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Politics : Dutch Central Bank Sale Announcement Imminent? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sea_urchin who wrote (22881)	4/9/2005 11:46:35 AM
From: sea_urchin	Respond to of 81427

> there is no way that Americans will be prepared to work for the slave wages necessary to produce goods at competitive prices So they'll be lining up at the soup kitchens nytimes.com >>The sight of masses of Americans gratefully chowing down on free food is indeed a show, an amazingly discreet one that is classified not as outright hunger but as "food insecurity" by government specialists who are busy measuring the growing lines at soup kitchens and food pantries across the nation. There were 25.5 million supplicants regularly lining up in 2002; they were joined by 1.1 million more the next year. And even more arrive as unemployment and other government programs run out.<<

To: sea_urchin who wrote (22881)	4/11/2005 4:15:49 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81427

Re: Through the amnesty known as the "guest-worker" program, you are importing competition and outsourcing jobs. This results in depressed wages covering the full spectrum of employment. Mass immigration-generated wage depression exceeds $200 billion annually,... "The full spectrum of employment"?!? I don't think so... As I pointed out in my previous post #22870, the IT revolution is enforcing a new division of labor upon the industrialized powers that be. Ricardianites and "Comparative Advantage" advocates were right in their theory that every country somehow ends up in a "production niche" that best suits its factors of production (manpower, available capital, public infrastructures [ports, railroads,...]). However, they got it upside down! As western scholars belonging to the most advanced economies, they --and their corporate followers-- wrongly assumed that "the West" (that is, the US, Europe and, willy-nilly, Japan) had a birth right to high-skilled, intellectual labor and that the West would for ever be able to keep its edge over "third/second-world wannabes". They failed to grasp that the jobs that were most likely to be outsourced and farmed out overseas were NOT the low-skilled ones but the high-skilled, computer- and IT-based jobs. After all, it doesn't take a labor expert to figure out that cabbies, shoeshine boys, construction trades, caretakers for the elderly, office security guards/janitors, pizza delivery businesses, etc. are not gonna be farmed out to India or China any time soon!! Those are the jobs that will remain in the US/Europe to be filled by locals (or (il)legal immigrants). The computer programmers, webdesigners, data encoders, consumer electronics manufacturers, health cyberconsultants, cybernews editors, cyber-tour operators, cyber-stockbrokers, cyber-gambling and online casinos, cyber-bookstores, etc., on the other hand, make up the bulk of top-tier, high-skilled activities most likely --most easily-- outsourced to low-waged countries. So, let's face it: as China and India (and Malaysia, Korea,...) keep eating away at the top-tier, high-skilled job market, both the US and Europe will fall ever lower down the food chain.... ending up with the un-outsourcable drudgery and bottom-feeders --not the other way round. Gus