The Financial Times has a nearly-4000 word article on "The Crisis of the American Middle Class" that manages never to mention any words beginning with the letters "immigra." The closest reference is:
Much as they disagree on what has caused the Great Stagnation, economists also differ on the remedies. Most agree that better education improves people’s earnings potential, even if it does not solve the underlying problem. Others point out that not everybody can be a bond trader, a software entrepreneur or a Harvard professor.
Many of the jobs of the future will be in “inter-personal” roles that cannot be easily replaced by computers or foreigners – janitors, beauty technicians, home carers and landscape gardeners, for whom college is often superfluous."
Huh? "Janitors, beauty technicians, home carers and landscape gardeners" "cannot be easily replaced by ... foreigners."
Thank God we don't have to worry about that happening in the future in America. Thank God America leads the world in jobs for economists.
What country is this article about again?
Posts
21 comments:
Three things: labor-saving technology, third world immigration, and trading with low-wage countries are bringing wages down. They all push real hourly wages down by increasing the supply and decreasing the demand for labor relative to capital. The logical remedies would a shorter workweek to combat labor-saving technology; a (possibly world-wide) moratorium on large-scale immigration; and either substantial tariffs on low-wage imports from Asia or a plan to tax capital and subsidize wages to redistribute the gains of trade.
Well, it doesn't seem to be only America. R. J. Stove wrote the following in 2009, on Takimag, about his experiences briefly studying "Knowledge Management" at an Australian college:
Once upon a time, in the Bad Old Days (we were asked to believe), people earned money by making things. Now, in the Brave New World, people earned money by thinking things. This Is The Knowledge Economy. We Love The Knowledge Economy. Long Live The Knowledge Economy. Rah Rah Rah!
No amount of contrary evidence could shake lecturers', and textbook writers', faith in this Knowledge Economy gig. The fact that every knowledge-worker I know is about to lose his job or has already lost it — even as plumbers, electricians, bricklayers, and other non-knowledge-workers are earning at least six-figure annual salaries — was simply not allowed to disturb the prevailing euphoria. Since at least euphoria made a change from impenetrability, I remained mostly silent.
He went on to say that it was actually advantageous in this course "if you cannot speak enough intelligible English to buy a train ticket without an interpreter's assistance." Yeah, I can think of parts of formerly middle-class, Caucasian, America where that applies.
So you read that too! I thought I'd be first out of the gate on that one!
The American Dream was killed by the Mexican one. Simple as that.
Australia under Labor is dead set on importing millions of Sharia-demanding Muslims, for votes/welfare and criminal gangs to cleanse Aussies out of ... Australia.
OT: the FT is far better than the WSJ on commodities, global financial markets (editor Gillian Tett was one of the few who called the housing market bubble in 2005-6), and the like. About the US and particularly politics they don't have a clue and article author Ed Luce is very clueless (and an Obama worshipper who finds all Obama opponents and most Americans "racist"). You can see his contempt for ordinary Americans who are not elites in his article.
However, for basic business news its cheaper the first year than the WSJ.
They obviously mean foreigners who provide telecommunicated services (Indian call centers) or manufactured goods (Chinese widgets) shipped over here: once we let them in, they're not "foreigners."
"Three things: labor-saving technology, third world immigration, and trading with low-wage countries are bringing wages down." Historically there was a fourth - working wives.
How many times have you heard someone say that real median wages in America haven't increased since 1973, without mentioning mass immigration? In addition to depressing wage growth for low-paid (existing) Americans, far more to the point, the entry of millions at the bottom end has changed who the median American worker is.
"During my visit two expressionless Mormon “home visitors” wearing identical shirts and ties turned up and whisked Dustin, Ruth and their two-year-old son into their bedroom for counselling. “I would love to know what they’re saying in there,” says Shareen in a stage whisper."
I'd like to know what they were talking about, too.
Janitors can be replaced by foreigners in a foreign country once human-controlled robots become affordable.
"How many times have you heard someone say that real median wages in America haven't increased since 1973, without mentioning mass immigration? In addition to depressing wage growth for low-paid (existing) Americans, far more to the point, the entry of millions at the bottom end has changed who the median American worker is."
Bingo! This oft-quoted statistic just drives me nuts! Even if you disregard the wage-depressing effects of immigration, adding so many illiterate peasants to the workforce has indubitably altered the statistics. Anyone who cites this statistic without mentioning the immigrant factor is a straight-up liar.
PC makes you stupid.
Until something is done about the trade deficit it will just get worse. Trade is far more damaging than immigration to low/middle class wages. The trade deficit runs about 5% of GDP - that's worth about 7 million average private sector jobs assuming a private sector labor force of about 140 million.
At this point, politicians should be judged on the economy based on one issue - tariffs until trade is balanced. Use the Warren Buffet plan. Anything else is just empty talk while the bankers get rich.
> Many of the jobs of the future will be in “inter-personal” roles that cannot be easily replaced by computers or foreigners – janitors, beauty technicians, home carers and landscape gardeners, for whom college is often superfluous.
The only way that sentence makes sense is if I replace "foreigners" with "outsourced".
Huh? "Janitors, beauty technicians, home carers and landscape gardeners" "cannot be easily replaced by ... foreigners."
That's funny... in major U.S. cities, those jobs are almost always done by immigrants of one kind or another.
How many times have you heard someone say that real median wages in America haven't increased since 1973, without mentioning mass immigration?
None.
This piece sounds like the UK - stagnant or falling real wages, salaries at the top accelerating remorselessly away, young people burdened by education debt in the years they should be saving for that house deposit ...
Three quotes from far-left activists - two pro-immigration British, one German :
Labour MP Jon Cruddas, 2005 :
"… immigration has been used as an informal reserve army of cheap labour. People see this at their workplace, feel it in their pocket and see it in their community – and therefore perceive it as a critical component of their own relative impoverishment. Objectively, the social wage of many of my constituents is in decline. House prices rise inexorably, and public service improvements fail to match local population expansion. At work, their conditions, in real terms, are in decline through the unregulated use of cheap migrant labour."
Billy Bragg, 2010 :
"Everyone else in London benefits from multiculturalism and cheap labour…"
Karl Marx, 1847 :
"The main purpose of the bourgeois in relation to the worker is, of course, to have the commodity labour as cheaply as possible, which is only possible when the supply of this commodity is as large as possible in relation to the demand for it"
"Historically there was a fourth - working wives."
That was the first, but it hit critical mass by the early 1990's, so other measures were implemented. What better way to nuke the nuclear family, all while also driving down wages/salaries, appeasing the feminists, and finding a way to have others raising (and perhaps influencing or indoctrinating) your children in one fell swoop?
Bringing up this major cause of wage stagnation up in mixed company is a great ice breaker.
Many of the jobs of the future will be in “inter-personal” roles that cannot be easily replaced by computers or foreigners – janitors, beauty technicians, home carers and landscape gardeners ...
Servants, in other words.
Servants, in other words.
LOL'ed.
[In a gallows humor kinduva way.]
In my link to it on the Italy thread I also posted this quote, which I found interesting: "'I have this gnawing feeling about the future of America,' says [Nobel Economics Laureate] Spence. 'When people lose the sense of optimism, things tend to get more volatile. The future I most fear for America is Latin American: a grossly unequal society that is prone to wild swings from populism to orthodoxy, which makes sensible government increasingly hard to imagine.'"
A country importing millions of Latinos becoming more Latin America-like. Gee, whuddathunkit?
Every morning just remember to look in the mirror and repeat three thousand times, "Man is a blank slate. Race is a social construct."
"During my visit two expressionless Mormon “home visitors” wearing identical shirts and ties turned up and whisked Dustin, Ruth and their two-year-old son into their bedroom for counselling. “I would love to know what they’re saying in there,” says Shareen in a stage whisper."
I'd like to know what they were talking about, too.
Home teachers, not "home visitors." They weren't counselling, but just chatting/giving a Sunday School-type lesson. Why they were expressionless, or wearing the same ties, is beyond me, but it's atypical. And as for what they were talking about: trust me, you'd be bored. They probably only went into the bedroom so not to bother everyone else.
How many times have you heard someone say that real median wages in America haven't increased since 1973, without mentioning mass immigration?
Oh, if I'm in the room I always mention it.
How many times have you heard someone say that real median wages in America haven't increased since 1973, without mentioning mass immigration?
Women really started entering the workforce around 1973 as well. Also, 1974 was the peak of American oil output. Also the U.S. went off the International gold standard in 1971. Lots of things worked together to start lowering wages around that time.
jobs of the future, like i've been saying, are stuff like nurse and wal-mart stocker and bartender and waiter.
the people who signal the decline of a nation.
"How many times have you heard someone say that real median wages in America haven't increased since 1973, without mentioning mass immigration?"
haha, no kidding.
it does seem like the average guy has earned $40000 a year for like, oh, at least 20 years now.
i bet in 2020 the average guy will still be earning a wage of about $40000 a year.
employers have not increased the wages they offer to salaried employess in a very long time. i look at what the new guys at lots of different low skill jobs make, and it's about the same hourly wage i was making in the 80s and 90s.
the new guy still gets 12 bucks an hour to start. just like he did in 1990.
Post a Comment