The era of reduced expectations

I've been under pressure (from the guy in the corner office) to send my circuit boards to a turnkey manufacturer who ships the jobs to China for assembly. So far they've done OK but my preference is to keep the jobs in the USA and keep US employed.

:-)

Paul Schoen is a loser who equates an out-of-work condition as leisure.

Let it burn. ...Jim Thompson

Scumbag Republithugs hire illegals for cheap labor. Arizonans need only to look in the mirror to understand the illegal immigration problem. To be specific, illegals that crossed into the country illegally. There is another class of illegals that overstayed their visas.

Just can't help but display your ignorance, Miso?

Arizona is home to Sheriff Joe, the most successful officer at rounding up illegals and sending them back. In spite of the Feds trying to thwart his and other Arizona officers from doing their jobs.

Hire an illegal here and risk your company being raided and shut down.

But, Miso, you and your ilk see only left wing news, so you remain clueless. ...Jim Thompson

Whereas Jim only sees right-wing news, but considers himself thoroughly clueful. Sadly, clues aren't what he's full of.

Was immigration status an issue before 1913 (before you needed to worry about taxing income)?

What happened when a Mexican walked into the Ponderosa and asked Ben Cartwright for a job? I suspect law and government didn't even invade their thoughts.

Interesting question. I don't know. The other, most important thing missing in 1913 was drug traffickers.

Set aside the criminal element into a separate analysis box, and just look at the rest of the present "grade" of illegal's, and the problems they cause or facilitate...

(1) They overload our medical systems. To them, it's free medical care. And, thanks to our crazy "citizen" definition, the pregnant flock into border towns, such as Yuma, and drop a "citizen", free of charge... to live forever on welfare.

(2) Some unscrupulous employers hire them at less than minimum wage, and collect no employment taxes or pay into the unemployment fund. Sheriff Joe has his fun with this bunch of clowns.

(3) They have no scruples about claiming citizenship benefits... after all, vote (illegally) Democrat and get your "bennies" for life :-(

Nope. But, not only were there no taxes, there were no government benefits.... thus the scales stayed in balance.

I think Sheriff Joe should round them up, fingerprint them, then load them on airplanes... not back to Mexico... send them to New York and Massachusetts >:-} ...Jim Thompson

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Good point--hearty people seeking work, striking their own bargains between themselves.

Today's welfare state changes that to favor poor people seeking (everyone else's) support--dragging all of society into it--a different dynamic.

James Arthur

None of the above would be a problem if it wasn't for the welfare state. The immigration problem is a creation of progressivism, in taxation and benefits.

Without progressivism, they'd be able to work productively, and helping their economic status would be a blow to the cartels.

But people see the immigrants as parasites instead of viewing the government that way. They don't have any grasp of basic economics. The wealth of a society is a function of how much productive work is done. It makes no difference if it's done by Mexicans, but the government is a behemoth of non-production.

Eliminate the welfare state and I would welcome them.

After seeing Atlas Shrugged Part 2, my friend and I noted how it was about secession by individuals because you can't get enough agreement for a whole state to secede. There is a petition in Oklahoma and Texas, but I think they're doing it wrong. It should be national, just to allow people to express their desire to do a John Galt.

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They already are, aren't they? 2% GDP growth, most of which is artificial and temporary, as people flee the workforce?

When profits are 'evil', when the 'just' reward for inventing improvements and investing to produce them is deemed zero (e.g. "medicine should not be for profit"), people don't.

James Arthur

I first read "Atlas Shrugged" in 1964. Started reading, couldn't stop, called in to Motorola, "I'm not coming in today". Read the whole thing in 22 hours straight ;-)

(I liked the actors better in Part 1 >:-} ...Jim Thompson

'The Ponderosa' & 'Ben Cartwright' are both fictional.

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Of course, if this were the case, they'd keep on going to Canada\, which actually does have a welfare state, or at least a closer approximation to a welfare state than the US offers.

In fact the problem is simply that the US is richer than Mexico, offering more and better paid jobs, even at the low end of the job market.

Where would they be able to work productively?

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Flee? they can't find work and give up trying. This isn't anything as active as fleeing.

Actually it isn't deemed zero, just less than the number the producers would like to see. Even capitalists shouldn't always get everything that they'd like - the US needs to spend more on welfare and education rather than less, despite your enthusiasm for re-introducing all the short-sighted idiocies of the Victorian Gadgrinds.

Not for profit medicine certainly seems to support a lot of the medically qualified very comfortably in the UK. They don't end up as obscenely rich as they'd like to be - unless they emmigrate to the US, like my medically qualified cousin (who is merely a well-paid acadamic, rather than a captain of rapacity).

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Only in James Arthur's fantasy land. US welfare is nasty and inadequate, and clearly failing to do the job it ought to do, which is to keep unemployed workers (and their kids) alive and healthy until the next job comes along. He resents having to pay for that inadequate service, whose failures are hampering the US economy, and wants it replaced with something cheaper which will do even more damage.

His economic ideas were current back when Dickens was writing so I shouldn't be surprised that he chooses to model himself of Dicken's Mr. Gradgrind.

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And so is most of US right-wing economic insight. It's a gripping and convincing narrative, but largely imaginary, and a very poor guide to reality, as Jim-out-of-touch-with-reality-Thompson illustrates here pretty much every day. He read "Atlas Shrugged" and didn't recognise it as fantasy.

WTF do you know about me? I grew up in a neighborhood where white was the minority.

The people we learned to avoid were the Irish kids.

Do you think I don't know that? I used it metaphorically.

That lot actually believes we had a surplus in 1998 because of a tax increase in 1993, as if the money was sent to DC via carrier pigeon, but even that wouldn't have taken 5 years.