People are people, Kevin. That's what mystifies me about the immigration issue; the math on unemployment is usually ignored.
If US unemployment is at 5%, and someone of working-age comes to this country, then they will either be unemployed, or they will get a job, but that will be one less job for someone who was already here. And they may be willing to work for less, whether we're talking about unskilled or skilled labor.
The case with Intel (and Disney, and other large companies) is more offensive because it is more obvious. But if we could see the job shifts that incurred from low-skilled immigration as well, it might be just as disturbing.
What exactly is offensive to you about the case with Intel (Disney and other large companies)?
And when the confederates saw Jackson standing fearless as a stone wall the army of Northern Virginia took courage and drove the federal army off their land.
People are people but people coming here to avoid starvation and to work jobs Americans don't want is not the same thing as high skilled, educated, middle-upper class immigrants coming here to work as contract slaves. The latter effectively drives down wages starting at the middle. Ajax has repetedly misrepresented Bernie Sanders' remarks on this issue. He keep citing Brietbart which claims he is attacking illegal immigration when he is not.
But if we could see the job shifts that incurred from low-skilled immigration as well, it might be just as disturbing.
Unemployment is just below 5% and would probably be below 4% had State republicans not slashed public sector employment in the name of austerity. The only person I know who has an actual gripe with illegal immigrants is my uncle who has been hanging sheet rock all his life. He is 58 now, he was born in Alabama, he never finished school, he's been married five times, he has seven kids scattered all over the country and he has never bothered to pick up any other skill aside from hanging sheet rock. Of course, he votes Republican and hates all immigrants because they're easy to blame for his laziness and stupidity. Aside from him, I can't think of a single person who claims he is unemployed because of illegal immigrants.
According to an April 2015 symposium on the effects of illegal immigrants in the Southern Economic Journal, illegal immigrants actually raise wages for documented/native workers. Meanwhile, rules preventing illegal immigrants from getting driver’s licenses raise our car insurance premiums and E-Verify requirements raise the cost of doing business and reduce employment.
Last edited by YahooSeeker [Bot] on Sun Apr 24, 2016 11:41 am, edited 1 time in total.
Obama came into office supporting civil unions, but it wasn’t until 2012, with a little nudge from Vice President Joe Biden, that he came out in favor of same-sex marriage.
The president said that he initially didn’t think the labels for same-sex couples really mattered as long as they had the same rights as heterosexuals. Sasha and Malia helped him see why that wasn’t the case.
“I have to confess my children generally had an impact on me,” he said during a town hall in London. “People I loved who were in monogamous same-sex relationships explained to me what I should have understood earlier, which is it was not simply about legal rights but about a sense of stigma, that if you’re calling it something different it means that somehow it means less in the eyes of society.”
So which is it? Did Obama have an 'aha" realization where his daughters persuaded him that denying the term "marriage" to homosexuals was a legal endorsement of stigmatizing same-sex unions or did he go through a multi-year phase of opinion changing that he was aware of and felt the need to point out to gay special interests despite not knowing where that opinion would end up? It is of course possible that is "evolving" language was actually a bone thrown to LBGT activists that had no actual intent of communicating the general understanding that he was on their side and waiting for the right time to come out. But then that would be dishonest as well. In fact, that would be worse.
Let me suggest to you that Obama personally favored gay marriages, became willing to compromise on the issue for his personal ambition by advocating for civil unions that entail all the same rights as marriage if not the name, then later found that compromise unnecessary. He may have discovered that compromise was more harmful than he thought, but that's distinct from representing a public stance he did not believe in privately.
I probably should point out that my interpretation of Obama's views is the standard one and what's being proposed is revisionism. For example, here's what David Axelrod, Obama's campaign manager, had to say about Obama staking out an anti-gay marriage stance on his advice:
David Axelrod, who served as a top White House adviser after helping Obama get elected, said Obama begrudgingly followed his advice that he would face strong opposition from African American religious leaders and others if he let it be known he supported gay marriage. He said Obama “modified his position” to say he supported civil unions — but not same-sex marriage.
“Having prided himself on forthrightness, though, Obama never felt comfortable with his compromise and, no doubt, compromised position,” Axelrod wrote in the memoir “Believer: My Forty Years in Politics,” released Tuesday.
Axelrod’s disclosure affirmed what was widely suspected for years: that Obama’s May 2012 announcement that he supported gay marriage came long after the president had personally come to that conclusion. The year earlier, Obama and the White House had started saying his position was “evolving,” leading many to believe he was holding off on a public embrace of gay marriage for fear it could damage his re-election prospects. “If Obama’s views were ‘evolving’ publicly, they were fully evolved behind closed doors,” Axelrod wrote.
Is Axelrod lying here? Mind you, Obama was publically in favor of same-sex marriage in 1996 when he ran for and lost an Illinois Senate seat. His view became restricted to civil unions when he got national ambitions. How many liberal Democrats do you know go from supporting gay marriage to rescinding that support? Show me someone who supported gay marriage in 1996, but opposed in 2008 and I'll show you someone who either underwent a fundamentalist religious conversion or was a politician running for office.
People are people but people coming here to avoid starvation and to work jobs Americans don't want is not the same thing as high skilled, educated, middle-upper class immigrants coming here to work as contract slaves. The latter effectively drives down wages starting at the middle.
It's exactly the same thing.
It's also absurd to argue that there are any "jobs Americans don't want." Name any job, and there are plenty of Americans would do it for a certain wage. Picking tomatoes? Maybe Americans wouldn't do it for $6/hr, but I know plenty that would do it for $18/hr.
Otherwise, this conversation could be summarized as "Disney and Intel are simply bringing in workers from other parts of the world to do tech jobs that Americans won't do". (Unless I am wrong and the American workers have offered to do the work at the same or lower wages than the imported workers.)
I was just having a hard time deciphering where you were at on this issue. Your reasoning as always is sound.
I believe that Bernie once believed in protecting the interests of American workers, but he's realized that his old stances have become politically impossible in the Democratic party. So my original point was that he's not consistent. He's made changes in his policy based on the shifts in political winds in the Democratic party.
And when the confederates saw Jackson standing fearless as a stone wall the army of Northern Virginia took courage and drove the federal army off their land.
Getting somewhat back to the topic of Sanders vs. other alternatives, I have to admit this bit of news is uncomfortable when thinking about voting for Hillary.
I have every reason to believe she is better than Cruz or Trump as far as where they would take the country in terms of basic human and civil rights. But it really underscores the point Sanders makes about her not being on the side of the common voter when it comes to economic policy. It could be the best bit of anti-Hillary advertising the Kochs produce this election, and they took a page from Trump in doing it by using the free coverage that kind of sound bite was sure to create rather than pumping out ads from one of their dark money-funded S-PACs. Sadly, it's also true so...yeah.
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth? ~ Eiji Yoshikawa
cinepro wrote:It's also absurd to argue that there are any "jobs Americans don't want." Name any job, and there are plenty of Americans would do it for a certain wage. Picking tomatoes? Maybe Americans wouldn't do it for $6/hr, but I know plenty that would do it for $18/hr.
On the other side of the cost equation, that $18/hr probably doesn't go as far in this hypothetical where the costs to pick tomotoes is at least three times higher. Our current economic model has big problems that aren't being addressed by old paradigm arguments, and looking at both sides is necessary to see it. I often agree with the underlying arguments in your posts on minimum wage impacts. The problems related to this issue live close by and borrow it's sugar.
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth? ~ Eiji Yoshikawa