THE ENTIRE REASON BEHIND AMNESTY IS TOO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED!
"Placed within this context, the essential class logic of the spending cuts, attacks on wages and social conditions and the incessant demands for labour market “restructuring” becomes clear. Viewed from the standpoint of the process of profit accumulation—the driving force of the capitalist economy—government spending on social services, as well as increases in real wages, represent a drain on the wealth that would otherwise be available to capital in the form of profit, and must be driven down."
November 11, 2015, 07:30 am
Immigration policy is being used to pink-slip American workers
By Jon Feere, contributor
Think Stock
Immigration policy impacts Americans of all skillsets and education levels. It is often incorrectly assumed that our immigration system only brings in low-skilled laborers who compete with blue collar Americans in an increasingly difficult job market. Many politicians, whose jobs are not threated by foreign labor, often welcome mass immigration; in their minds, high levels of immigration means cheaper landscapers, housekeepers and au pairs. Elites in the halls of Congress and in many of the nation's newsrooms simply don't care about the impact low-skilled immigration has on American workers.
This troubling trend is not limited to Disney. Similar replacements were reported at Toys "R" Us, Southern California Edison, Cengage Learning, Pfizer and other companies. Professor Ron Hira of Howard University says that the H-1B program "has created a highly lucrative business model of bringing in cheaper H-1B workers to substitute for Americans."
If journalists and politicians can understand the impact H-1B visas have on high-skilled Americans, there is reason to be optimistic that they will eventually come around to understanding the negative impact mass, low-skilled immigration has on other American workers.
The Center for Immigration Studies is hosting a panel discussion this Thursday focusing on the impact of our nation's immigration policies on American tech workers. Discussion will center on a new book authored by Michelle Malkin and John Miano titled Sold Out: How High-Tech Billionaires and Bipartisan Beltway Crapweasals Are Screwing America's Best and Brightest Workers. (The event is open to the public at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on Nov. 12, 2015, at 2:00 p.m., but give us a call if you plan to stop by so we can try to hold a space for you.)
Speaking at the panel discussion will be co-author Michelle Malkin, a conservative columnist syndicated in more than 100 newspapers, Fox News commentator and New York Times bestselling author. She is founder of Hot Air and Twitchy.com. Also speaking will be co-author John Miano, an attorney with 30 years of programming experience and founder of the Programmers Guild, an organization committed to advancing the interests of technical and professional workers. Miano is also a fellow with the Center for Immigration Studies.
Additionally, the panel will include Leo Perrero, a 20-year veteran of the information technology (IT) field and a former information technology engineer at Walt Disney World who was recently fired and replaced by a foreign worker. Perrero was recently interviewed by an ABC affiliate in Florida about his experience at Disney, and the video is worth watching.
The book, Sold Out, shines a light on the right-wing and left-wing groups and politicians that promote the H-1B program (and high immigration, generally) and makes the case that purported shortages of American workers do not exist and that there is nothing special about the H-1B visa-holders who are being welcomed into the country (unless you consider "working for less" to be a special trait). The book frames the immigration issue in a way few books do, it's chock full of compelling case studies and data, and it offers about 100 pages of endnotes to back up the research.
Those who do not work in the STEM field may feel inclined to ignore this book, but workers in all fields will learn that their jobs are not necessarily safe from the mass immigration agenda that runs deep in Washington. American workers should know who is behind the scenes, pulling the strings and this book names names.
The issue of American workers being replaced by foreigners is one that is bound to be a hot topic during this election season, as many of the candidates have taken very strong positions on the H-1B program. For example, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) wants to triple the number of H-1B visas issued each year, while Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) has proposed quintupling the number — though he seems to be discovering that his position is unpopular. The Democratic candidates have not come out against the H-1B program or attempted to justify how it is being used; they're simply hoping talk about the H-1B program just goes away. Those who profit off the H-1B program are hoping the same thing.
But the more the public knows about how our nation's immigration policy is being used to replace American workers, the more quickly the mass immigration advocates will be stopped in their tracks.
Feere is the legal policy analyst at the Center for Immigration Studies.
But some are starting to take notice about the impact of our nation's immigration policy on high-skilled Americans who work in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields. The New York Times recently ran an interesting expose titled "Pink Slips at Disney. But First, Training Foreign Replacements," detailing how American tech workers were replaced by foreign laborers through the H-1B program. It was a follow-up to Computerworld's piece, "Fury rises at Disney over use of foreign workers." The American workers — one of whom noted that he had received a pay raise and the highest possible performance review — were told they had to train their foreign replacements or face repercussions. "Some of these folks were literally flown in the day before to take over the exact same job I was doing," explained one worker.
If journalists and politicians can understand the impact H-1B visas have on high-skilled Americans, there is reason to be optimistic that they will eventually come around to understanding the negative impact mass, low-skilled immigration has on other American workers.
The Center for Immigration Studies is hosting a panel discussion this Thursday focusing on the impact of our nation's immigration policies on American tech workers. Discussion will center on a new book authored by Michelle Malkin and John Miano titled Sold Out: How High-Tech Billionaires and Bipartisan Beltway Crapweasals Are Screwing America's Best and Brightest Workers. (The event is open to the public at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on Nov. 12, 2015, at 2:00 p.m., but give us a call if you plan to stop by so we can try to hold a space for you.)
Speaking at the panel discussion will be co-author Michelle Malkin, a conservative columnist syndicated in more than 100 newspapers, Fox News commentator and New York Times bestselling author. She is founder of Hot Air and Twitchy.com. Also speaking will be co-author John Miano, an attorney with 30 years of programming experience and founder of the Programmers Guild, an organization committed to advancing the interests of technical and professional workers. Miano is also a fellow with the Center for Immigration Studies.
Additionally, the panel will include Leo Perrero, a 20-year veteran of the information technology (IT) field and a former information technology engineer at Walt Disney World who was recently fired and replaced by a foreign worker. Perrero was recently interviewed by an ABC affiliate in Florida about his experience at Disney, and the video is worth watching.
The book, Sold Out, shines a light on the right-wing and left-wing groups and politicians that promote the H-1B program (and high immigration, generally) and makes the case that purported shortages of American workers do not exist and that there is nothing special about the H-1B visa-holders who are being welcomed into the country (unless you consider "working for less" to be a special trait). The book frames the immigration issue in a way few books do, it's chock full of compelling case studies and data, and it offers about 100 pages of endnotes to back up the research.
Those who do not work in the STEM field may feel inclined to ignore this book, but workers in all fields will learn that their jobs are not necessarily safe from the mass immigration agenda that runs deep in Washington. American workers should know who is behind the scenes, pulling the strings and this book names names.
The issue of American workers being replaced by foreigners is one that is bound to be a hot topic during this election season, as many of the candidates have taken very strong positions on the H-1B program. For example, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) wants to triple the number of H-1B visas issued each year, while Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) has proposed quintupling the number — though he seems to be discovering that his position is unpopular. The Democratic candidates have not come out against the H-1B program or attempted to justify how it is being used; they're simply hoping talk about the H-1B program just goes away. Those who profit off the H-1B program are hoping the same thing.
But the more the public knows about how our nation's immigration policy is being used to replace American workers, the more quickly the mass immigration advocates will be stopped in their tracks.
Feere is the legal policy analyst at the Center for Immigration Studies.
Imaginary Recovery?
For three decades now, liberals, er, progressives have been trying to explain why the Reagan recovery—that explosion of economic growth that lasted two decades—actually happened. It followed the down economy of the 1970s, when both unemployment and inflation soared in tandem. This wasn’t supposed to happen. The liberal economists of the School of Keynes were perplexed. Their remedy of more and more government spending didn’t work. And they were loath to credit President Reagan’s supply-side tax cuts that Congress had enacted in 1981.
NEWSCOM
Now the puzzle has been solved: The Reagan recovery didn’t exist. In a New York Times review of Jack Kemp: The Bleeding-Heart Conservative Who Changed America, Timothy Noah says the tax cuts produced “a disaster.” It was Kemp who had persuaded Reagan to adopt across-the-board cuts in individual income tax rates. This, Noah says, “inaugurated two decades of sky-high budget deficits, accelerated a nascent growth trend in income inequality and did (depending on who you ask) little or nothing to ease the brutal 16-month recession that began around the same time the bill was passed.” That’s it. No mention of any recovery. It never happened.
The review doesn’t bother to explain, absent a recovery, how Reagan could have declared “Morning in America” and won reelection in 1984 in a landslide. Was the public misled about the condition of the economy? Reagan was dubbed the Great Communicator, but convincing the public the economy was in great shape when it wasn’t—even he couldn’t manage that. In truth, he didn’t have to. The economic numbers did it for him.
Something caused the economy to grow at a rate of 4.6 percent in 1983, 7.3 percent in 1984, and 4.2 percent in 1985. Over the rest of Reagan’s presidency, the growth rate was 4.5 percent, and through 2000 the economy grew on average 3.7 percent. Those numbers, taken together, would seem to indicate a recovery occurred. What could have sparked it? Perhaps the tax rate cuts worked in the 1980s and 1990s, just as they had in the 1960s when JFK’s tax cuts became law. Just a guess.
By Nick Beams
A comment by Financial Times economic columnist Martin Wolf published November 11 points to the depth of the downturn in world economic output resulting from what he calls the “Great Recession” that followed the global financial crisis of 2008.
According to Wolf, a “recovery” is now underway but “only in a limited sense.” Just how limited and whether it can even be called a “recovery” in any meaningful sense is highlighted by the global economic trends to which he points.
While most crisis-hit countries are now showing positive growth rates, he writes, gross domestic product “remains far below what might have been expected from pre-crisis trends.” He continues: “In most cases, growth has not recovered, mainly because of declines in productivity growth. In the euro zone, GDP was still below pre-crisis levels in the second quarter of 2015. In crisis-hit members, a return to pre-crisis output is still far away. They will suffer lost decades.”
This analysis underscores two decisive conclusions: the crisis of 2008 was not a conjunctural downturn, but a breakdown in the functioning of the capitalist economy; and the measures implemented by governments and central banks, with the claim that they would promote “recovery,” have failed completely. In fact, as research cited by Wolf in his comment makes clear, they have exacerbated the slump.
Wolf draws attention to a survey conducted by Professor Laurence Ball of Johns Hopkins University, who found that losses of potential output ranged from zero in Switzerland to more than 30 percent in Greece, Hungary and Ireland.
Summing up Ball’s results, Wolf writes: “In aggregate, he concludes, potential output this year was thought to be 8.4 percent below what its pre-crisis path would have predicted. This damage from the Great Recession is… much the same as if Germany’s economy had disappeared.”
As is always the case with comments by Wolf, while he can perceptively point to significant trends in the global economy and bring to light certain relevant facts, as an ardent defender of the profit system he never goes so far as to suggest that these phenomena are the result of inherent contradictions within the very structure of the capitalist economy. Consequently, he always maintains that there is some way out if only more rational policies are followed. And when what he sees as necessary remedies are not applied, he attributes this to failure of either the will or the intellect.
Addressing the question of the euro zone, which seven years after the Lehman Brothers collapse still has not returned to pre-crisis output levels, he insists that its governments and financial authorities “should have done better” and that even today Europe “lacks the will and the institutions it needs.”
Why such measures have not been developed is never probed. This is because any such examination would raise the question of whether the present policy outcomes are not the result of the “lack of will” to pursue more effective measures, or some kind of mistake, but are, in fact, the expression of another agenda which is being assiduously implemented.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Wolf maintains that it “might be possible to return to pre-crisis trend rates of growth” and that a mix of “aggressive support for demand and contributions to long term supply,” via far higher levels of public investment, would work both to increase output levels and restore growth rates to their previous trend.
He points to evidence that “festering recessions have prolonged effects on prosperity,” and adds that “one conclusion is that it is vital to act swiftly to restore demand.” But the question as to why government and economic authorities around the world have proceeded in the opposite direction—cutting spending on health, education, pension and other vital social services and refusing to undertake public investment spending—is never examined.
The impact of government spending cuts on economic growth is highlighted in a 2014 paper co-authored by former US Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers and Antonio Fatás, cited by Wolf. Since then, Summers has advanced the proposition that the world economy is not experiencing a conjunctural downturn, but has entered a period of what he calls “secular stagnation,” akin to that of the 1930s.
The 2014 paper details the predominant downtrend in the world economy, particularly in the euro
zone, where, relative to the situation in 1999 when the euro was launched, GDP is below where it would have been had the trend at that time been maintained. The International Monetary Fund estimates that by 2019, the euro area will be 15 percent below the level of output that would have existed had pre-crisis growth continued.
The Summers-Fatás analysis examines the persistent overestimation of IMF growth forecasts compared to the actual outcomes since 2008 and notes that if the “deviations were… transitory, we would expect the forecast error to decrease over time as output returns to trend.”
But, in fact, there is a “very large amount of persistence” in the forecast errors for all advanced economies, suggesting that the first shock—the crisis of 2008—continued its propagation and “became permanent.”
The authors conclude that government programs of “fiscal consolidation”—the reduction of government spending for the purpose of decreasing debt—lowers growth, creating a “negative feedback loop” where the more that spending is cut and the sharper the fall in output, the more the debt to GDP ratio rises, leading to a push for even more spending cuts. There is “strong support for the notion that austerity policies not only have caused significant temporary damage to growth, but that they might have resulted in exactly the opposite outcome that they were seeking by permanently reducing output.”
They maintain that countercyclical fiscal policy should have been “more aggressive given the nature and persistence of the crisis.” In other words, instead of government spending being cut, it should have been increased.
But the same question arises here as with Wolf. Why were such policies not carried out from the beginning, and, furthermore, why, when the damaging impact of government cuts has now been definitively established in facts and figures, has the austerity agenda not been reversed?
The answer to these questions lies in a probing of some of the basic features of the capitalist economy, which none of the “critics” of the present agenda undertake, as they seek to promote the illusion that the deepening breakdown can be halted if only more enlightened policies are followed.
The Summers-Fatás paper indirectly points to the direction in which such an analysis must proceed. The authors note that from early 2007, GDP growth in many advanced economies began to slow. This trend was increasingly evident by the end of the year before it turned into recession in 2008, which deepened in 2009.
However, these trends were the outcome of processes that went further back. The analysis of bourgeois economists focuses on shifts in output measured by GDP. But the driving force of the capitalist system is not economic growth as such, but the accumulation of profit, and, in particular, the return on capital as measured by the rate of profit.
While profit rates tended to rise during the decade of the 1990s, they had started to turn down towards the end of the decade, resulting in a recession in the US in 2001. The interest rate cuts initiated by the US Federal Reserve provided a temporary boost, helping to fund a cheap-money boom in the first half of the decade both in the US and globally, such that the IMF recorded that world growth in 2006 was at its highest level since the early years of the 1970s.
But the downward pressure on profits, which had led to cuts in productive investment in the real economy and an increasing resort to financial speculation, was not overcome. Consequently, when the orgy of speculation exploded in 2008, it did not give way in due course to an upturn, but resulted instead in growing stagnation, outright recession and further financial crises as took place in Europe in 2012.
Placed within this context, the essential class logic of the spending cuts, attacks on wages and social conditions and the incessant demands for labour market “restructuring” becomes clear. Viewed from the standpoint of the process of profit accumulation—the driving force of the capitalist economy—government spending on social services, as well as increases in real wages, represent a drain on the wealth that would otherwise be available to capital in the form of profit, and must be driven down.
In other words, the ongoing and deepening austerity programs being pursued by governments around the world are not some irrational response to the crisis, or the product of intellectual failure, lack of will or any of the other reasons advanced by Wolf, Summers and other would-be critics. Rather, they are an expression of the remorseless class logic of the capitalist economy, where, as Marx put it so clearly, the accumulation of wealth at one pole depends on the accumulation of poverty, misery and degradation at the other.
The “Great Recession” and the deepening austerity drive
By Nick Beams
16 November 2015
A comment by Financial Times economic columnist Martin Wolf published November 11 points to the depth of the downturn in world economic output resulting from what he calls the “Great Recession” that followed the global financial crisis of 2008.According to Wolf, a “recovery” is now underway but “only in a limited sense.” Just how limited and whether it can even be called a “recovery” in any meaningful sense is highlighted by the global economic trends to which he points.
While most crisis-hit countries are now showing positive growth rates, he writes, gross domestic product “remains far below what might have been expected from pre-crisis trends.” He continues: “In most cases, growth has not recovered, mainly because of declines in productivity growth. In the euro zone, GDP was still below pre-crisis levels in the second quarter of 2015. In crisis-hit members, a return to pre-crisis output is still far away. They will suffer lost decades.”
This analysis underscores two decisive conclusions: the crisis of 2008 was not a conjunctural downturn, but a breakdown in the functioning of the capitalist economy; and the measures implemented by governments and central banks, with the claim that they would promote “recovery,” have failed completely. In fact, as research cited by Wolf in his comment makes clear, they have exacerbated the slump.
Wolf draws attention to a survey conducted by Professor Laurence Ball of Johns Hopkins University, who found that losses of potential output ranged from zero in Switzerland to more than 30 percent in Greece, Hungary and Ireland.
Summing up Ball’s results, Wolf writes: “In aggregate, he concludes, potential output this year was thought to be 8.4 percent below what its pre-crisis path would have predicted. This damage from the Great Recession is… much the same as if Germany’s economy had disappeared.”
As is always the case with comments by Wolf, while he can perceptively point to significant trends in the global economy and bring to light certain relevant facts, as an ardent defender of the profit system he never goes so far as to suggest that these phenomena are the result of inherent contradictions within the very structure of the capitalist economy. Consequently, he always maintains that there is some way out if only more rational policies are followed. And when what he sees as necessary remedies are not applied, he attributes this to failure of either the will or the intellect.
Addressing the question of the euro zone, which seven years after the Lehman Brothers collapse still has not returned to pre-crisis output levels, he insists that its governments and financial authorities “should have done better” and that even today Europe “lacks the will and the institutions it needs.”
Why such measures have not been developed is never probed. This is because any such examination would raise the question of whether the present policy outcomes are not the result of the “lack of will” to pursue more effective measures, or some kind of mistake, but are, in fact, the expression of another agenda which is being assiduously implemented.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Wolf maintains that it “might be possible to return to pre-crisis trend rates of growth” and that a mix of “aggressive support for demand and contributions to long term supply,” via far higher levels of public investment, would work both to increase output levels and restore growth rates to their previous trend.
He points to evidence that “festering recessions have prolonged effects on prosperity,” and adds that “one conclusion is that it is vital to act swiftly to restore demand.” But the question as to why government and economic authorities around the world have proceeded in the opposite direction—cutting spending on health, education, pension and other vital social services and refusing to undertake public investment spending—is never examined.
The impact of government spending cuts on economic growth is highlighted in a 2014 paper co-authored by former US Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers and Antonio Fatás, cited by Wolf. Since then, Summers has advanced the proposition that the world economy is not experiencing a conjunctural downturn, but has entered a period of what he calls “secular stagnation,” akin to that of the 1930s.
The 2014 paper details the predominant downtrend in the world economy, particularly in the euro
zone, where, relative to the situation in 1999 when the euro was launched, GDP is below where it would have been had the trend at that time been maintained. The International Monetary Fund estimates that by 2019, the euro area will be 15 percent below the level of output that would have existed had pre-crisis growth continued.
The Summers-Fatás analysis examines the persistent overestimation of IMF growth forecasts compared to the actual outcomes since 2008 and notes that if the “deviations were… transitory, we would expect the forecast error to decrease over time as output returns to trend.”
But, in fact, there is a “very large amount of persistence” in the forecast errors for all advanced economies, suggesting that the first shock—the crisis of 2008—continued its propagation and “became permanent.”
The authors conclude that government programs of “fiscal consolidation”—the reduction of government spending for the purpose of decreasing debt—lowers growth, creating a “negative feedback loop” where the more that spending is cut and the sharper the fall in output, the more the debt to GDP ratio rises, leading to a push for even more spending cuts. There is “strong support for the notion that austerity policies not only have caused significant temporary damage to growth, but that they might have resulted in exactly the opposite outcome that they were seeking by permanently reducing output.”
They maintain that countercyclical fiscal policy should have been “more aggressive given the nature and persistence of the crisis.” In other words, instead of government spending being cut, it should have been increased.
But the same question arises here as with Wolf. Why were such policies not carried out from the beginning, and, furthermore, why, when the damaging impact of government cuts has now been definitively established in facts and figures, has the austerity agenda not been reversed?
The answer to these questions lies in a probing of some of the basic features of the capitalist economy, which none of the “critics” of the present agenda undertake, as they seek to promote the illusion that the deepening breakdown can be halted if only more enlightened policies are followed.
The Summers-Fatás paper indirectly points to the direction in which such an analysis must proceed. The authors note that from early 2007, GDP growth in many advanced economies began to slow. This trend was increasingly evident by the end of the year before it turned into recession in 2008, which deepened in 2009.
However, these trends were the outcome of processes that went further back. The analysis of bourgeois economists focuses on shifts in output measured by GDP. But the driving force of the capitalist system is not economic growth as such, but the accumulation of profit, and, in particular, the return on capital as measured by the rate of profit.
While profit rates tended to rise during the decade of the 1990s, they had started to turn down towards the end of the decade, resulting in a recession in the US in 2001. The interest rate cuts initiated by the US Federal Reserve provided a temporary boost, helping to fund a cheap-money boom in the first half of the decade both in the US and globally, such that the IMF recorded that world growth in 2006 was at its highest level since the early years of the 1970s.
But the downward pressure on profits, which had led to cuts in productive investment in the real economy and an increasing resort to financial speculation, was not overcome. Consequently, when the orgy of speculation exploded in 2008, it did not give way in due course to an upturn, but resulted instead in growing stagnation, outright recession and further financial crises as took place in Europe in 2012.
THE ENTIRE REASON BEHIND AMNESTY IS TOO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED!
Placed within this context, the essential class logic of the spending cuts, attacks on wages and social conditions and the incessant demands for labour market “restructuring” becomes clear. Viewed from the standpoint of the process of profit accumulation—the driving force of the capitalist economy—government spending on social services, as well as increases in real wages, represent a drain on the wealth that would otherwise be available to capital in the form of profit, and must be driven down.
In other words, the ongoing and deepening austerity programs being pursued by governments around the world are not some irrational response to the crisis, or the product of intellectual failure, lack of will or any of the other reasons advanced by Wolf, Summers and other would-be critics. Rather, they are an expression of the remorseless class logic of the capitalist economy, where, as Marx put it so clearly, the accumulation of wealth at one pole depends on the accumulation of poverty, misery and degradation at the other.
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