Posted on 05/17/2006 7:47:58 AM PDT by Pukin Dog
Edited on 05/17/2006 8:30:59 AM PDT by Lead Moderator. [history]
You posted: "Good Post."
Thank you.
You wrote: "Again you are debating the Living Wage argument that everyone around the world deserve a Living Wage as you determine it"
I am not.
I have not discussed the wages of the rest of the world, only those of America and Americans. While I do believe, as a general philosophic and indeed Catholic principle that everyone working in the world deserves a living wage (not as I determine it, but objectively determine by the needs for civilized subsistence), I have nowhere advocated any policies with that aim. I have focused exclusively on what is good for American workers alone, judging that the proper sphere for American government's concern. Indeed, were the rather modest things I advocated in my posts actually put into law, conditions would WORSEN for 3rd World labor outside of the United States, because the labor-cost equalization tarriff I have suggested would harm employment abroad while helping workers in the United States. My purpose is not to harm foreign workers, but to prevent substandard foreign conditions from dragging American workers down to their level in a race to the bottom. We do not govern the world, but we DO govern the United States. Accordingly, our laws should be protective of the people of the United States. We should not intentionally aim at harming other people in the world, but to the extent that harm is inevitable, and it is merely a matter of chosing the unfortunate group upon which the harm will fall, I believe that it is the sworn duty of American officials to do their best to make sure that the harm is deflected away from Americans.
My proposal was not idealistic, aimed at making the whole world better and giving everybody in the world a living wage. Maybe someday if we rule the whole world that will be our responsibility. But for now, our responsibility is to Americans first and foremost, and my considerations of labor costs and proposal of a labor-cost equalization tarriff was aimed solely at protecting American citizens, not in advancing a Utopia that cannot be achieved at the present time.
You wrote: "That is not the way Capitalism, which is by far the greatest form of Economics works."
You write of an economic theory as though it were a religion. I suppose we could debate economic theory, in the abstract, but I don't see much use in it because nowhere in the world is there anything approaching pure capitalism. Heavy regulatory, legal and national security regimes limit all economic activity. Economies are some of the operations of people, but people are primarily citizens and family members, and economies are regulated by nations and laws, not the reverse. There is brand of capitalist theory that believes that states themselves are nuisances and impediments to some sort of idyllic borderless worlds in which capital flows and efficient production are the primary determinants of social structures, power and law. This is not the actual state of the world, and to many people - myself included - is a highly undesireable objective. For great capitalist enterprises are NOT organic bodies. They are, rather, shell organizations in which individual people wield enormous power. Currently, that power is subordinate to the power of the state and, in democratic states, the voting public at large. A pure capitalist regime would reverse the order of priority and place the greatest economic actors at the center of all policymaking. This is a fancy modern version of feudalism, with the greatest lords (in this case of industry) commanding the greatest power. That's not the American system, at all, and is not desired by most people in America (or anywhere else). Economies serve people, not the reverse.
You wrote: "You earn what the market will bear, nothing more."
Not in a Christian society such as ours. We have decided, democratically, that if what the market will bear is not sufficient for you to survive, we will augment your market income to the extent necessary, with retirement benefits, health insurance, and welfare, so that nobody perishes from want merely because his marketable skill set is insufficient to support his continued existence in our highly organized economy. This is a choice, a democratic choice. We make our economy less brutally efficient, and choose not to allow literal starvation or death from untreated disease to be an economic goad. Rather, we have limited the goad to better housing, consumer goods and entertainment options, and perhaps better education and influence. We do NOT, however, allow the logic of the market to get anywhere close to the sentence I quoted from you. Old, sick people are economically worthless, a pure economic burden, and they will not recover from decrepitude to become economic actors ever again. We tax the whole economy to provide for them, because the alternative is to push them out on an ice floe and be rid of the burden...and if they didn't provide for themselves in their working years, tough. Certainly those who do not provide for themselves do not live as well as those who are dependent on just Social Security and Medicare or welfare, but we choose to tax the economy quite heavily, and restrict business and individual options, in order to provide a substantially effective minimum floor beyond which the most improvident old person simply is not permitted to fall. Economic considerations are completely overruled by humanitarian concerns.
We have made this choice democratically.
The problem is, if we have an absolutely unregulated free trade regime, we compete with a world in which 3 billion people will be allowed to starve on the street in their old age unless the charity of family or friends steps in. We cannot maintain our own choice to care for the old and sick if we engage in a race to the bottom with the Third World. Because going to the Third World standard is morally unacceptable to most Americans, and this is a democracy, perforce we must erect various barriers so that we are not put out of business and simply FORCED into the Third World regime by wages with which we cannot possibly compete.
You wrote: "Workers are just like businesses in that to enter a market they will take less and work towards higher prices later."
And yet workers are fundamentally different from businesses. Businesses do not have bodies, or nerve endings. They do not suffer, love, raise children. A corporation is a FICTION - a USEFUL fiction, to be sure, but a fiction nevertheless. A man is a real thinking and feeling thing. We can callously let corporations that are not economically viable die and blow away. If men were just like businesses, we could do the same to them to. And in the Third World, they DO. But men are not just like businesses in this sense. We cannot simply let them die if they are not economically viable during a certain period.
Or rather, we COULD, as they do in the Third World, but we are Americans, in a country with a Christian tradition, and we CHOOSE not to. Through the democratic process, we have enacted our moral values, which most of us believe to come from God Himself, into our law. We have CHOSEN to place the survival of even old and poor and useless men over perfect economic efficiency, because we think, as a society derived from Christians and Jews, that men are more important than money, in the end.
Having made that fundamental moral decision, the sole question is where we draw the line. We do NOT draw it anywhere close to the idea that starvation and death are goads for business to drive men into jobs. We draw the line well above that. To maintain that line where we have drawn it requires regulation and taxation of business and trade at a level far, far exceeding laissez-faire. I happen to think that what we have, with all of the regulation and social welfare safeguards, IS capitalism. Call it Christian Capitalism. It is not Chinese Capitalism. And in head to head economic competition in manufacturing, Chinese Capitalism will win, economically (so would fascist corporatism) unless the power of the state is harnessed to make laws that do not allow the Chinese to unmask their full batteries within Christian Capitalist economies. We have that now, and we should maintain it.
You wrote: "So a Mexican takes what he can get until a better job comes along and so forth. Many who have been here for years are making very decent wages compared to where they started. A healthy economy will always need entry level laborers."
This is so. We have laws that don't allow ANY worker in America to be unprotected by the legal minima. Illegals are unprotected by the minima. And that is a problem. Business interests do not have the right to subvert the public will of the people of the United States duly expressed through our constitutional structures. Business is made of Americans, and all Americans are subject to law. Illegal Mexicans don't have the right to be here at all; and businesses don't have the right to hire them. That's the law, and I think the law is right.
You apparently don't, which is your prerogative.
You wrote: "Labor intensive industries such as Farming, Landscaping, Saw-milling, etc are high volume low profit industries. You assume that the $1 an hour the owner saves goes into profit when that may not be true. He may have to lower his costs to enter the market or compete with the guy down the street. He does what he has to do to get the job and feed his family. If he raises his price the customer will just go to the next one that does have lower prices."
Yes, the consumer will. The point of comparative-wage equalization tariffs is to remove from the consumer the option of saving any money by leveraging off of unprotected foreign labor.
You wrote: "As for China, they have entered the capitalist society and they have an advantage now but as capitalism takes over their labor will go up just like everywhere else."
To a point, over the course of a century. We do not have to allow the bottom tier of Americans to be unemployed for a century while waiting for China to "catch up". Our duty is in protecting Americans, not protecting Chinese development. The choice is between shifting the profits to China and letting China develop more rapidly while more Americans at the bottom suffer, or shifting the profits to the lower tier Americans so they don't suffer so much, but inevitably slowing down Chinese development. And the duty of our policymakers is to the Americans, not the Chinese.
Or their duty SHOULD BE to Americans, at any rate.
You wrote:" Your tariffs idea will only damage the economy as higher costs are passed on to consumers."
Which damage will be offset by a precipitous drop in unemployment, welfare, Medicaid, social security and probably prison costs. Employ Americans and you don't have to tax the economy to feed so many unemployed ones.
You wrote: "You are talking about Billions of taxes on millions of consumer goods."
That's right.
I am talking about tarriffs that balance out the cost advantage of third-world labor pools.
You wrote: "You are asking for gummit to control the economy. I believe that is called Communism?"
No, I am not asking for any such thing, or anything resembling any such thing. What I am asking for is most certainly not Communism in any form.
As a Commodity trader it is easy to see labor as a commodity. We are all Commodities when it comes down to our value in the marketplace. Whether your picking apples or operating on a heart or owning your own business you have a certain value to the Market which is reflected in your earnings. A truly free market will pay you what you are worth just as it will value any other item such as a diamond or a gallon of gas. The ultimate worker commodity is the Union worker who is told exactly what he is worth depending on an agreed upon value for a certain scale. The rarer your skill set the more precious a commodity you become to the Market
Like the old saying goes, if you don’t want to become a millionaire, join a Union. If you want to become a millionaire, run a Union. This represents two truths of worker value, one is a strictly negotiated value and the latter isn’t. The Union boss not only is a rare commodity, he enjoys the hidden benefits of corruption and graft.
The Market will reward any commodity that is rare which brings a positive cash flow to the capitalistic society. Whether the person is picking lettuce or making cars the market determines the value of that worker. A Mexican speaking illegal alien who can only do manual labor has no leverage in the marketplace and is valued at $20-$30 per day since there are millions of equally unskilled Mexicans to keep his price down. At the other end of the spectrum is Rush who there is only one in the entire World which means zero competition. There are lots of copies, but only one America’s Anchorman who can make wonderfully obscene profit margins from the marketplace. This allows him unlimited leverage. The less the competition the greater the profit margin and higher the wages.
Within the Mexican labor pool there are levels of skill which is reflected in wages. Basic labor such as hoeing a field or picking lettuce is going to pay a lower wage than someone who can bring certain skills or talents to the market. Anyone who has picked apples or cherries knows that there is definite skill in reading trees and racing up and down ladders. This will garner a higher wage well into the $100 per day range. The fact that this only lasts for a week or two before migrating to the next farm which eliminates this as a career for most Americans.
Mexicans are a necessary commodity and problem that has been ignored due to convenience. Nobody should fault the farmer because he is using this readily available labor to keep his expenses at a level that is required by the marketplace. Finding dependable hard workers for low wages is a difficult hole to fill for a labor intensive employer. If his costs are too high the buyers will buy from a farmer who can meet their demands or buy off shore. The margins for farming are so small it is required that farmers maximize every acre and cut every penny to continue their God given livelihood.
This example is farming however the same is true for every labor intensive industry. Until we address all the issues of Mexican labor and the cheap commodity that it brings to the workplace we are never going to solve this issue. In a full employment red hot economy, employers need this valuable asset to meet market demands.
Likewise a Mexican who is living in Mexico earning $50 a month looks at the Shining City on the Hill and realizes he can make 10 times that and is motivated to cross the border. To us it is below a living wage but to Manuel Mexical this is the promised land. No matter what we put in place including a fence, Manuel will find a way across to earn a living he cannot make in Mexico just as Rush will move to Florida to avoid oppressive income taxes. Both should be legal and managed. Until we have an enforceable guest worker program anything we put up will be just trying to empty the ocean with a holey bucket.
There is no simple solution is and anyone who is honest will admit the same thing. To ignore the forces of supply and demand is to ignore basic economics. To try to form a bill that ignores these forces will be as worthless as SSI for those under 40. We can reach the point where we can talk about this issue in a respectful manner to get to a point where there is a solution. Using thugish tactics will only cause people run away from it making the situation worse. This is the most important issue in the Country and until we can get the Mexicans to come across in an organized and secure manner we will never have control of our borders. One answer would be a guest worker program with no chance of citizenship.
Give President Bush credit for addressing this issue rather than crucifying him, since it is a net loser to anyone making that attempt. No matter how strict the guest worker program is the demagogues are going to call it amnesty regardless of the truth. Mexico has a commodity besides Oil that we need to exploit for our economy. Closing the border is the goal which all sides must be pointed while name calling only widens the divide to eliminate free exchange of ideas.
Pray for W and Our Amazing Troops
Your post is difficult to answer, because we are speaking from the perspective of two fundamentally different views of the world and how it works.
You seem to really believe, at the core, that economic flows explain (and determine) the course of the world. I think that economics are part of the overall sphere of human activity, that we do not currently allow economics to drive all of our decision-taking processes, and that we shouldn't because the results of doing that are morally unacceptable.
You believe that if a nation imposes an economic law, that "the market" will simply get around it by going outside of the nation. I think that certain economic players may try to do that, but that well-constructed laws can make that difficult and that other things more important than economics drive the final decisions.
You gave the example of Rush Limbaugh moving from high-tax New York to low-tax Florida in order to broadcast and keep more of his money. Yes, he does just that. But why, then, does he not take the additional step and move from low-tax Florida (which still gets socked with the Federal Income Tax) to no-tax Guernsey, or Monaco, or the Cayman Islands, and broadcast from there. There is no TECHNICAL barrier to doing that, and the economics of doing so make utter sense. 40% of income going to federal taxes is a lot to save.
So why doesn't the logic of economics and dollars drive RUSH offshore?
The answer has nothing to do with economics, but all of those OTHER things that affect human decision-taking, which economics alone do not explain - and which are why we can, in fact, impose laws that are economically sub-optimal but which achieve more important social goals. Most Americans don't want to live outside of the United States even if they can save a lot of money doing it. Abroad is tricky and untrustworthy. Abroad has different sovereign risks. Abroad doesn't have the medical resources. Also, other Americans don't like to do business with you so much if you are abroad and outside of the reach of their laws and system. Who would listen to Rush Limbaugh talking about American politics if he himself opted to be a Cayman Islander broadcasting into the US? He has to pay 40% of his top dollars in taxes and remain in the US, because people are not emotionally willing to engage with a foreigner. Economics are not driving the equation; emotions are.
My point about wage-equalization tarriffs is that American purchasers CAN'T simply "go abroad" for cheaper prices to get around the tarriffs. People live here. They have to buy and consume the goods here. Europeans pay $7 a gallon for gasoline, but they don't try to import gas from the USA: it's illegal. Likewise, a wage equalization tarriff will drive up the cost of goods somewhat, but there isn't a legal solution to get around it. You can't just buy from someone else, because whoever has cheap labor gets the tarriff slapped on him when he ships the stuff into the USA.
Now, as far as agricultural labor goes, it may well be that we do need third world berry pickers. But if we bring them in, we should not do so with the stipulation that they have to leave. They should be on a track to remain and become citizens.
I guess the fundamental difference comes down to the view that labor is simply a commodity. Yes, it is, but it's a very special type of commodity, because it is human beings. As such, it cannot be treated in the same cold fashion that iron ore and pork bellies can be treated. Human concerns do not allow full efficiency in the labor markets. We have to have considerably inefficiency in labor markets because people are not machines, and human needs are constant and permanent. The full commodification of human beings and labor is not where democracy is willing to go.
As far as Mexicans simply getting here somehow if there's an advanced system erected, my answer would be: not 2 million a year. A few would get under or over the wall, and a few would go around by boat, but if you can't just walk into America, the fact of a barrier makes it harder and more expensive to try, and many, many will not make it or will not even try. We are not working in a world of absolutes, but speaking, rather, of relative positions.
Interesting discussion.
Threads such as this show that they reflect what is happening at FR.
It is not the math which is relevant but the ASSUMPTIONS behind the math.
Don't you know that those men belong to a top secret cabal working to transform the USA into Northern Mexico for their Globalist masters? If not there are plenty of the "enlightened" here ready to tell you all about it. Make sure you express no doubt as to their assertions for fear of being called an "open borders lover" or a Bushbot.
Not similiar in anyway. This is, for me, ALL about using this issue to destroy the FR. Bush has consistently said the same thing wrt this issue. It is only within the last couple of months that the Lynch Mob has gotten dangerous and their threats serious.
Immigration is not even close to the most significant issue facing the Nation. When the Lynch Mob tries to make it so using demagogery and falsehoods you will find me trying to bring a little commonsense into the discussion.
When there were no threats I ignored most of the anti-Illegal threads since they are very stupid and not worth my time.
Quite the contrary the rabble can be counted on to riot at the drop of a hat even if all they get from it is a couple of bottles of booze, the chance to beat people in the streets or to watch fires.
Even ILLUSIONS is sufficient to get the rabble in high gear.
Birds of a feather.
Don't distort what I refered to as "rabble" or I will say you LIE.
It was not my emotions which caused difficulties on the Schiavo threads but the attacks upon my integrity and humanity because I had the timerity to question the True Believers' version of reality. And the invalid assumption that I had never had to deal with the loss of a beloved or I could have never been so "unfeeling."
Normally I am extremely self-controlled. Any threat to FR will definitely arouse my anger though.
"Quite the contrary the rabble can be counted on to riot at the drop of a hat even if all they get from it is a couple of bottles of booze, the chance to beat people in the streets or to watch fires.
Even ILLUSIONS is sufficient to get the rabble in high gear."
I have seen very few true riots over the course of my life.
There was Detroit in 1967; also Watts. There was the LA riot. There have been a few disturbances. But there really is not a large, seething mass of people perched on the brink of lawlessness and ready to run into the street and set the world afire the instant that supervision is inattentive or the power goes out. This is my view of things, anyway.
And that is why you and Bush are so tone deaf, I guess. Because you don't take this seriously. The folks who have to deal with the impacts of illegal immigrants do.
I have not criticised Bush on this issue because I see no reason to. It simply is not one of the top five or six issues we face and exaggerating it into the BIGGEST or ONLY problem does not work with me.
My defense of the President is so that he can continue to do the MORE IMPORTANT work which must be done or none of the other issues will have ANY meaning.
I say this because numerous State and County governments...as well as the Federal government have turned a blind eye on this...since 1986.
Secondly, the new laws being written on Capitol Hill are totally unnecessary if the enforcement of the existing laws are already being ignored.
My question: Why hasn't any government official stepped forward to explain why these illegal immigrants have been allowed to enter, stay, work, send money back, buy and sell real estate here,...like any other respectable American citizen?
IOW, what's the REAL REASON?
What I take seriously is the Inflation of this Issue into the SKY is FALLING claims of those using it to attack the President.
Neither the President or I are tone deaf. We recognize clearly that it is something which can be dealt with but NOTHING worth destroying FR and the GOP over. WE are not the "tone deaf" ones here.
Like I said, y'all just don't get it.
Probably because y'all are insulated from the issue.
In the last couple of months this has been dragged up as a WEAPON to be used against the GOP. That appears to be the only reason is has all of a sudden the END ALL and BE ALL of American politics.
I love the way you can assume you know something about what I am "insulated from" and what I am not.
Here is a hint though. I am NOT insulated from Islamic Terrorism. Which is the NUMBER ONE problem facing us.
I'd say it's a pretty fair assessment, given your attitudes on this and what you have posted here.
Here is a hint though. I am NOT insulated from Islamic Terrorism. Which is the NUMBER ONE problem facing us.
I'd put them pretty even, actually. How many Americans have been murdered by illegal aliens or killed by illegals driving drunk since 9/11?
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