Rallying for fairness
Vanity Fair editor James Wolcott, from his blog:"White riot/I wanna riot/white riot--a riot of my own" sang-chanted the Clash on their first album, and that seems to be the rallying cry of angry white middle-aged pundits and radio hosts fed up with having Mexican flags flaunted in their faces like the dancing skirts of haughty senoritas. Skilled in the military art of shooting off their mouths, these are dime-brained demagogues ready to inflame ethnic and national antagonisms and defend the Alamo all over again, even if it means expelling millions of immigrants already here and then constructing "a (columnist Charles) Krauthammer Wall of non-Frank Gehry design" that will endure as a testament to the marriage of nativism and neoconservatism.
Hear, hear.
The National Day of Action for Immigrant Justice culminates this Monday, April 10th. Around the country, people will be rallying in support of principled immigration reform and against U.S. House of Representatives Resolution 4437, which would criminalize illegal immigrants and make felons of those who assist them. Hundreds of thousands are expected to take to the streets in large U.S. cities such as Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Washington D.C. A rally in Iowa is scheduled for Sunday afternoon at one o'clock at Nollen Plaza in downtown Des Moines. Count me in.
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Undocumented workers are often blamed for driving down U.S. wages, but it's really the corporate fatcats and their marionettes in Washington who have been denying millions of hard-working Americans a living wage. According to census data printed in last Sunday's New York Times, the median household income fell 3.8 percent, or $1,700, during the period of 1999 to 2004 despite the fact that average productivity climbed three percent per year.
The minimum wage has not been raised in eight years. In 2006, for the first time in history, a full-time U.S. worker earning the minimum allowable wage cannot afford a one-bedroom apartment anywhere in America at market rates. Meanwhile, the CEO of ExxonMobil earned roughly $13,700 an hour in 2005.
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Things have gotten so gloomy in America that even fortune cookies are scaling back their optimism. This is absolutely true-- my fortune at lunch read "Your are not illiterate."
posted by CM @ 5:23 PM
4 Comments:
The wording in your 2nd to last paragraph is misleading.
"the median household income fell 3.8 percent, or $1,700, during the period of 1999 to 2004 despite the fact that average productivity climbed three percent per year"
Productivity improving could simply be a result of less hours worked (which would in itself lead to a lower median household income). So, it's more likely that pay is down BECAUSE productivity is up, not despite it.
Now cut out this political blogging shit and start talking baseball. I liked the way Wrigley looked. The new bleachers didn't stand out and didn't change the aestetics of the park. (But I'm not happy with the fact they are called the Bud Light Bleachers). Pictures of Busch look pretty nice too.
Central and South America continue to drift to the left (see 1st link), and the U.S. continues to absorb increasing numbers of people fleeing those regions looking for opportunity. Funny how that works isn't it. I guess Mexico, Nicaragua, and the others just haven't drifted far enough to the left yet. When they finally drift as far as Cuba and Venezuela, I'm sure all of the gringos will be moving south looking for opportunity in a workers paradise.
How can pro-union progressives in the U.S. say that undocumented workers are not driving down wages in the U.S.?
1.) For example, small time contractors building houses, not corporate fatcats, are the ones hiring undocumented dayworkers under the table for cash instead of hiring union workers at union wages plus FICA. New Orleans is being rebuild by non-union undocumented workers (see 2nd link).
2.) Basic economics. Millions of new workers increase the labor supply while the demand for labor does not change which decreases wages. Reducing the supply of workers would work in the opposite way to increase wages. This would be the most applicable for those with minimum wage jobs because employers would be forced to pay better than the minimum wage to attract the scarce resource of unskilled labor.
The living wage is not the way to raise household income. Here is a quote from the 3rd link, "Decades of research have shown that the minimum wage harms the least-skilled workers from poor families while heavily benefiting young workers from middle-income households. Several studies critical of the living wage come to similar conclusions. The main beneficiaries of the living wage are public-sector unionized employees because of the reduced incentives for local governments to contract out work. Instead of exploiting grievances of the marginally employed against 'greedy' employers, advocates for the poor should focus their energies on building the skills of the poor."
More basic economics: raising wages above the going market rate causes the labor supply to exceed demand resulting in unemployment.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4861320.stm
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-labor4apr04%2C0%2C6858623.story
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-493es.html
TA
It's true that George W. Bush has inspired more Marxist thought in Latin America than Che Guevara ever dreamed, thanks to his global economic policy and his neglect of the region in favor of a war for oil in the Middle East. They'll never have a workers' paradise there anymore than we will, but perhaps they'll at long last be rid of the right-wing military dictators the U.S. propped up for decades while multi-national companies looted their natural resources.
If there are more South and Central Americans attempting to enter the United States than there were 20 or 30 years ago (and that's highly debatable,) it's probably only because they aren't being tortured by Reagan-supported "strongmen" in dank basements. For years, they had even more unchecked capitalism than we did.
New Orleans is being rebuilt by non-union, undocumented workers because our government allowed the Haliburton-style contractors to mug the American taxpayer. These are not "small contractors." That reconstruction effort is actually a great example of the exploitation of the entire workforce, and it's going to effect everyone negatively except the CEOs who will make off like bandits once again.
You can debate the measure of worker productivity, but at least admit the system under your descriptions is therefore broken. And there are hard facts on cost of living-- a 46 percent increase for housing, healthcare, education, and childcare between 1991 and 2002, according to the Economic Policy Institute, not the corporate socialists at the Cato Institute, per TA's reference.
The three-pronged solution is regulation, regulation, and regulation. We need to force these large companies- by law- to stop exporting jobs overseas and making it more difficult for smaller companies to compete, we need to reward full-time work with full-time wages and benefits consistent with our shared social and religious values, and we need a progressive tax system that provides relief for the people doing the heavy lifting, not one that does things like abolishing the inheritance tax for the top one percent of wealth-holders.
And finally, we need to welcome in a new supply of legal immigrants and guest workers so that, once again, the best and brightest are allowed to come here to study and invent, which is no longer the case. Our economic system needs more motivated people paying in, and the plan has to include a sensible visa policy that allows workers to not only come to America safely, but return home safely as well, thus improving the living conditions of the part of the world we've treated as our backyard for generations.
If we don't, I fear we'll soon have a hard time distinguishing where the backyard ends and the house begins.
I don't like sounding like a probusiness Republican because they're many things in the system under my description that stink. I don't disagree with much of what you said. But let's face it, the Haliburton-style corporations control the country. Regulation could change this, but how can anyone realistically look to our Federal government to pass living wage and other laws that would increase labor costs for these corporations? IMHO, expecting this type of regulation as a solution is completely unrealistic and hopeless. We all know how these people get re-elected.
This is why I still cannot understand why progressive union supporters argue that undocumented workers are not driving down wages today and in the foreseeable future. Today there is no living wage. Today there is virtually no enforcement of the laws preventing people from hiring illegals under the table. There are no laws against outsourcing jobs. Today increasing the supply of low skilled immigrant labor only makes it easier for them to be hired at a lower wage. How can this possibly be a good thing for organized labor in the U.S.?
Given the current circumstances in the U.S., increasing the supply of low skilled labor does help corporations keep labor costs down. TA
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