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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Steve Lokness who wrote (254645)	7/1/2014 4:10:42 PM
From: stsimon	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 541856

So lets look at legal immigration. In my home State the government will not raise salaries for IT workers to compeitive levels while drastically reducing benefits. Salaried workers cannot be hired. Consequently, a large number of contract folks on H1 visas are hired, mostly from India. These contract workers send a good chunk of their pay back to the home country. In addition, the contract labor is more expensive than salaried State workers would be even at competitive salaries and benefits. A second problem, and a large one going forward, is the use of robots, (software and hardware), to replace human workers. There are no SS taxes paid by the employers for robots, so over time the number of workers will continue to shrink even if immigration continues. The Luddites were correct, they were just early on their timing. IMHO.

To: Steve Lokness who wrote (254645)	7/1/2014 4:40:27 PM
From: research1234	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541856

Work that US workers won't do is not a recent phenomenon. California and the deep south agriculture have always relied on immigrant labor, as has much of the meat and chicken picking and packing businesses. The dirty secret is that if those businesses paid decent wages and provided better working conditions, food costs would go up substantially. Just cause you don't like it doesn't make it wrong. If our immigration system got fixed, legal immigrants would still be willing to do the crappy work for crappy wages cause its still better than what they can get in their home countries. I'm sure that if we could eavesdrop on long time US residents in the 19th century, we would hear the same arguments about how the cheap foreign labor was destroying US jobs. But it didn't - it freed up US labor to do higher level work. And that's what a well thought out immigration policy could do today if it could get done. US bonds are a linchpin of the global financial system. Its clear from the low rates of interest that US bonds pay that buyers, whether private, public or sovereign, do trust that the US will keep paying interest as far as the eye can see.The system masters will not just let it all collapse in a pique if they do start to mistrust the US financial outlook. They will make sure that the system keeps working by whatever means necessary. It is absolutely false equivalence to claim that Reps are just as much at fault as Dems. It is quite clear that the current populist Rep faction neither likes nor trusts the federal government, and is not at all interested in finding common ground with Dems to craft solutions. Their approach has been nihilistic - their way or no way. They appear to have no interest in any real discussions based on facts or existing economic theory that they do not like. The governing structure of the US requires constant compromise to make it work - whether one sees that as idiocy or brilliance, it simply is they only way our system can work. When one side refuses to compromise on the key issues of the day, they start to loose their claims of legitimacy IMO.