60 Minutes: Devastating Story on National Unemployment (house of representatives, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan)

[Neuling]

Originally Posted by parfleche

I'm in construction where they steal high paying jobs.I used to be a project manager but today speaking bi lingual has become a requirement. so I'm wearing my nail bags and competing with them

So, if you know them, can't you tell the authorities?

[momonkey]

Originally Posted by Katiana

Let's by all means go back to the days of no health insurance provided by employers, no concerns about environmental degradation, no safety net for anyone. It was so much better back then, with people starving to death, getting killed regularly in industrial accidents, and so forth.

Why should an employer lay off employees in advance of any of this happening and blame it on Obama?

Has anyone seen my violin?


Oh, here it is...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rSd1...eature=related

[Wapasha]

Originally Posted by Neuling

All I am saying is that I think it is an illusion to assume that there would be jobs for those masses of unemployed Americans if only there were no immigrants. Sometimes there is simply a huge gap between supply and demand, they don't match. I know that discussion from other countries as well, it is more like the search for a scapegoat when the real problems are structural.
I remember that American products have had a bad reputation because of quality issues at least since the early 1980s, way before Obama. It was not just cars from Detroit, same goes for musical instruments (just look at how the American synthesizer manufacturers were rolled over by the Japanese). The US is good at software, but relative to turnover that is not an industry to provide many jobs, especially to the masses. Not to mention given the Indian competition.
A lot of the US economy depends on intellectual property, but that is also a dangerous terrain in a globalized world.
I can't think of a single product category anymore where I would say to myself, if I need a product like that it should be American, let alone made in the US. The really good stuff from the US is very overpriced, usually hand-made products such as guitars hardly anyone can afford.

But common sense tell us that even if we subtract the farm jobs from the list, that still leaves about a million jobs that are taken by illegal aliens,

[ovcatto]

Originally Posted by momonkey

Well, we see the federal government has created some $200K stimulus jobs with borrowed money, but has done nothing to make investing in the US economy a smart thing to do.

Ah, no we haven't. One of the fallacies of the $200K stimulus jobs is that the figures that I've seen touted make rely on 4th grade maths, you take the total amount of the stimulus grant and divide it by the number of jobs created. Of course such an equation never accounts for materials and tools required to make the job useful in the first place... oh well.

Anyway, I would agree that it hasn't done enough, however the argument is a bit specious since needed infrastructure are needed to stimulate investment in new economic markets such as developing a intelligent electrical grid, investment in alternate energy technologies can and should put in place the opportunity to replace dying industries with new ones.

Our corporate taxes are too high and if you are successful you'll pay big capital gains taxes.

So, say the corporations yet when a company like Google uses tax avoidance to trim $3.1 billion off of its tax bill one has to wonder, where would Google be without the massive investment in the internet paid for with tax dollars would have been without such investment.

Tax and cap is still floating around out there making creating a new business risky at best.

New old technology businesses yes, new efficient ones, not so much. You can either hang on to your bible, guns and old economies or you can face the fact that the only way to build a sustainable new economy is give greater weight to new clean industries.

The return on investment in the US is a big question mark.

With the investment market riding on highs not seen since the 90's the only question is mark is what the .... are you talking about? The problem isn't investment or the return on those investments. The problem is jobs!

The same New Deal policies that gave us the Great Depression are in play now and yielding the same results.

You see this is what I am talking about when it comes in the ill-education of the reactionaries. The Great Depression didn't began in 1929 reached bottom in 1932 and only began to rise again after the 1932 elections, FOUR YEARS before the introduction of the first New Deal legislation.

[ovcatto]

Ladies and gentleman, I present the how Real Americans™ demonstrate their patriotic™ concerns for their fellow citizens.

Originally Posted by momonkey

Has anyone seen my violin?

[momonkey]

Originally Posted by Neuling

Don't illegal immigrants perform mostly low-level, bad-paying jobs anyway? Do Americans with degrees want those jobs and are they willing to work for such low salaries?

Well, in the video I watched, the lady had to compete with a homeless guy to the bottles and cans, so it appears they are willing to take those jobs.

P.S. I didn't want to say this in front of everyone because I know liberals have a hard time grasping basic economic concepts. If the illegal immigrant weren't here to work at the job for sub-minimum wages, it would necessarily pay more. That would be an example of what we conservatives call "supply and demand".

[Neuling]

Originally Posted by Wapasha

But common sense tell us that even if we subtract the farm jobs from the list, that still leaves about a million jobs that are taken by illegal aliens,

I just think this is barking up the wrong tree. In my view it is the greed of employers and investors that drives down wages and salaries, and to a certain extent consumers wanting cheap products and thus forcing producers to cut costs. If employers were willing and able to pay decent wages, there would not be an army of illegals in your country. I read that quite a number of illegals have voluntarily returned back home because of the crisis in the US. Makes me think that it is the supply of low-paying jobs that attracts them in the first place.

[parfleche]

Originally Posted by Neuling

So, if you know them, can't you tell the authorities?

most of my work is in Durango Co a sanctuary city

[db108108]

The recession isn't the fault of Obama, or even Bush. This is a structural recession that has been coming for a LONG time and there really is no easy way out. The growth of the US economy over the past 25 years has been fueled by consumption, which, in turn, was fueled by consumer credit. People got in up to the eyeballs, and the economy rolled along. Suddenly, there's a liquidity crisis, credit becomes tight, people can no longer spend, and BOOM! Recession.

There's really only one immediate way out of this: to get people to spend. But how can they when they have no job? It's a catch-22, and there's no way out. What we really need are structural changes to the economy, and a rolling back of some free-trade agreements. But again, that's impossible due to how much debt is held overseas.

I did watch the 60 Minutes piece last night - it was very sad. Especially the woman who went from making 70K two years ago to collecting bottles now. What's the answer here?

[Wayland Woman]

Originally Posted by momonkey

Well, in the video I watched, the lady had to compete with a homeless guy to the bottles and cans, so it appears they are willing to take those jobs.

P.S. I didn't want to say this in front of everyone because I know liberals have a hard time grasping basic economic concepts. If the illegal immigrant weren't here to work at the job for sub-minimum wages, it would necessarily pay more. That would be an example of what we conservatives call "supply and demand".

If business owners---who are mostly conservative Republicans---would quit hiring illegal immigrants at sub-standard wages then the illegal immigrants wouldn't be coming here in the first place. Why do some people have a hard time grasping THAT concept?