Republicans can stop joking around: they know as well as anyone that paying off the jobless is the best way to keep people from rioting in the streets—and them in power.
The Politics of Unemployment
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication, WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "The Stringer."
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2 years of unemployment is just long enough to make oneself completely unhireable preparing them for a lifetime of government handouts.
If we got rid of illegals, we’d have at least 1 million jobs with NO takers.
Seriously, the numbers (both real and media deflated) of illegals are a little higher than “Unemployed”. Oh, sure, “Lousy” jobs, but jobs that they pay illegals barely anything for. Have a whole crop set to rot on the vine and Judd the Farmer (an LLC) will pay $16 an hour + to “Lazy Gringo Pickers”.
And to get rid of illegals, we don’t need no stinkin fence, no profiling, and hopefully not vigilante murdering. Frankly, just check the books randomly and frequently on employers and FULLY prosecute any employers who’ve hired illegals. Problem solved. No jobs, very few illegals and the worse criminals (gang members, drug dealers, human traffickers) with them have no “Underground Community” to hide in.
Likewise, if we banned the shipping of jobs overseas by corporations that want to sell here, we’d solve the problem. But … whether banning the movement of (undocumented) people, or the movement of jobs and goods, you are messing with the free market! Ayn Rand is going to haunt your dreams!
Lee,
If union leaders hadn’t been so greedy, and priced themselves out of the market, perhaps there would be more jobs here.
To US 395,
Greedy?
Actually, it’s the businessmen who thought (and got Ray-Gun to agree with them) who were greedy by thinking that it was “Fair Trade” to lay off a man at a shoe factory and have his job shipped overseas so a barefoot girl chained to a post in the floor of a ramshackle “Factory” could have it.
So, the first person gets a wage that goes back into the local economy and the factory has to follow US laws and regulations… The second doesn’t.
However, guess what, the second costs as much or more than the first one…
1. The cost of transport, even in the 90s when this went from a lot to virtually all, made up the difference.
2. The companies have NO loyalty, those that manufacture, they use the same equipment/technology and make “Knock-offs” that rule their market and infringe on the USA one, costing incalculable royalty/development $.
3. The employees might get paid enough to slowly starve to death, but the local “Generalismo Sadismo” comes in weekly like it’s Haloween and he wants “Candy” aka a “Bribe” or “Tea Money” as it’s called in most of Asia.
But they get “Tax breaks and Subsidies” to pay for it so they can keep most of this false economy inflated profit margin while keeping the prices just below what a lawfully run and fair waged US economy plant could make it for.
It’s like there’s a dam, then a rich guy on the artificial lake punches a hole in the dam so he can get “Free” power. However, every 1 part of energy his crude paddlewheel hooked up to an engine machine “Earns” it costs 9 parts of energy from the real generator. Then with all his friends doing the same thing, the lake starts to get lower and the real generator starts charging the people more for energy. So the rich scream to destroy farmland by diverting another river to fill the dam faster. And, it should not take an engineer to know that this is really NOT a good idea, times two… Either event, the holes in the dam, then the diversion of more water to compensate, threaten to collapse the whole structure catastrophically. But the rich don’t care as long as they get their “Free” power, confident they can see it when the dam collapses and motor to their mansions in time, then escape through the back roads.
Ray-Gun? It’s been years since I’ve heard that oldie. The number of manufacturing jobs in the US have been largely stable until the mid-90’s. Since the mid 90’s manufacturing jobs in the US have shrunk by 20%. Want to guess who was president in the mid-90’s and signed GATT?
Ray-Gun opened the door, which Bush Sr., Clinton and then Bush Jr. opened wider and wider and wider.
Technically Nixon started it, Carter tried to close it, then Ray-Gun went after the unions and “Tariffs”, but later presidents enabled the “Shipping jobs overseas” thing. They first snuck it in under a “Trade” issue, then a “Charity” issue, then rammed “Tax funded outsourcing” through.
It’s a long, entrenched conspiracy and I don’t lean Left or Right on it, that’s just propaganda, more “keep the masses fighting each other while we rule and rob them both” going on.
Right now, IMO, their weakest link is the illegals. Massive public demand for enforcement, followed by the very real threat of “Jury Nullification Protest” and other stuff better not discussed online but obvious, we get rid of illegals. As the elites try to patch that wrist that’s been slashed, we slash the other one, the unrestricted international trade. Then their “Media and political sock puppets” will openly betray them hoping to keep jobs in a media no longer supported by them and a government no longer bribed by them.
Who’s side are YOU on, US395?
The Rich Elite – or the Americans?
I’m not for “Socialism”, I’m just for people being able to barter with their labor to demand reasonable compensation for their part in society. No more “False Economies”. If it ain’t worth payin’ a man a decent wage, it ain’t worth doin or you make it yourself if it’s really that important to you. They say we don’t have a ‘right’ to even basic food, shelter, medical care, jobs…though they then provide that to illegals… Well, we can then say they don’t have a “Right” to be “Rich elite” either.
And, last but not least, if they import a Mexican for labor, FINE… BUT-later after we purge them and then perhaps allow “Immigration” (1) again, the Mexican MUST be paid the “Going Rate” of any US worker, at least, and there can’t be that many of them.
Also, let’s say they like the factory where the barefoot 6 year old girl sews shoes chained to the floor. Hey, maybe they like lil brown girls for “Other” fun also…? Well, they can keep that up, but, when the shoes she sews get imported into the USA they get a “Tariff” again that makes them cost just as much, plus 5%, as anything a USA company can make them for. In short, you can still “Compete” like have a “Cobbler” make good quality custom shoes that sell for more (higher price and quality I’m not for tariffs) but not “Undercut”. Every single other country in the world, save “Banana Republics” especially CHINA strictly Tariffs OUR goods, why can’t we?
1-Our immigration laws are rooted still in the “Eugenics” movement, a disgusting pseudoscience that was a paper thin vehicle for class-ism and racism. It also helped a German leader during the years leading up to WW2 push his own agenda claiming they needed their “Eugenics” program to “Keep up with the United States”.
Let’s also make another thing clear, we the American people are NOT in a “Socialist” system in any way. “Social Security” for instance should be the most solid investment in the world on account of it being a poor one, one you’d need to live till 144 to have any chance of taking back any of. But it’s been raided and DIRECTLY given to many of the rich elite over the years.
Likewise, the “Rich Elite” have the most one sided “Socialist Nanny-State” in history that makes the former (joking) “Statues of Lenin and Stalin, inc.” from the USSR look like nothing. Tax breaks, subsidies, complete ignorance of illegal labor, violations of anti-trust laws, bailouts, limiting of “Bankruptcy” laws for the consumer while expanding for big business… They suck at the teat of welfare like no other.
Frankly their importing illegals and exporting jobs is exactly that, welfare for big corporations. “The law of supply and demand” only matters to them when it works for them, not us. You see, if there’s a limited labor pool and the workers dictate their terms that’s “Supply and Demand”. But if from outside the system impoverished workers are brought in or jobs are exported but the government doesn’t balance by “Tariffs/Immigration enforcement” then that itself is a form of “Welfare Nanny State” but one that supports the big businesses.
US395, I know you are but a simple troll, but you can’t simultaneously blame unions and union-busting for the decline of manufacturing.
These evil banks deseve to be torched for trying to get back some of the money they loaned!
Now, these guys, on the other hand:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/business/bal-bz-baltimore-tax-sale0802,0,5484557.story
deserve a medal for looking after the public interest so meticulously. Who do these cheapskates think they are, hiding such huge sums from the public?
Notice that, for all we know, Mr. Nicklew might be a real homeowner, i.e. not a debtor sitting on very little equity.