You need to read up on economics, because this is incorrect. Especially incorrect is that we don’t have millions of new immigrants every year.
Originally Posted by Susanann
Today, “Free-trade” and unlimited immigration has reversed the job market to where today we now get millions more additional job seekers each and every year just from immigration alone.
“Free-trade”, elimination of protective tariffs, and record immigration, all 3 combined together resulted in adding 100 million more job-seekers while at the same time eliminating nearly 10 million manufacturing jobs.
The combination of increasing job seekers while reducing jobs changed the employment situation in America from everyone having secure jobs to the endless worsening mess that we have now and will get worse.
Since 1970, our population has increased 100 million - mostly due to (legal and illegal) immigration, and all their babies (the very high fertility rate of new immigrants ), and all the babies of the immigrant babies since 1970.
Do the math yourself. Any reasonable person can easily see the employment damage that is caused by adding millions more people while at the same time reducing millions of jobs. IF you cant understand this simple principle, then you will never understand why American citizens had such good, plentiful, high paying, secure jobs back in the 1960’s and why they are never coming back.
::Sigh:: I’d just be wasting my time… 
I assume that means you’re not going to bother asking for a cite?
Not really. That “incentive” to stay at a company, only lasted about 5 years or so, after which any employee had the freedom to quit at anytime and work for someone else, and to get another pension.
As soon as an employee was “vested”, usually about 5 to 10 years service at most companies, then the defined benefit pension was guaranteed regardless if the employee quit or was fired. Once an employee became vested, his pension could not be taken away.
I’m gonna ignore the racist crap you’re spewing for just a minute and point out that this number is meaningless.
So our population has increased by 100 million people in the last 40 years. But in 1970 the population had increased by 80 million since 1930. And the 1930 census shows an increase of 50 million over the 1900 census. Population has always been growing in the US.
As was mentioned, the USA in the 50’s had no fear of foreign competition-Japan made jnk, and Germany was still recovering from WWII. Hence, US factory jobs were secure and well paying.
Now, your competition is in low wage countries like India and China, Vietnam, Thailand, etc.
So nobody is secure-except those in government jobs.
This is really beginning to feel like a Great Debates thread.
Hence, thither with it.
In the Detroit area, it was not just the big 3. You could get a job in many places and stay there for a lifetime if you wanted . The generation before me was populated by lots of people who worked in one job for decades.
It was a time when workers and the company had an understanding about loyalty. The company would do everything it could do to keep from laying you off. You would work and ,get promoted and stay there for a long time.
The corporations broke the bargain.
The word “ha” isn’t strong enough to express my disagreement at this statement, but it’s the best I’ve got…
Ha! Oh, and a :dubious: for good measure.
Perhaps it’s something we should look at, though. For one thing, in terms of lifestyle choices such as where we live, our way of life doesn’t handle population growth very well, for the simple reason that, until about a generation ago, we never really had to. This wasn’t because of changes in the immigration laws, but because, until then, finding land for another housing tract or farm wasn’t difficult. Have you ever been to Germany or The Netherlands? By raw numbers, those countries are a lot more crowded than the U.S., but in many ways they feel less crowded because of how the available space is used.
And, speaking of Germany, things look a lot better over there right now. Even with the extensive social safety net and worker-friendly employment laws, they’ve got far less unemployment than we have. I listen to a couple of German radio stations regularly, and it’s amazing how much less gloomy and depressing the news is, generally, compared to here. In general, one notices the lack of an endless stream of news items about the shortage of money for basic necessities, and the struggles of people brought down by the economic downturn.
Germany does have a stable population, by the way. What would the employment situation look like in this country, if the job market didn’t have to generate 100K new jobs every month just to keep up?
Government jobs have been slashed and benefits and wages cut. My wife worked for the IRS for 25 years and they cut lots of people.
If Ralph thinks government jobs are sinecures, he should apply. But I doubt he could get hired.
The way we handle population growth probably should be addressed. Better public transportation and better city planning are two things I would definitely implement if I were King of Everything.
But if you’re claiming that finding land for a new housing tract or farm is difficult, I’ve got a bridge I’d love to sell you. It’s connected to acres and acres of land, all of it a few miles outside of the big crowded cities.
I’m certainly willing to be corrected, though my description does seem accurate for Southern California. Working in IT, I’ve known quite a few colleagues who worked 6am - 2pm, or even earlier, to make their 100-mile (RT) commutes a little easier. But these are lifestyle considerations, really. While I don’t want to divert the thread into whether population growth has a good or bad effect on lifestyle options generally, I do think it has an impact on the labor market. If the United States had a healthy trade balance, like Germany, that effect would probably be good, overall. But we don’t have that; instead we have a chronic trade deficit; reduced to the most minimal terms, that makes us a consuming nation rather than a producing one. The rest of the world isn’t buying enough of what we produce, so it’s only reasonable to wonder whether we need to have an ever-increasing number of us to produce more and more of it.
Add in the fact that women and minorities really weren’t welcome in the labor pool back in the 50s and 60s and you get a really nice and rosy employment picture for a post-war economy unscathed by the fighting and integrating all the technological advancements of aforementioned war.
Yes, the US was in a unique position in the 50s and 60s as the only industrial power that had not had its industrial infrastructure devastated by WWII.
Other than that, we haven’t had a good anti-outsourcing thread in at least a week, so I guess we’re due…
Evidently Justin Bailey is the racist. ** Justin Bailey** is the only one who even mentioned race.
I, for one, would greatly appreciate it if you would not make any more racist comments. If you want to make racist comments, or talk about race, then start a new thread.
Ah, there’s your problem. Southern California is really only representative of Southern California. I’ve done a lot of driving around New York and the whole state is more or less one big wide open area outside the major cities. Literally hundreds of miles of nothing.
That is a good question. How different itwould be if we did not need to create an additional 100,000 to 150,000 new and additional jobs each and every month just to tread water. It is VERY hard to visualize how jobs could ever once again be more “Secure” as long as the number of job seekers is continually, repeatedly, and endlessly increased by over 100,000 each and every month, month after month, year after year, decade after decade, etc. Under the present course, job security is not even on the discussion table to ever return.
If we held our population steady, job security would at least be within the realm of possibility, and then we also would not need to continually build and expand our roads, bridges,schools,hospitals, housing, prisons, courts, colleges, enough to be able to process an extra additional 100,000 mouths to feed each and every month, and we would not have to continually drain our fresh water supplies, use up all of our energy, and do as much polluting of our air and waters.
Hundreds of miles of “nothing”? Are you sure about that? Are you trying to tell us that there is hundreds of miles of empty unused unsettled land available for homesteading in New York today?
When exactly was it that you drove thru New York? 1660?