/economic forms which DON'T NEED HIM or the old socialism/capitalism dichotomies to survive and flourish.
It may all fail in Vz, of course, and turn bad or worse than what was before. Chavez and his wisdoms are still dicey quanta -- not yet credibly transcended by their own declared intentions.
But I think the present reason that so many USA's aver if not hate H. Chavez, is because his ideas about people governing themselves democratically, remind us of the ideals we Americans have come to give up on, and sell out, for a mere mess of Madison Avenue pottage...
Gee I'm a slow learner. It's been 50 years and I still haven't figured out what's wrong with Castro.
Well he did wipe out large scale predatory capitalism, I suppose.
His country does suffer a lot because of the US embargo.
We in the USA do need to go to any length to exterminate any threat to Wall Street's God-given right to steal everything and anything.