The jobs will get done and spit jar commentary

Short version: it's all about the transfer of wealth, from labor to capital.

Long version:
Living in upside down world means we have to put up with a lot of cognitive dissonance.

This very week, while the Leader of the Free World talks about gay marriages, we are returning to the Victorian splendor of the PBS series "Upstairs, Downstairs". However, if you are reading this, you and I are definitely, downstairs.

As The Congress of the United States of America prepares this very week to pass the trillion dollar- Paris Hilton Permanent Tax Cut Bill, to benefit the lucky, lazy heirs and winners of the rich sperm-donor lottery... in effect, creating a new aristocracy and completely negating the American Revolution of 1776 ... we must also listen to GOP media whining about poor immigrants who pick our cheap vegetables and build our cheap housing, and change the linens in our cheap vacation destinations.

Remember when the code word the GOP used was "death tax?"
HaH! You know as well as I do, that dead people don't pay taxes. They don't do anything, they're dead, duh! A dead person doesn't care about paying taxes or not, get it?
Inheritors pay taxes on inheritances. That's why Dems used to call it an Estate Tax. It's an unearned pile of money or goods, and the lucky heir that inherits it pays a tax on it. But you believed the GOP meme and called it a death tax, too, I'll bet.

You know, that trillion missing revenues will have to come from somewhere if we are going to do things like build fences or invade innocent countries. If you are middle class, and have grand children, the tab will be on them, on taxes they will pay, and since it is on credit, add a finance charge.

And YeeHaw, the cowboys in Congress have already cut you off at the pass if you think of personal bankruptcy. But our GOPcrony prison builders have been doing land office business building the American gulag system, and I'm sure they can alter their designs to build workhouses for middle class shirkers.
Wm. Krystol and Grover Norquist will be so happy, we will return to the good ol' days of Charles Dickens and Queen Victoria.

Our wealthy classes (sorry, Rushbuddies, class war exists, whether the disturbing fragrance of it disrupts the delicate senses of right wingnut radio hosts, or not) our wealthy classes are the first to penny-pinch a tip or gyp a service person, are the first to squeeze every penny out of tax avoidance gimmicks, are the first to "vote with their pocketbook", but ask for him to pay a worker who doesn't even make a living wage, say, minimum wage, or better yet, the legal prevailing wage, for doing a job, and Heavens to Betsy! you'da thunk you shot him in the heart.

(Did you hear the President of the United States of America say "spit jar" yesterday? How could you have voted for that clown? twice?)
And now, we are building a fence to keep people out of our country. Guess that'll show up in the jobs growth figures next month. I wonder which GOPcrony is making all of the profit off of this taxpayer funded boondoggle?
It's reminiscent of all the taxpayer dollars we wasted on Ronnie's Star Wars Missile Shield program that didn't work, either, but did line a lot of GOPcronies pockets.

I liked what Stephen Colbert said to the grads of Knox College on the concept of building fences around our borders... "And when you enter the workforce, you will find competition from those crossing our all-too-poorest borders. Now I know you're all going to say, "Stephen, Stephen, immigrants built America." Yes, but here's the thing- it's built now. I think it was finished in the mid-70s sometime. At this point it's a touch-up and repair job. But thankfully Congress is acting and soon English will be the official language of America. Because if we surrender the national anthem to Spanish, the next thing you know, they'll be translating the Bible. God wrote it in English for a reason! So it could be taught in our public schools.
So we must build walls. A wall obviously across the entire southern border. That's the answer. That may not be enough - maybe a moat in front of it, or a fire-pit. Maybe a flaming moat, filled with fire-proof crocodiles. And we should probably wall off the northern border as well. Keep those Canadians with their socialized medicine and their skunky beer out. And because immigrants can swim, we'll probably want to wall off the coasts as well. And while we're at it, we need to put up a dome, in case they have catapults. And we'll punch some holes in it so we can breathe. Breathe free. It's time for illegal immigrants to go - right after they finish building those walls. Yes, yes, I agree with me."
(The whole speech, worth reading, is at the Knox College website.)

Here's a good take on the subject of immigrant labor:
The Worker Next Door
By Barry R. Chiswick
Chicago
Op-Ed Contributor
New York Times
June 3, 2006

IT is often said that the American economy needs low-skilled foreign workers to do the jobs that American workers will not do. These foreign workers might be new immigrants, illegal aliens or, in the current debate, temporary or guest workers. But if low-skilled foreign workers were not here, would lettuce not be picked, groceries not bagged, hotel sheets not changed, and lawns not mowed? Would restaurants use disposable plates and utensils?

On the face of it, this assertion seems implausible. Immigrants and low-skilled foreign workers in general are highly concentrated in a few states. The "big six" are California, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, New York and Texas. Even within those states, immigrants and low-skilled foreign workers are concentrated in a few metropolitan areas - while there are many in New York City and Chicago, relatively few are in upstate New York or downstate Illinois.

Yet even in areas with few immigrants, grass is cut, groceries are bagged and hotel sheets are changed. Indeed, a large majority of low-skilled workers are native to the United States. A look at the 2000 census is instructive: among males age 25 to 64 years employed that year, of those with less than a high school diploma, 64 percent were born in the United States and 36 percent were foreign born.

Other Americans nominally graduated from high school but did not learn a trade or acquire the literacy, numeracy or decision-making skills needed for higher earnings. Still others suffer from a physical or emotional ailment that limits their labor productivity. And some low-skilled jobs are performed by high school or college students, housewives or the retired who wish to work part time. Put simply, there are no low-skilled jobs that American workers would not and do not do.

Over the past two decades the number of low-skilled workers in the United States has increased because of immigration, both legal and illegal. This increase in low-skilled workers has contributed to the stagnation of wages for all such workers. The proposed "earned legalization" (amnesty) and guest worker programs would allow still more low-skilled workers into the country, further lowering their collective wages.

True, the prices of the goods and services that these new immigrants produce are reduced for the rich and poor alike. But the net effect of this dynamic is a decline in the purchasing power of low-skilled families and a rise in the purchasing power of high-income families - a significant factor behind the increase in income inequality that has been of considerable public concern over the past two decades.

In short, the continued increase in the flow of unskilled workers into the United States is the economic and moral equivalent of a regressive tax.

If the number of low-skilled foreign workers were to fall, wages would increase. Low-skilled American workers and their families would benefit, and society as a whole would gain from a reduction in income inequality.

Employers facing higher labor costs for low-skilled workers would raise their prices, and to some extent they would change the way they operate their businesses. A farmer who grows winter iceberg lettuce in Yuma County, Ariz., was asked on the ABC program "Nightline" in April what he would do if it were more difficult to find the low-skilled hand harvesters who work on his farm, many of whom are undocumented workers. He replied that he would mechanize the harvest. Such technology exists, but it is not used because of the abundance of low-wage laborers. In their absence, mechanical harvesters - and the higher skilled (and higher wage) workers to operate them would replace low-skilled, low-wage workers.

But, you might ask, who would mow the lawns in suburbia? The higher wages would attract more lower-skilled American workers (including teenagers) to these jobs. Facing higher costs, some homeowners would switch to grass species that grow more slowly, to alternative ground cover or to flagstones. Others would simply mow every other week, or every 10 days, instead of weekly. And some would combine one or more of these strategies to offset rising labor costs.

Few of us change our sheets and towels at home every day. Hotels and motels could reduce the frequency of changing sheets and towels from every day to, say, every third day for continuing guests, perhaps offering a price discount to guests who accept this arrangement.

Less frequent lawn mowing and washing of hotel sheets and towels would reduce air, noise and water pollution in the bargain.

With the higher cost of low-skilled labor, we would import more of some goods, in particular table-quality fruits and vegetables for home consumption (as distinct from industrial use) and lower-priced off-the-rack clothing. But it makes no sense to import people to produce goods in the United States for which we lack a comparative advantage - that is, goods that other countries can produce more efficiently.

The point is that with a decline in low-skilled foreign workers, life would go on. The genius of the American people is their ingenuity, and the genius of the American economy is its flexibility. And throughout our nation's history, this flexibility, the finding of alternative ways of doing things, has been a prime engine of economic growth and change.

Barry R. Chiswick is head of the economics department at the University of Illinois at Chicago.