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To: CaptIsaacDavis
I am confused. Isnt the 'free market' a system where companies try to find the lowest bidder and workers try to find the highest wage?


So this is the free market. hmmm.
42 posted on 01/07/2004 3:06:04 PM PST by WOSG
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To: WOSG
Two words: free and market. The LIBs love "free," but they LIE about the meaning of the word "market." Define it and enact policies to ensure it remains relatively "free" over generations. If you mean that employers, many of which receive protections from liability by incorporating (SCOTUS: a corporation is a "creature of the law"), and which benefit from the wealth and investments of U.S. citizens primarily -- and the blood of its heroes fighting to sustain it -- will be "free" to import foreign guest workers to substitute for American labor, then it's not truly "free" any more.

Freedom 101 from Jefferson: it comes with responsibilities.

The tax basis for participation will be different in some states (foreign workers on short-term seasonal or "project" assignments routinely get around state and local tax liability). Moreover, there are associated macroeconomic and business costs that are not even reflected in the $ contract between employer and employee:
1. Top consulting firms actually get paid $MM to "train" companies to deal with language and culture issues that DESTROY economic value at firms (all things considered, and assuming an ability to substitute even with HIGHER paid American labor)
2. Tax burden on infrastructure -- health care, insurance, training, welfare, SS, prisons, on and on. Business 101: the full cost of an employee is not simply a function of the negotiated salary. Cheap imported labor, for a large minority share of the pool, merely passes on HIGHER costs for that illusion of "cheaper" labor onto states and the Feds (US via taxes). The net result is an effective cost subsidy for less competitive enterprises for a large minority share of the total firms employing such labor.
3. Productivity. US Federal Reserve bank economists have proven quantitatively in several studies that few have the guts to report on that immigrant labor subsitution has dramatically REDUCED productivity growth in the United States. In other words -- NO KIDDING -- language, training, social and cultural gaps do matter and are weighing on the total wealth creating capacity of the United States.

What we have done is basically create a huge share of the U.S. economy (ballparked in studies at 10-12% of GDP) that is fundamentally dependent upon indirect labor cost subsidies through illegal and legal immigrant labor.

"Free Markets 101" -- that results in ineffective allocations of investment capital that DESTROYS long-run productivity and job creation for short-term gains for a relatively narrow fringe of firms.

Moreover: Many immigrant laborers have subsidies from foreign governments affecting the cost basis for their participation in the non-market "free for all." Indeed one of the lesser known dirty secrets of the racket is that governments in China, South Korea, Egypt, and elsewhere deliberately have incentive/subsidy programs to send people here to work in professional jobs (with rotations back home expected after a few years) or even to set up small "mom and up" shops. Why? Hard currency is the name of the game. They need the $ flowing back into the economies to subsidize a host of programs. The world outside the US exports two things mainly -- natural resources and cheap/slave labor.

The bottom line is that the WH is taking a radical libertarian approach, which, like the "free trade" argument, is not about "free trade" or "free labor markets" at ALL. They are policies for "open markets" that seek the ECONOMIC BENEFITS OF SOCIALIST SUBSIDIES AND INEFFECIENCIES RESULTING FROM POORLY REGULATED MARKETS (E.G., ALLOWING COUNTRIES TO EFFECTIVELY "DUMP" LABOR AND ASSOCIATED POLITICAL COSTS ONTO THE U.S. MARKET -- E.G., MEXICO). MEXICO WOULD HAVE EXPLODED IN ANOTHER REVOLUTION A LONG TIME AGO -- MAYBE RESULTING IN A REAL FREE MARKET THAT WOULD SEE THE END OF THE SOCIALISTS -- WITHOUT SUCKERS IN THE US TO SUPPORT THEM.

Even the advocates who know what the heck they are talking about are careful not to call it "free markets."
177 posted on 01/08/2004 1:27:53 AM PST by CaptIsaacDavis (.)
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