With all the information we have about both candidates, who do you plan to vote for?

Halcon,

"Devils" was not quite what I had in mind, although as you bring it up; just whose data are our immigration people relying on when these people come in from countries whose governments are corrupt? Mexico is first and most obvious for volume alone. Then there are dozens of others as well.

The fact is, we do not "need" any more immigrants, and especially those who are not qualified for anything except to drive wages to the bottom and keep them there. People that are concerned about low wages should consider that as long as there is a cheap labor pool of millions of immigrants from such places who will work for peanuts - peanuts is all that is going to be on offer for jobs that should pay more, and many considerably more.
 
Funny...in eight years as an IT messaging consultant, I've never had any competition from Mexican immigrant laborers.

I'd be worried about that competition if I was in the business of selling fruit at stoplights, or in the field of back-breaking farm labor. Truth is, those jobs have a high percentage of Mexican laborers because there are too few Anglos who want to bale hay or pick strawberries all day for $6/hour. The Mexicans who live next to my brother-in-law's bison ranch are the most hardworking individuals I've ever seen in my life. They work their daytime jobs, and then come over to my brother-in-law's ranch after work to help him bale hay until sundown and do other tasks that would leave me physically drained inside of an hour. And they do it as a favor, without pay (save the occasional goat or cow they get from my brother-in-law as a "thank you".) If more Anglos had that kind of work ethic and attitude towards physical labor, we wouldn't have welfare rolls.

I don't *ever* hold it against a man when he tries to make an honest living for his family. If you lived in one of the poorest economies in the world, and you were situated right next to the richest country in the world, you'd be hoofing it across the border, too. They do jobs that Americans are usually too proud or too lazy to do, for crappy pay. Where's the harm in that, and whose jobs are they taking? If enough Americans were willing to do them, people in this country simply wouldn't employ Mexican migrants. It's a simple supply-and-demand labor situation.

As long as Mexico is right next to the United States, and as long as our economy yields jobs, these people will come here and try to make a living. I'd rather see them bale hay for an honest paycheck than run drugs or rob people for a living.
 
I don't *ever* hold it against a man when he tries to make an honest living for his family. If you lived in one of the poorest economies in the world, and you were situated right next to the richest country in the world, you'd be hoofing it across the border, too. They do jobs that Americans are usually too proud or too lazy to do, for crappy pay. Where's the harm in that, and whose jobs are they taking? If enough Americans were willing to do them, people in this country simply wouldn't employ Mexican migrants. It's a simple supply-and-demand labor situation.
Click to expand...

The plentiful supply of illegal immigrant labor is driving down the wages for entry-level jobs, in this supply-and-demand labor situation.

Sure, Americans aren't willing to work as janitors in Wal-Mart for $2 a day, but the solution there is not to find people who are (or who are at least under threat of deportation if they complain), but to punish the people who are carrying out that slave-wage exploitation of vulnerable people.
 
mvpel,

The plentiful supply of illegal immigrant labor is driving down the wages for entry-level jobs, in this supply-and-demand labor situation.
Click to expand...

If enough labor to get the chickens plucked is available for $2/hr, then that's exactly what chicken plucking is worth. If you believe that chicken pluckers should be citizens and well-paid, and that paying chicken pluckers $2/hr is exploiting them, then you have two (moral) options from where I sit.

1) Start a new company. We'll call it "AmeriPoultry." Pay your pluckers a decent, living wage and a good benefits package. Watch the best and the brightest chicken pluckers in the nation flock to work for you. Advertise heavily that your chickens are "100% American-plucked, by well-paid professional pluckers!" Discover the joys of laying your formerly-happy employees off when you have to lock the doors because the average troglodyte kept buying Tyson chicken, plucked by minimum wage immigrants, which cost about a third of what yours did.

2) Invent a chicken plucking machine. Then all those Mexicans can make $0/hour instead of minimum wage, because Tyson will have found a better way to pluck chicken, and the immigrants will have to go find a different way to earn minimum wage, taking other jobs away from unskilled native adults and teenagers.

The presence of a renewed supply of cheap labor has shown the baby boomers' dream of being able to buy a bass boat & a backyard swimming pool off of assembly line worker's wages to be the fallacy that it is.

Ever summer, when the teenagers come by to ask for your lawn mowing business, do you pick the cheaper one or the more expensive one?


(There's a third, immoral chicken-plucking scenario, too:

3) Pass laws to cut off the supply of cheap labor. Pass laws mandating the lowest wage chicken pluckers can earn. As poultry companies have to pay their labor more, they lay some off, and raise the price of chicken in order to compensate for their losses. The newly laid-off chicken pluckers can no longer afford chicken, so pass a price ceiling on poultry. Company therefore lays more pluckers off to make up. Open soup kitchens and road-building projects to prepare for depression.)
 
F-Bush which has sent 3 of my closest friends and at least 4 of my cousins and relatives. His last ten months of increased economy what happened to the 3 years prior to that. paying over $2.00 for a gallon of gas. Claiming that interests rates have been the lowest they been in along time. Doesn't bush know that low interests mean low economy high interest means good economy. WHen interests rates are low all interest rates are low that means even our CD accounts rates. Bush can forget my vote.

F-Kerry and his anti-gun legislations and higher tax clauses. He's in the same boat with gas prices. And his stuck up politics, he reminds me of a communist in a nice suit not a uniform. Mass. has one of the highest taxes in the country thank you kerry, i live in florida so what would happen here if kerry became president.

Niether get my vote in october i'll decide where i vote.
 
Mark,

There are plenty of people working hourly paid jobs - like myself - who do not pick fruit, or any of the other typical work done by cheap immigrant labor for $6 an hour. The fact is, as long as there is a huge cheap labor pool at the bottom, it affects everyone who currently earns in the less than average brackets in their respective areas.

You may be relatively secure in your present job in this regard. But when the same principle is applied to fields like yours in the form of exporting them it will have the same effect.

The "I'm alright Jack" ain't going to last though. People should realize that before this Pan-American state can come about there has to be a leveling of the playing field. No one should delude themselves that the standard of living of countries like Mexico, etc is going to somehow be raised to our level. In order to bring these countries up - ours is going to be lowered. This regardless of all the bs people are being fed about how "good" this is for us.

Tamara,

It isn't a case of what type of business anyone should start, it's a case of a government's responsibility to it's nation and it's citizens. If the cheap labor pool was not there this would not be an issue. We don't need laws to "cut off cheap labor" - just adherence to the principle of keeping our country and it's citizens first.

------------------------------
"We must press on with our agenda for peace and prosperity in every land." - George Bush, to the United Nations General Assembly, November 10, 2001
 
Last edited:
... but to punish the people who are carrying out that slave-wage exploitation of vulnerable people.
Click to expand...
Minimum wage where I live is around $7.50/hr. We have one of the highest (if not the highest) minimum wage laws in the country.

Incidentally, we also have one of the highest rates of unemployment in the country.

Suppose those two items might be related?

pax

Fallaces sunt rerum species. ~ Seneca

If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose- because it contains all the others- the fact that they were the people who created the phrase "to make money." No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity- to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. -- Ayn Rand
 
Please - leave the Ayatollah Rand out of this.

Most economists seem to agree that the minimum wage exacerbates unemployment by eliminating some of the lowest paying jobs. But those who owe their meager incomes to these laws will be severely affected in the short term by any effort to eliminate minimum wage laws. Such policies should be accompanied by increased temporary assistance to the needy, and some kind of program to ensure that they have the opportunity to eventually move on to better jobs.
 
Running drugs isn't an honest living?

It may be dangerous, and it may be illegal, but I wouldn't say it's dishonest.
 
Halcon,

Please - leave the Ayatollah Rand out of this.
Click to expand...

Klintoon, Shrub, Demoncrat, Repugnican, Fineswine, Pinko, Capitalist Pig, Sheeple, et cetera, ad nauseum.

I figure that if we were going to descend to argument by vituperation, I'd want to make sure nobody was left out. ;)


Tell me, how much of my money are you willing to take against my will to make sure that there's "some kind of program to ensure that [the needy] have the opportunity to eventually move on to better jobs." Suppose I object to this theft?
 
But then on a lighter note there is THIS question

"How come we choose from just two people for President and fifty for Miss
America?"
Click to expand...

The California recall election had over 100 candidates to choose from. Of course, most of them weren't serious candidates.
 
Tell me, how much of my money are you willing to take against my will to make sure that there's "some kind of program to ensure that [the needy] have the opportunity to eventually move on to better jobs." Suppose I object to this theft
Click to expand...

Well failure to pay your taxes is breech of contract(the social contract), and a crime, so use your imagination to predict the consequences. A pacifist who opposes militarism still has to pay his taxes that go to the defense department against his will, and he's paying a bigger percentage of his paycheck for government programs he doesn't support. We don't have a system where you can withhold your money from programs you disagree with.
 
Halcon,

Y'know, I, as a rule, do not sign open-ended contracts, hence my reluctance to subscribe to the "(implied) social contract theory." Besides, if "breach of social contract" is such a heinous thing, the entire federal government should've been tossed in the pokey by the 1930's. ;)
 
Well failure to pay your taxes is breech of contract(the social contract), and a crime, so use your imagination to predict the consequences.
Click to expand...

B.S.
For 150 years this country apparently did not need such a contract. Add to that, that the actual ratification votes of the "Income Tax" amendment were submitted without legal authorization from the people of the states they represent - it's hard to honestly say that such a "contract" exists.
 
There are lots of contracts in which one or both parties can change the conditions - your gas and electric bills can be changed usually with mere notification. And you have a some power to change the terms of the contract - your vote, and the votes of whoever you can convince to side with you. If you really don't like the social contract you are free to terminate your part in it by emigration. You are not free to arbitrarily decide that the contract has been broken by the government, that's done by the courts. Both the income tax and the validity of the 16th amendment have been repeatedly upheld by the federal courts.
 
If you really don't like the social contract you are free to terminate your part in it by emigration.
Click to expand...
Emigrate to where? What if I don't like the policies of any other country? Several centuries ago it may have been practical for the disillusioned to go live in some uninhabited area. Now that's virtually impossible.

It is simply garbage to assert that because I continue to live on land rather than create a raft and go floating into the Gulf and/or Atlantic Ocean, I somehow agree to all social limitations "my" country and state have adopted.

If this country observed constitutional restrictions on government, I might well formally agree to abide by all its laws. This country broke the founders' social contract before I was even born. I don't see how it still applies to me, philosophically at least.
 
Actually when you sign those little witholding forms called the W-4 you are entering a contract, as when you file a 1040. But there is no such thing in the U.S. Constitution as the "social contract".

As far as the court rulings, stating the obvious is all well and good. However, this conveneiently sidesteps the frauds being perpetrated against most people regarding "income tax" - and who is liable to pay it according to the tax code. People ought to check out the case of Vernice Kuglin, the FedEx pilot who won her case in a Memphis court against the IRS. It makes an interesting read.
 
If you really don't like the social contract you are free to terminate your part in it by emigration.
Click to expand...

I was born here. They can go emigrate (the first step of which would best be completed by them going and jumping in a large body of water.)

Both the income tax and the validity of the 16th amendment have been repeatedly upheld by the federal courts.
Click to expand...

So was the ownership of other human beings. Your point? :confused:
Imagine that! The federal government upheld the expansion of power by the federal government. I'm shocked! ;) I wish I could express how little I think of the opinion of the nine black-robed Gladys Kravitzes of the Rehnquisition, but the language fails me under the circumstances. (Suffice it to say that every time I'm confronted with a moral choice in my life, I don't ask myself: "What would Sandra Day O'Connor do?" :p )
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top