"It's the Economy, Stupid"

[unixronin]

And the government isn't exactly helping.

On February 2, 2009, NumbersUSA with the Coalition for the Future American Worker launched the above "elevator ad" in an extended nationwide educational campaign on cable TV.

The purpose of the ad is to inform the public of two government statistics that, when placed together, show an outrageous participation of our federal government in increasing the numbers of unemployed Americans.

The two statistics from last year?

• 2.5 million Americans lost jobs
• The federal government brought in 1.5 million new foreign workers to take jobs

NumbersUSA has been doing everything in its power the last three months to persuade the nation's political leaders and media leaders to address this incongruous policy. Yet to date, there has been no indication whatsoever of a slow-down in importing an average of 138,000 new foreign workers each month -- even as half-million Americans a month are losing jobs.

This tells only part of the story, of course.  Part of the problem is that employers want to hire the cheapest workers they can, even if they're not the best.  Part of the problem is that sometimes they ARE the best, because US schools aren't graduating enough qualified engineers and other technical professionals.¹  Too many people want the "easy money" careers like law practice and banking.²  On the lower end of the scale, most of the Mexican migrant workers that people complain about are doing menial jobs that the complainers aren't willing to do in the first place.

[1]  The truth of this claim is hard to ascertain.  There are documented claims asserting both its truth and its falsehood.

[2]  Lawyers are perhaps the most egregious example.  The United States has 5% of the world's population, and 70% of the world's lawyers.  The United States has slightly under 2.4 times the population of Japan, and 30 times as many lawsuits per year.  The US has three lawyers for every doctor, five lawyers for every four police officers, two lawyers for every three engineers.

Comments

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Which coincides interestingly with the economic analysis that a marginal tax rate in the range of 10% to 13% is optimal, and any higher rate actually reduces long-term revenue because of the burden on the economy. (And that's not even getting into parasitic costs like the IRS.)

Right now, though, we're in a situation in which, even without the banking crisis, the economy is staggering under the weight of government, and the government either has to impose higher and higher taxes, or borrow more and more money faster and faster, just to stay "solvent on paper". And of course the more it raises taxes, the more the economy slows down, and the more the government borrows, the weaker the economy becomes overall.

There aren't too many ways that can end, and most of them are bad.

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

I want an ending where I can keep the Constitution intact. I know it has it's flaws, but it is better than anything we have now.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Hear, hear.

As for the flaws ... well, some of them are fixable; others are compromises between being ideal and actually being able to work in the real world. That's a hard line to draw.

I think these days our government honors the Constitution almost more in the omission — or the evasion — than in the observance. Its principal significance to most of Congress, I think, is that it prevents them from directly doing many of the things they actually want to do.