The Down Range Forum
Member Section => Down Range Cafe => Topic started by: Teresa Heilevang on January 02, 2010, 01:05:02 AM
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Some interesting items.
Have you wondered why Americans are not hired for good jobs, but instead, aliens from overseas are hired under H-1B?
"Our goal is clearly not to find a qualified and interested U.S. worker, and that, in a sense, sounds funny, but it's what we are trying to do here."
www.computerworld.com/s/article/9025268/H_1B_video_shocker_Our_goal_is_clearly_not_to_find_a_qualified_..._U.S._worker_
Alan Greenspan: "Greatly expanding our quotas for the highly skilled would lower wage premiums of skilled over lesser skilled. Skill shortages in America exist because we are shielding our skilled labor force from world competition. Quotas have been substituted for the wage pricing mechanism. In the process, we have created a privileged elite whose incomes are being supported at non competitively high levels by immigration quotas on skilled professionals. Eliminating such restrictions would reduce at least some of our income inequality."
www.newswithviews.com/Cutler/michael176.htm
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This is what happens when capitalism/libertarianism/individulalism runs amok. Look, lets have a ittle background. Greenspan was not just a Libertarian, but an Objectivist, a disciple of Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead ect). She belived in pure meritocracy, the free market and pure individualism. Government and community held no place, and as a refugee from the Bolsheviks who could blame her? Now, thats all well and good, but what she and Greenspan failed to get was that the free market depends on the rule of law. This only happens in organized communities with some basic shared values (not unanimity or homogenaity, just core beliefs) that provide the glue to hold the thing toghther. A cheap analogy is that they focused on atoms, not molecules. For Greenspan, the market ruled, effieciency was king, and he didn't care if work was done in Cleavland or Chiapas, by Americans or illegals. Cheap labor equals a lower price. Problem is that neither he nor Rand understood the one good economic idea Marx had, and that is the "Crisis of Realization" (Das Kapital volume I) . The idea is this. Competition, particularly international competition (and this includes illegals) , will drive wages lower, reduce costs and promote effeciency. The problem comes when the guys making Chevys, or Nikes or whatever, can't afford to buy them. A cheap product, but no market. If we all are paid Wall-Mart wages, we'll all be shopping at Wall-Mart. Greenspans idea of us being a "privileged class" eg Americans who were born here, played by the rules, and had our educations paid for by our own labor and our parent's savings, is an affront to the very idea of community. To him, a computer science graduate from an American university should have to compete here at home, equally, with a a guy from Mumbai with an HB-1 visa. Our wages should drop to those of India as computers will be cheaper. This makes no sense. Not only do we risk hitting a point where those folks can't afford the lap tops they build, but we also forfiet the capital in terms of infra-structure and expertise required to train them. We are eating the seed corn. (Think I'm kidding? Go into a Wally World and try to buy American. How many more dollars can we send to China before they just foreclose?). We must insist on labor laws that "privelege" our own and deport illegalls and jail those that hire them. We must tax corporations that "out source" over seas higher than those that build here. Greenspan and Rand were OK on econ., but they ignored politics. The nation state is the basic unit of community, power and security. Thinking you can dissolve it in a double entry ledger is folly. Economics is fine, but money doesn't trump security. Security comes from power and power is found n community. The socialists and plutocrats don't get this. The patriots and the miiddle classes do. Rant over, sorry M'lette.
FQ13
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Indeed, we should put tarrifs on foreign labor as we do goods.
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FQ, are you serious? This is when "when capitalism/libertarianism/individulalism (sic) runs amok"?
Wrong yet again. The game has been fixed. This is no more free-market capitalism than it is a dance with the homecoming queen. This is a rigged game where the elite get to modify rules of behavior to their own benefit using the gummint as a willing accomplice.
If you had said this is when greed runs amok, then I might have (shudder!) agreed with you.
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FQ, are you serious? This is when "when capitalism/libertarianism/individulalism (sic) runs amok"?
Wrong yet again. The game has been fixed. This is no more free-market capitalism than it is a dance with the homecoming queen. This is a rigged game where the elite get to modify rules of behavior to their own benefit using the gummint as a willing accomplice.
If you had said this is when greed runs amok, then I might have (shudder!) agreed with you.
We are not in real disagreement here. Look greed is good, its what makes us get up and go to work. The thing is there need to be rules. The reason I mentioned the libertarian/capitalist thing is that some niave types think we don't need the rules, that we can just trust enlightened self interest to to keep people honest. Greenspan revealed his foolishness when he confessed to being stunned by the mortgage crisises because it wasn't in the firms' long term interest. He didn't get the herd mentality, desire for a quick buck or that execs get payed based on quarterly returns, not long term performance. The same is true of his view of immigration. We are all just individuals to him, one replaceable with another. He does not see that in order for a nation to exist we must resist that and say no. THESE individuals (citizens) are special, we have unique obligations to them. Like preserving their jobs by not importing immigrant labor to compete with them. The problem isn't with greed, its with not having rules, or seeing the need for rules that , to quote Madison "make vice act as a virtue". By this we channel greed through checks and balances. Pure Capitalism won't do this in regards to immigration. Greenspan would have us throw open the borders. We need to have rules about who comes and enforce them.
FQ13
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FQ, are you serious? This is when "when capitalism/libertarianism/individulalism (sic) runs amok"?
Wrong yet again. The game has been fixed. This is no more free-market capitalism than it is a dance with the homecoming queen. This is a rigged game where the elite get to modify rules of behavior to their own benefit using the gummint as a willing accomplice.
If you had said this is when greed runs amok, then I might have (shudder!) agreed with you.
Agreed....(capitalism x greed) - morals = MONOPOLY....not free market....
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We should not have swayed from a Republic, with laws governing the government. Now we have a 'Democracy' where 51% of the people rule the other 49%. They are trying to starve America to Death.