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Post by kramer on Dec 10, 2008 19:23:18 GMT -6
Unreal. We are in the midst of one of the worst economic depressions we have ever seen, and Bush, in the dead of night so no one will notice, changes laws to make increasing foreign farm workers easier. This law will reduce farm worker wages even further, (they make less than $15,000/yr now which is poverty level) and add many more foreign workers onto the US farm industry rosters. Just what we need as millions of Americans are losing their jobs. Lou Dobbs talked about this on his show tonight, he was steaming. When his transcripts come out, you can see what he had to say. These were the only stories I could find on the web at the moment. www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/57549.htmlwww.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g_ZJ8etax13XemL7KIn8FUy7knCAD950508O0WASHINGTON (AP) — As it prepares to leave office, the Bush administration is moving to make it easier for U.S. farming companies to hire foreign field workers, which farmworker groups say will worsen wages and working conditions.
Farm groups said that changes to the H2A visa program, used by the agriculture industry to hire temporary farm workers, were posted on the Labor Department's Web site at midnight Tuesday but have since been taken down.So, we're going to allow in more legal foreign workers, we've already let in 15 to 30 million illegals, we've outsourced over 3 million (this number might actually be 5 million, more on that later) jobs in the last 8 years... Where's the light at the end of the tunnel in this scenario?
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Post by kramer on Dec 6, 2008 9:23:39 GMT -6
The only thing that's going to drive prices up in the long-run is increased wages and employment of American workers, thus increasing their aggregate and average wage-financed buying power. The only way to do that is to bring back American industry and the jobs that go with it. That'll only happen when we adopt the same protectionist policies that every other country on the planet employs except the United States. We need emergency tariffs right now, and before any further stimulus is doled out, to ensure that any stimulation of production demand from American consumers is filled by production by American workers, and only American workers. I'm pretty much against the idea of tariffs. However, that is if the nations we are dealing with are not using them. You're right, we should impose tariffs on those countries. I didn't realize we were taking in the shorts so hard over tariffs... I thought only a few countries had them on us.
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Post by kramer on Dec 6, 2008 9:11:48 GMT -6
I never even considered Mexico in the bailout.
If those plants in Mexico do close, I wonder how many of those workers will come here?
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Post by kramer on Dec 6, 2008 1:11:04 GMT -6
Millions and millions of Americans and people worldwide know that George W. Bush made 9/11 the trigger for initiating an illegal war in Iraq that has killed and maimed so many thousands of people. Didn't Iraq fire on our planes when we were patrolling the no-fly zones? Isn't this an act of war? Surely millions more people now understand that George W. Bush bears responsibility for creating the conditions that encouraged greed-driven capitalism to rape and murder the middle class and push us into the current global economic meltdown. By removing government oversight and regulation he committed the greatest acts of fraud in the history of mankind. After he made American democracy delusional he made prosperity delusional. Yeah, he bears responsibility but not all of it. Fannie and Freddie were mainly projects of the left. Idiots like Barney Frank defended them and said they were in great financial shape right before they collapsed. F&F bought MBS which freed up money for banks to make more loans which fueled this mess. Personally, I blame republicans, democrats, greedy people, banks, wall street. I'm sure I missed a few. People like Bill Clinton and Robert Reich have said that part of the blame belongs to democrats. You can't just pin it on Bush. I wonder if this mess would have had never happened if the CRA wasn't started. Somehow, I think when banks were encouraged to make loans to people with bad credit histories, I got to believe that they thought it was ok to make them to people with good credit histories. Especially with the implied backing of those loans by F&F.
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Post by kramer on Dec 6, 2008 0:59:12 GMT -6
In my opinion, I think home prices need to fall to what the market says. If the government steps in and helps people in trouble, I think this is going to slow down but not stop the slide in prices. This is just going to prolong this economic mess. And what happens if prices do continue to fall? Those people who were just helped will probably walk away again when they go upside down. Anybody ever see this graph of home prices from Robert Shiller? You can see that the housing bubble started under Clinton. I suspect that the tech stock market crash and 911 were the main reasons Greenspan kept rates low which I think, unfortunately added to the growth of the bubble. Bush making loans available to almost anybody (and I heard illegals as well) topped it off.
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Post by kramer on Dec 2, 2008 19:55:28 GMT -6
Based on what I've been reading, these people (Rubin and Podesta for example) support globalization and one of the reasons why is to alleviate global poverty. It also ties in with the UN's MDG's (millennium development goals). You probably think I'm a nut for saying this but this is what I've read THEM saying. No, I don't think you're a nut at all. I'm sure they are saying that. I think you're right on the money about them supporting globalization under the false claim of alleviating poverty outside the US (while increasing it in the US). But Rubin et al also profit handsomely from their fake attempts to "fight poverty" in other countries by replacing high-wage American workers with starvation-wage foreign workers. The end result is that most of the savings from labor cost reductions go to the American multinationals who employ foreign workers, not to the workers themselves. Only a small fraction of the labor cost savings are passed on to American worker-consumers, while ALL of the labor cost "savings" come out of the pockets of American workers. How do these guys profit from this, do they have stock in these companies? Are there any sites that track this? And what are some of the big multi-national companies that are behind this? As far as workers in developing countries working for less money than those in developed countries, perhaps a worldwide minimum wage is in order?
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Post by kramer on Dec 2, 2008 15:53:47 GMT -6
Economist Dean Baker also has trouble with the $70/hour autoworkers myth. " The New York Times told readers that GM's autoworkers are paid $70 an hour (including health care and pension). This is not true. The base pay is about $28 an hour. If health care cost per worker average $12,000 per year, that adds in another $6 an hour. If the pension payment takes up 25 percent of base pay (an extremely high pension), that gets you another $7 an hour, bringing the total to $41 an hour. That's decent pay, but still a long way from $70 an hour.
How does the NYT get from $41 to $70? Well the trick is to add in GM's legacy costs, the pension and health care costs for retired workers. These legacy costs are a serious expense for GM, but this is not money being paid to current workers. The person on the line in 2008 is not benefiting from these legacy costs.
It would be helpful if the NYT could get its numbers straight. It certainly can affect public support for a bailout if they are led to believe that autoworkers are paid much more than is actually the case." www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/beat_the_press_archive?month=11&year=2008&base_name=gm_auto_workers_are_not_paid_7I knew right from the beginning that the $70.00/hr number was when you included union legacy costs. Why it wasn't report this way is beyond me. Anyway, Toyota and Honda have companies in America and they obviously don't have legacy costs (at least nowhere near the scale of GM's and Ford's). So why wouldn't these union legacy costs be hurting GM and Ford in regards to competing with Toyota and Honda? Aren't these legacy costs added into the price of their cars?
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Post by kramer on Dec 2, 2008 15:11:46 GMT -6
Not a one of them -- Rubin, Summers, Furman, Ghoulspee, et al--has seen the light yet on the damage caused to Americans by globalization. It's interesting that Obama completely ignored Joseph Stiglitz, also a former Clinton appointee, but one who has seen the light about globalization, and has come to see the damage it causes. Based on what I've been reading, these people (Rubin and Podesta for example) support globalization and one of the reasons why is to alleviate global poverty. It also ties in with the UN's MDG's (millennium development goals). You probably think I'm a nut for saying this but this is what I've read THEM saying.
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