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Saturday, June 03, 2006

Whoa! The NY Times Gets A Clue?

A couple of wizened old editors must have tottered out into the newsroom last week in the wake of the layoffs and firings. I bet they looked around, realized with stricken horror that what passes for liberalism these days is a strange critter and promptly set out to make amends.

NY Times prints a column by an economist:
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.
...
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.
...
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.
WaPo prints a column by Frank Schaeffer, who has a son in the military:
A personal connection to our wars might discourage the sort of glib hubris that leads the media to trumpet events such as the Haditha killings without putting them in the context of the everyday heroism that is the norm, or in the context of history. And a personal connection to our military by our political leaders would give them a stake in our troops' welfare and what we are asking them to do.

It's time for the critics of our military to also earn a little moral authority by volunteering themselves or encouraging their children to do so. Anything less is nothing more than arm's-length moralizing.
It's time for the mainstream media to wake up and realize that the wonder is that there aren't more incidents such as what they suspect Haditha to be. They don't know. It's troubling that no one wants to wait and find out the old-fashioned way.

We should be very proud of our military for their high standard of conduct overall. This is incredibly rare. The bleaters in the MSM are largely interested in justifying their own weaseltude by casting contempt upon a group of people who have performed to incredibly high standards under incredibly difficult conditions. They must mock our volunteer Armed Forces, or stand in shame before them.


Comments:
If immigrants entering the work force depress wages, how come the same argument doesn't get made for women entering the work force?
 
Anon..it probably does apply to some extent, at least in the short term--which is why unions were eager to get rid of Rosie the Riveter right after WWII. However: (a)the supply of women in relation to the supply of men is finite, and (b)there is no huge cost-of-living differential between women and men as there is between resident Americans and immigrants whose families still reside in another, and much cheaper, country.
 
Anon - women entering the workforce in large numbers did act to depress wages in some occupations. That happened in two ways. The first was that women tend to bargain less than men. This did not happen in unionized industries, because the unions handled bargaining. The second is just the reduction in competition for jobs.

But those effects have already been felt.

On the other hand, what's being addressed here is the contention that this country needs a large supply of additional unskilled laborers. It doesn't.

And David points out correctly that the situation with the "guestworkers", ie easily exploitable workers with no bargaining power, has distorted the domestic labor market more severely.
 
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