My feeling about immigration - whether legal or illegal - is if you're not comfortable competing with immigrants, you have no right calling yourself a conservative. We're talking core American values here. Hard work. Open bidding. Immigrants have these two things down.
Keeping them on the other side of the border doesn't take those two competitive factors away. Greed heads will just take the jobs to them.
Hopefully, you've capitalized on the enormous advantage of having been born in America and having spoken English from the get go. If you're still afraid immigrants are going to take your job, I don't want to hear it. Go tell it to Carlos Mencia. He'll give you a wakeup call from the conservative perspective.
Now I'm going to talk about something seemingly unrelated.
Growing up a good young conservative, I despised unions. I thought they were for lazies. I could always find work because I busted my butt for cheap. Joining a union was just trading in one tyrant for another. That's what I thought, and to a certain extent I still harbor those biases.
As I got more life experience under my belt, and read a little history, I realized America once had the same labor environment as the third world has today. Little kids seven and eight years old worked for a few pennies a day back in 1800s America. Does this sound familiar? It should. It's why people want to get out of Guatemala and come to America. There's no child labor here any more. Why? Unions.
In China, unspeakable thousands of workers die in the mines every year. Why? Because the government sees no need to tie down industry with safety regulations. And why does our government have such evil interventionist policies? Unions.
When hoards of hard workers crowd our borders to take jobs away from poorly-educated, God-fearing rural folk, who puts up the loudest cries of outrage? Unions.
Now I'm going to talk about something seemingly unrelated.
The U.S.A. once had – maybe still does, you wouldn't know it – a highly successful program called the Peace Corps. It's my opinion that a couple greenhorn zealots, installing a water purification plant in an Algerian village, do more to promote the cause of liberty than a hundred 500 pound bombs. Set loose fifty thousand such committed souls in the world and they can make an enormous impact. That's my opinion. Disagree if you will.
Now, if you read the title of this piece, you already know where I'm going. The downside of union activity in America is our international competitive disadvantage. Guatemala can put fifty children to work sewing leisure suits for less money than we pay one American worker. If there's a couple miners trapped in America, we actually SHUT DOWN THE MINE while we try to save their lives. China apparently does not. If the workers don't want to work in Pakistan, the government might call out the military. We haven't done that here for decades.
So.
You could build a sort of Iron Curtain, and create lots of job opportunities for the tens of thousands of guards you'll need to operate it. I don't think that's a solution to the problem of people beating down the door to work in America.
Or, you open the borders and let anyone work for whatever they're willing to work for. I don't think we're prepared for that. Just between you and me, I think we've become lazy.
Hows about we have the government get together with the labor unions and come up with a plan, a plan that has that certain something Jimmy Carter called the "moral equivalent of war"? Why do people flock to America? It's because the employers in their countries of origin pay crap, have no safety regulations, and basically treat them like slaves. These peasants flocking to our borders aren't the "enemy"; it's the greedy bastards who are offering them nothing for their sweat and blood. And I do mean sweat; I do mean blood.
Let's give these people something to fight for at home. Let's have a peace-corp-scale program that sends union organizers into the countries where that economic force is most badly needed. It may take a few decades for it all to sort out. Factory owners in those countries may want their governments to retaliate. Hundreds of these passionate union organizers will die. It may mean you have to pay more for that Taiwanese pair of pants, but I have a hard time seeing a downside to eliminating the world's safe havens for Dickensian industrialists. You may love unions or you may hate unions, but I think we can be agreed that it's time for the entire third world to hear the refrain, "Eight hours for work; Eight hours for rest; Eight hours for what we will."
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Comments: 35
but yes unions have made the life of the average worker so much better in our two beautiful countries.
Unions changed that. As Carol says above, did the unions get greedy and corrupt too? You bet. But the workers kept those gains. GM is now threatened by bennies that their management negotiated with the unions twenty or thirty years ago. Union workers will tell you that they took those bennies in lieu of higher salaries...and now GM is trying to dump their responsibilities.
But those union bennies are making US industry non-competitive in world markets. So, your article is a good one, Ron. There will be commenters here...you can count on it...who will demonize immigrants or unions or whoever. But the truth is, this is a very tough problem and there are no easy solutions.
I like your ideas. I don't hold out much hope that they will be tried any time soon.
Even if there were laws to prevent it.. you would end up with people saying "I will work for 1 more hour for the same price"
Remember Hoover Dam being built during the great depression. There were workers waiting for people to die so that they could take their place on the job. Is that really what you want to go back to?
In China.. you have a completely open market for agriculture and every farmer is poor and starving.. so again Free Trade agreements may seem prosperous at first.. but it is really only for the few.
"My feeling about immigration - whether legal or illegal - is if you're not comfortable competing with immigrants, you have no right calling yourself a conservative. We're talking core American values here. Hard work. Open bidding. Immigrants have these two things down.
Keeping them on the other side of the border doesn't take those two competitive factors away. Greed heads will just take the jobs to them."
This is exactly why Alexander Hamilton, in the Fedarlist Papers, called for high tariffs on all imports. His theory?
High tariffs will force companies to build plants in this country, and hire American workers at fair wages, if they want to sell their products in this market. On the other hand, free trade lends itself to a million market distortions and even more human abuses. American workers should not be made to suffer just because the rest of the world's population allowed themselves to be enslaved since the beginning of recorded history. And yes, I do consider myself to be a conservative.
Debbie, I've said I wouldn't be comfortable in a union and it's true, and yet all jobs have their challenges. I suppose if your husband's shop wasn't unionized, there would be some other issues to deal with.
Geoffrey, I don't think there is such a thing as open markets. There are always power bases working to restrict trade to their own advantage. Large businesses can manipulate the market to the disadvantage of small businesses (Walmart for example, and Microsoft). A union a necessary counterbalance, and if it pushes wages too high, it will shake out with non-union companies having less expensive goods.
Denver, by isolating ourselves from the rest of the world, we give up all those cheap imports that make our paychecks go so far. High tariffs on our part would invite restrictions on the purchase of our agricultural and entertainment products abroad. Without foreign markets, we would have to pay what we ourselves want to demand for our work, and I think we need to ease ourselves out of that sense of entitlement.
I read a little pamphlet as a kid, and the name was something like "It didn't start with Nixon." While it was mostly a diatribe about what was wrong with liberalism, there were some things in there that made sense to me. One of them was this: "If it doesn't make sense on a small scale, it doesn't make sense on a large scale." We can restrict trade with countries outside our borders, so why not - if you're Maryland - restrict trade with other states; why not - if you're Osceola Iowa - pass ordinances against people driving to the city to buy products for less than the local hardware store? Maybe I should grow my own vegetables and sew my own clothes. The advantages of trade are just too great, and turning to the government for protection from competition is an attempt to create a system that improves on the natural course of things. I don't think managed trade works anywhere near as well as open trade.
Interesting idea, Ron, but it seems to me it's not that simple because those powers are all interrelated and interconnected. Today, labor suffers because of the collusion between business and government. The growing interdependence between organized religion and government has me terrified.
I think George is saying that "free trade" will not work. And the reason it won't is that people in other countries are not free and are exploited at the expense of the American worker. I hope I am not putting words in his mouth.
Problem is, many of our businesses, and all of our consumers are benefitting from that exploitation. In any trade deal, I have read, there are winners and losers. If you erected tariff walls, the flood of cheap imports would go away...and so would virtually all of our exports. What's the bottom line? I haven't a clue, but I'm not sure going back to the bad old days of tariffs or import quotas is the answer.
Dad taught me alot. He taught me to fight for what I believed in, to be outspoken and he taught me to "Gather" - especially in the face of adversity.
You know hillbillies - you pick on one, you deal with the whole family.
sigh...now I'm off topic.
Anyway - white Americans are pissed because the Mexicans are hungrier for a dollar, not accustomed to credit cards and watch how they spend. A mexican family will live on tortillas and pinto beans to save a buck. Funny, we ate pinto beans and fried bread at least twice a week growing up in the coal fields....
Jackie, I have every intention to needle the people who have an immigrant phobia. Back in my younger days I used to think it would be as simple as having open borders, and while I'm not opposed to that now, I think helping people make their own homeland liveable is the way to go. Who wouldn't want to live in Vietnam if you could make $15 an hour there. It's a beautiful country with a culture at least as rich as ours.
I spent a lot of time among the Mexican kids when I was growing up. I know how they were treated by the small town bigots. Part of my position on immigration stems from that. We're all individuals, but my experience with people who are learning English is they're better company than people who dislike anyone who doesn't look like they do.
1) Homophobia - I told a friend once, "Well, they'd better stay away from me." He asked what I was afraid of, and I had no answer for that, except maybe that I was afraid I might be gay. I revisit that question off and on and always come away with, "I'm powerfully attracted to women. Had I met a man that really turned me on, that would be who I am, but it never ever happens. So, I suppose I'm straight." I don't think anyone should be afraid to ask themselves the question, and if they are afraid even to approach the idea in the privacy of their own minds . . .
2) Labor unions - I think it was someone pointing out the child labor piece. What a loathesome thing. I also look at what I'm paid for what I do, and I have to ask myself how this could be. The only answer I could come up with is if someone has to be paid anywhere close to a living wage for digging ditches (rather invigorating and low stress work), why would anyone be a grant writer or a lawyer for the same wage? The answer is most would opt for the job with low responsibility. If laborers make okaydiocre money, then you have to pay quite a bit more for stressful work. That's why I make so much; it's not all my doing and I have the unions, in part, to thank for it.
3) Abortion/Euthenasia - I used to worry that there was a slippery slope, and that ending a life under any circumstances would eventually lead up to genocide. I've since been disgusted by the religious aspect being cynically used for political advantage. I also think women can't be equal unless they have control over their own fertility. None of this "keeping them barefoot and pregnant" for me. For me equal opportunity is a fundamental American value.
4) Gun ownership - I never liked guns, even as a young conservative. For some time, I was in favor of strict gun control, but after seeing Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld in control of our government (Bush is just a successful lobbyist), I think privately held arms are our best protection against a military coup or other totalitarian mess. So, we have rampant gun availability, and fear in one of the most popular tools for selling products and ideas. That makes for big trouble, but not as big as a Donald Rumsfeld having no restraints placed on him. Welcome to hell if that ever happens.
5) Fiscal responsibility - I read a right wing pamphlet as a 14-year-old, and it said the test for an economic policy is if it doesn't work on a small scale it won't work on a larger scale. Fiscal responsibility was key to this pamphlet's definition of conservatism, and in this I am unwavering.
6) Use of military force - I'm worthless as a fighter. Always have been and always will be. I was too young to go to Vietnam and it's just as well. I would have been a danger to my fellow troops because I always question whether my actions are going to hurt someone else. Not a battlefield value. I can see the importance of taking on, say, a Hitler. I'm happy to pay taxes if any military expenditures are used under such extreme circumstances. So, I actually was somewhat pro-war as a kid. That all ended when my heroes sold missiles to the "enemy" (Iran). That was a shocker that rattled me through and through. I now am very skeptical of the motives for going to war.
So, I hope that answered your questions. I pick and choose from the right and left according to what makes sense to me. I could be wrong, too. Every belief or action has some flaw in it - without exception. If that weren't the case, we'd be gods, and we're not.
My only quibble...gun control. In this modern day, the kinds of weapons that the average joe can own would be worthless against the military and law-enforcement powers of our government. As you say, you would be worthless as a fighter, as would I, weapon or not. The pen...and public opinion and political action...are mightier than the sword. Weapons in the hands of the public threaten the public far more than they do the government.
I do think though, given the enormous abount of difficulty they've had trying to bring order to Baghdad, I'd like to see them try to enforce marshall law in Waco or LA.
I like the way you think. Emphasis on "way." And I don't seriously disagree with your observations or proposals.
George, I actually voted for John/Jon? Anderson in 1979. He said we were in a mess and getting out of it wouldn't be easy. Reagan said it wouldn't be any problem at all, and he won. I hung around in the Republican glee club for a while, but the Iran/Contra thing really shook me up. I mean *really* shook me up.
I have often thought about Carter's presidency. He WAS a weak president, not sophisticated in the ways of Washington, and unable to enact most of his programs. But one thing he did that will always endear him to me is his Alternative Energy Programs, and his speech about the our growing dependence on foreign oil being the biggest threat the nation had faced since WWII. He was absolutely dead right on that, and he did start those programs. Of course, Reagan torpedoed every single one of them as soon as he got in office, but I have often thought...what if we had pursued Carter's plan. Would we have been in the Gulf in 1990? Would our presence there have stirred up Islamist fundamentalists? Would the WTC attacks have happened? And all the you-know-what that followed?
Of course, we'll never know, and a president is judged by what he accomplishes, not what he attempts. Still, I admire Jimmy Carter, as a human being, and yes, as a president. He really tried to do right, more than any president since.
It's the few crazies that screw things up for everybody else.