Saturday, June 24th 2006
How to mess everything up
Today’s letter fix comes from Bob Ryan in the SF Chronicle:
But the long-term solution to the immigration problem is for the United States to declare that a living wage is a basic human right, and show real leadership in advancing the cause of an international minimum wage. The national debate over immigration reform should include a thorough review of the merits of this approach. If we are truly serious about fixing our broken immigration laws and policies, an international minimum wage may well be the key element in reaching that goal.
No comment. If anyone else wants to jump in and state how this would mess up not only America but the entire world, feel free to share.
I thought America wasn’t supposed to project its subjective ideals on the rest of the world. Is that not what we’ve been told?
Comment by Tommy Owens — 6/25/2006 @ 3:15 pm
a living wage is a basic human right
Spoken like someone who has never employed others. The planned economy suggested by such nonsense is a disaster obvious to the people we depend on for jobs: business owners.
Comment by Webster — 6/26/2006 @ 5:07 am
In a world economy, we really can’t dictate a minimum wage for our small sector of the economy. A higher minimum- wage would simply increase the number of jobs being shipped abroad.
We can dictate that our government protect the local economy by controlling legal access to the jobs that cannot be off-shored and preventing immigration from artificially inflating our housing market.
I would prefer to pay $2.00 more for lettuce while paying $300.00 less for housing.
The only real Immigration solution is to control access to employment. Illegal employers are the real problem not illegal immigrants.
I would propose that we give greencards to any illegal immigrant that can testify in the sucessful prosecution of his/her illegal employer.
Illegal employers are the terrorists in our economy. Illegal employers have devistated the working class and responsible employers.
Why shouldn’t we use the best (and motivated) witnesses we have to prosecute them.
Comment by Steve — 7/2/2006 @ 12:32 pm
A global minimum wage would crush the developing world’s ability to compete with richer countries for lower order manufacturing. If the same low wage was expected in the United States and China then the manufacturing would be done here instead of there.
Some might add that this would bring us more jobs, so what if it’s at their expense; but the long term picture is bleak for the United States too. The resource expenditure we would dedicate to making t-shirts would detract from the capital available to produce higher order goods and to invest in innovation. In the absence of wage specialization, all countries loose.
Comment by mickeyk — 7/2/2006 @ 2:58 pm