Posted on 03/03/2008 7:38:57 PM PST by jazusamo
It is fascinating watching politicians say how they are going to rescue the "rust belt" regions where jobs are disappearing and companies are either shutting down or moving elsewhere.
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is being blamed for the jobs going elsewhere. Barack Obama blames the Clinton administration for NAFTA, and that includes Hillary Clinton.
Senator Obama says that he is for free trade, provided it is "fair trade." That is election year rhetoric at its cleverest.
Since "fair" is one of those words that can mean virtually anything to anybody, what this amounts to is that politicians can pile on whatever restrictions they want, in the name of fairness, and still claim to be for "free trade." Clever.
We will all have to pay a cost for political restrictions and political cleverness, since there is no free lunch. In fact, free lunches are a big part of the reason for once-prosperous regions declining into rust belts.
When the American automobile industry was the world's leader in its field, many people seemed to think that labor unions could transfer a bigger chunk of that prosperity to its members without causing economic repercussions...
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
The best thing each one of us can do for this country tomorrow is introduce someone to the wisdom that is Thomas Sowell and his writing.
Very well said!
Bravo Tango Tango Tango
Regards
alfa6 ;>}
Sadly what Mr Sowell is saying also apply to a significant number of Freepers who rail against illegal immigrants who “steal our jobs”.
Not that I’m for illegal immigration, but we have to recognize that a large part of the reason they are here is because employers who wish to avoid being burdened by cost-creating regulations passed by politicians are actively hiring illegals instead of citizen. That these regulations are what’s creating the demand in the economy for illegal aliens.
Minimum wage, workman’s comp, family leave, etc, are all free lunches that the politicians tried to give to the public to buy their votes, and once again, those lunch do have a long term cost.
Want to really stop the illegal problem? Repeal those laws. A wall may stop some of them, but not nearly as many as fewer employment prospects will.
true free trade means no trade barriers and no subsidies -corporate welfare. Bush was for reducing barriers but he wanted to be “compassionate” by spending lots of money.
Someone needs to tell that to the random union thugs that troll FR shilling for their unions. Heck, just send them all "Basic Economics", although one of you may need to read it to them, since I don't have that kind of time on my hands.
LOL! You’re exactly right and I don’t want to take the time either.
I think the best way to deal with the illegal problem is to get tough on mexico’s corruption problem.
mexico is not exactly a libertarian country but taxes and govt spending are pretty low and people go there all the time for prescription drugs because there is less regulation.
The corruption is like a big tax that makes it hard for their economy to function and that’s why so many try to cross our border in the first place.
I’m not concerned about illegals stealing jobs. I think that argument deserves to be shot down quickly. The problem is they are taking up too much govt resources and they are a threat to our culture and social stability. of course, that also applies to legal immigration as well. Look at Europe, especially scandinavia.
they’d still try to come if the US offers a better deal than mexico. I think we do even without welfare. Mexico has to give mexicans a better deal and the US has to give them a worse deal in order to solve the problem.
I am not largely convinced that they are a economic drag on American society. Yes, they do consume some social benefits, but they also contribute to the economy both through production, providing cheap labor cost that reduces the price of goods, and consumption, and they have to pay some taxes such as sales tax and gas tax etc.
The real issue I have with illegal immigration, aside from the fact that I want a secured border for security reasons, is that because they are illegal, they cannot be integrated into regular society.
Immigration is not a problem as long as people are integrated into American culture and society. Because there is no integration, that’s how you end up with people have massive demonstrations waving the Mexican flag, because neither Americans nor they themselves see them as American.
The main problem I have with illegal immigration is the effect on our culture.
Even if there is an economic drag, it costs a lot of money to keep them out and kick them out which is why I think the best policy is to focus on the mexican govt. That’s the source of the problem and really...if you want to solve a problem effectively, you have to go directly to the source.
great essay by Sowell.
btw, you might find this interesting:
http://www.neoperspectives.com/Amnesty_From_Government.htm
“Though I think “progressive” types might not be able to latch on to such straight forward analysis. Settling down back home in SC as I will be, the influx of job seekers from “up yonder” give me the creeps. They ran off the corporations (for exactly the reasons Mr Sowell stated). They drove up property taxes with social programs and govt fix-it schemes. Now they head here to where the jobs have come and the cost of living is low. Unfortunately, they bring their “ideas” with them.”
Recommend this video that illustrates the numbers problem of accepting legal immigrants at the current level. When watching the video imagine if we legalized the ones who are here under the amnesty proposals. Link http://www.numbersusa.com/about/tvandvideo.html
Thanks for the link. Yes, that’s pretty much sums up my take on it as well.
Ummm...
The Real Problem with illegal immigration is that remittances to foreign countries by these illegal workers remove 80 per cent of their money earned from the US. Thus, their earnings in the US economy go unspent within the US economy. Social Services received are never recouped...
Just an observation.
DM
First of all, I don’t know if the 80% figure is accurate, I find it rather hard to believe given their low wages they earn they can live on spending just 20% of their earning.
Secondly, even if it were the case, their low wages reduce the cost of goods, thereby raising everyone else’s buying power, effectively giving all Americans a raise.
And the fact is we created the illegal immigration problem through excessive government regulation on the economy. Making it much cheaper for business to go “underground”, well, underground means hiring illegals.
The knee jerk reaction is to always blame others rather than look at ourselves in the mirror.
Many studies have demonstrated that illegals are currently a substantial net drain. Your point is well taken in that there are costs and benefits to illegal immigration.
The real issue is amnesty. If illegals are amnestied, the cost rises substantially. They will demand much larger amounts of welfare. In addition, they will chain migrate extended families demanding welfare benefits. In addition, amnesty will lead to open borders and chaos. Anoter amnesty will send a clear signal that we will never enforce our borders. The hordes of new citizens will vote for rat politicians who promise even more welfare. We will be importing tens to hundreds of millions of welfare seeking, non assimilating immigrants.
I agree that we have many self inflicted problems involving excessive litigation, regulation, taxation, and union protection. Regardless of whether we fix these problems, immigration is still a huge issue that must be addressed. If we take the shamnesty solution, we will have even bigger problems.
OK that far, the rest of your post is crap.
Unions and entitlements are indeed a significant part of the downfall we are sharing...
Illegal aliens are another issue.
Dump the unions? OK.
Transfer the jobs to illegals?
Not on your freaking life!
Allowed to do so, most union members would take the job and hang the union out to dry.
The true believers quit working years ago and should be put out to graze, far out.
The jobs that ARE available need to go to Americans, people willing to work to become Americans, and people that America needs to maintain its position...not to wetbacks. ("Undocumented" if that sounds better to you)
The jobs that are available do not require terrorists to fill them in between (oh yeah!) acts of terrorism.
Coyotes and drug smugglers already have well paying jobs, they don't need any more help.
Undoing unions and undoing the paternalistic society mandated by government labor laws may be an admirable goal,
it is NOT an avenue to amnesty.
I never said I was in favor of Amnesty.
I want to secure our borders, but as I’ve stated, not for economic reasons, for cultural reasons.
I want to secure our borders for economic reasons and national unity. Open borders might work in world without welfare. We have a vast welfare state so open borders will mean a much larger dosage of socialism.
If you follow the logic of what I wrote, you should see that I am adamantly opposed to Amnesty, which is the worst of all possibilities. It’s even worse than doing nothing.
Why?
Because the moment these 15-20 million people become legal through Amnesty, they’ll all become unemployed. The reason they were desired was precisely because they were illegal. Once they are legal, hiring them instantly becomes as expensive as hiring regular citizens. So all of them will then be collecting welfare checks and really draining our social welfare system. And to top it of, the economic incentive to hire illegals still exist, so that means *another* 15-20 million of illegals will come in to fill those openings. Amnesty would be a disaster.
My 11th grade daughter is taking an economics class from a private tutor, using “Basic Economics” as the textbook. Maybe I should get her a Thomas Sowell poster for her bedroom wall :-).
Excellent summary!
Instant and permanent Democrat majority in national politics. The Republican Party becomes a purely local phenomenon for a little while in a few of the smaller towns and counties.
Amnesty will set the populations of Mexico and Central America in motion northward.It will not stop with the 12-40 million already here.The fence is as built as it will get. Bush is backing off from the Vicarious Fence, which will not stop the crowds, even if built while the real fence has been defunded by the Democrats. The US will end up extending welfare to Mexico and Guatemala- maybe Honduras and San Salvador. If we get President Hussein then it doesn’t much matter anyway as he has pledged to extend American welfare to the world.
Just the act of granting an Amnesty, no matter how limited the pols think it to be will suck in millions more either in the hope of the extension of the amnesty or to fill the newly available jobs.
I’ll have to order that. My daughter loves Thomas Sowell’s books; he has the same subtle but nasty sense of humor that she admires in James Madison.
A good argument can be made that the USA's national security would be immeasurably improved if we had 140,000 troops in Mexico City rather than in Baghdad.
Deliberately opening our borders to economically "leaven out" the Communist influence on the Mexican lower classes from Chavez and others is going to be recognized as a grand strategic blunder in coming decades.
In the short run, you can get away with all sorts of things. But, in the long run, the chickens come home to roost. The rust belt is where those rising costs have come home to roost.A bit of typical Sowell wisdom, atypically expressed in poor writing. How should he have said it? MaybeIn the short run, you can get away with all sorts of things. The rust belt is just another name for "the long run," when the chickens come home to roost.
I think what you left out was enforcement - cutting back on feel good regulations is a worthy goal but once you've stepped over he cliff it's REAL hard to step back.
Nothing is going to work unless each and every illegal in the country knows that deportation is a real & consistent result of sticking his or her head above the bushes.
Nothing is going to work unless employers are required to either confirm citizenship or formally sponsor the immigrant (define the need for that alien, and guarantee the alien's behavior and ability to stay off of welfare).
That last part isn't difficult, my grandparents had to have established sponsors when they came here about a century ago.
Forcing employers to do these things just foist another layer of cost creating regulation on US businesses to deal with the problem caused by the last cost creating regulation, you also need another government agency to enforce these new regulations against employers.
All of which does nothing but hurt our economy by driving up the cost of business and increases government spending and interference in our lives.
Reducing these regulations is not just another “worthwhile goal”, it is addressing the heart of the problem, everything else is just the symptom. This problem does not exist because Mexicans want a hand out, this problem exists because too many Americans were looking for a handout. Americans buying into socialism is the real problem, all our ills come from that. Until we fix that, we are just bailing water from a leaking boat.
> Sadly what Mr Sowell is saying also apply to a significant number of Freepers who rail against illegal immigrants who “steal our jobs”. <
Not to mention the anti-free-trade, Buchananite FReepers most of us know too well.
But then, one doesn’t expect them to read or items by Thomas Sowell!
Most people who understand the economics of illegal immigration, aren’t clamoring for more cheaper labor in other sectors. Just because I get low cost lettuce, doesn’t mean I advocate illegals o bring the cost down for high ticket items.
No, but low cost of goods (like lettuce) means you have more disposable income to buy big ticket items.
You just summed up the Globalist's "level playing field." NAFTA was supposed to created those conditions (Mexican jobs in Mexico) and now it's various programs funded by the US for Mexican and Latin American "opportunity."
The illegal’s price is not an artificial price, it’s your price that artificial, artificially propped up by government regulations that force employers to pay extra.
The illegals are actually practicing real free mark with the employers, their are bargaining and contracting without being interfered with by government intervention.
You either have Free Markets or you don’t. This “I’m for the free market except when the Government interferes on my behalf” is pure hypocrisy and what gets us into trouble. Because everyone will then want the government to intervene on their behalf, and pretty soon there is no free market to speak off and everything is controlled.
Capitalism's way of competing with Chinese slave labor wages?
Nobody is born entitled to a standard of living they are comfortable with. Everyone is only entitled to whatever the standard of living they can *EARN* in a free market.
The attitude that “I don’t need to earn it, it should just be given to me as a matter of right” is what’s leading us down the socialist path.
—Minimum wage, workman’s comp, family leave, etc, are all free lunches that the politicians tried to give to the public to buy their votes, and once again, those lunch do have a long term cost.—
American workers do not wish to be treated like medieval serfs. Big business, it seems, likes to employ serfs, that’s why there is so much outsourcing.
—We would have won Viet Nam w/o Dim interference—
Funny you say that, as it was the “Dims” who got us into that unfortunate enterprise in the first place. Moreover, the real interference was from the Soviets, who supplied weapons to an enemy willing to fight to the death, while we supplied weapons to ARVN, who was willing to fight to ... um ... a really nasty bruise?
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