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Wage Stagnation + Cheap Labor = Big profits Diane Alden In the last few months, plutocrats like Bill Gates and the Google king pins put immense pressure on Congress to raise work visa caps from 65,000 a year to the-sky-is-the-limit. The political side of the plutocracy, Hillary Clinton and George W. Bush, chimed in shouting shortage of labor in every category. To this crowd there is always a labor shortage: thousands of visas and millions of illegal immigrants are not enough to quench the thirst for cheap labor and big profits. As the man said, profits are a good thing but they are not the only thing.
In a snit about not getting his way, CEO Gates says he is going to move an entire division of Microsoft operations to Canada because congress won't give him more foreign work visas. Never fear, where there is a self-seeking corporate type there is a way.
Work visas are a part of the NAFTA agreement; Bill Gates could, and probably will, sidestep visa limits when he moves a division of Microsoft to Canada. Politically correct Canada allows unlimited numbers of foreign work visas demanded by multinational corporations. This would allow Gates to ship foreign workers to the U.S. under the NAFTA "agreement."
Gates will probably get away with increasing his foreign worker visa quota using the NAFTA agreement. Rob Sanchez, who is an activist saving American jobs, informs us that this may be exactly what Gates is up to. Rob writes: "The amusing thing is that, despite the scare mongering over a shortage of H-1B visas, Microsoft has actually admitted it would have moved even if H-1B immigration was increased: 'Microsoft spokesman Lou Gellos said that while the immigration issue was a factor, the company would be opening the center in Vancouver even if it were not for the immigration challenges.'" (Microsoft sings 'O Canada' amid immigration challenges By Ina Fried and Anne Broache, CNET News.com.)
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Gates' ruse does not stand-alone. More recently, the expansion or increase of H-1B, H-2, student, trade, and other visas was touted by Hillary Clinton as a stop-gap measure until we lazy, stupid Americans are trained and educated to take the jobs the ruling elite tells us only others are qualified to take. This contention by the ruling elite is based upon half-truths, outright lies, and an agenda that is nothing but a sellout of American interests.
Hillary Clinton must know there is no real shortage of workers, including scientists and engineers. There is no shortage of Americans studying those disciplines; in fact there are an over abundance in those categories. But Hillary Clinton is almost as good a shill for big business as she is for the needs of India and the thousands of Indian workers in the U.S. today.
In June, the inimitable Lou Dobbs reported: "Presidential candidate Senator Hillary Clinton, speaking to the Indian Institute of Technology, repeated her call for an increase in the number of H-1B visas. Senator Clinton backs a plan that would raise the number of H-1 visas to 115,000 from the current level of 65,000 . . . in the same speech, the senator also raised the concern that American workers have about losing their jobs to outsourcing. "Now, the senator is courting Indian-American voters, and they're exerting an increasing influence in U.S. politics. And they have the very highest average income of any group."
Dobbs goes on to say: "The senator is the co-chair of the Senate India caucus, by the way. They have a total of 37 senators in that caucus, including 18 Democrats, 19 Republicans. Now, over in the House of Representatives, 176 of our congressmen belong to the India caucus, 115 Democrats, and 61 Republicans. Senator Barack Obama's campaign staff has criticized Senator Clinton for her ties to India, most notably."
To add insult to injury, the week of July 15, 2007 George W. Bush proclaimed with all sincerity that we have an across the board labor shortage, therefore, we would regret not passing his ‘guest worker amnesty." If that was a threat he might want to consider his part in inflicting unrelenting pain on the working and Middle Class which have been betrayed by the economic and political establishment for two decades.
It is true; Americans are losing jobs to globalization and unrestricted immigration and they usually find new ones. The problem is the wage differential between jobs they lost and new jobs are significant. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics average pay is 17 percent below what U.S. workers made in jobs that were lost to globalization. For white-collar workers, White House economists say earnings for college grads with four-year degrees fell 5.2 percent from 2000 to 2004 when adjusted for inflation. Labor economist Paul Harrington and others conclude nearly half of the 6.5 million jobs created since 2001, are jobs without benefits, part-time, or free lance. The Economic Research Institute reports half of all new jobs have gone to immigrants. From 2000 to 2006 the foreign-born workforce grew by 5.3 million, or 31 percent. Over the same period the number of U.S.-born workers rose by 3.9 million, or 3.3 percent. So some 57 of every 100 jobs created during the first six Bush years went to an immigrant. As good jobs depart to cheaper labor nations, the U.S. median middle class is struggling with manipulation of inflation numbers that do not tell how badly wage stagnation is compared to inflation. When you count the drop in median wages and the rise of real inflation, no amount of cheap goods at Wal-Mart or Best Buy is going to make up the difference.
During Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's testimony before Congress on July 18, 2007 it became clear wages are not keeping up with real life inflation. Member of the House Committee on Financial Affairs Ron Paul gave Bernanke the actual inflation picture. The Fed chairman did not disagree.
Paul: "But we have a lot of information today available to us to show that there's a lot of monetary inflation going on. For instance, if you look at MZM, it's growing at almost a 9 percent rate. M3, no longer available to us from the official sources, but private sources tell us it's growing at a 13 percent rate." Of course we can reassure ourselves and say the CPI (Consumer Price Index) is growing at a 2.6 percent rate. But if you go back to the old method of calculating the CPI, closer to what the average person is suffering and one of the reasons why there's an inequality going on, is it's growing at over a 10 percent rate. Cheerleaders for warped economic policies that ignore the decline of the working and middle class had better understand repeating the "free" trade mantra does not make it true. Markets and trade have not been free for a long time. Corporate and financial interests have designed trade and financial policy creating winners and losers. Along with unrestricted immigration, work visas and other financial and government policies eventually Americans will figure out how badly they have been betrayed Contact alden@newsmax.com.
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