Category Archives: Labor

No Attrition

IMMIGRATION, Labor, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Welfare

Although fewer Mexicans are entering the U.S., illegal aliens are not repatriating to Mexico, despite the economic depression, reports the The Washington Independent. The trend appears to support my assertion, in the post on “Socialist America Sinking,” that the trough is still sufficiently full of feed for the incoming oinks.

It’ll take time to break the backs of the relatively few Atlases who carry the $13 trillion American economy. Decades hence, immigration will slow. Until then, the hordes will flock to the freebies.

Granted, it might be argued that fear of law enforcement prevents aliens from crossing the border. But that’s laughable, given the solid, proven record the US holds of not patrolling the border in any meaningful way.

My contention is on its way to being vindicated: Illegals are driven less by the rugged individualism romantic Americans of the liberal and libertarian left attribute to them, and more by the magnet of welfare and other free stuff (like Mephisto’s Medicare). After all, American immigration policy selects for poor character.

…Like A Housewarming For The Homeless

Debt, Economy, Government, Inflation, Labor, The State

A JOBLESS RECOVERY is the equivalent of a housewarming for the homeless. You have got to know that this sophistic term is a political construct, not an economic one. The term is meant to coat the entrenched, systemic effects of endemic, employment-killing government policies with a patina of scholarly respectability.

Typically, establishment economists will waffle about “structural changes—permanent shifts in the distribution of workers throughout the economy”—causing job losses, but will gleefully tout GDP growth, or some or other highly manipulable indicator, as evidence that the the jobless are fussing needlessly.

And here we return to square one: I am not sure that a vigorous recovery is even possible given government funded and unfunded debt amounting to upwards of $60 trillion, and counting. I don’t know that a country can surface from under all that. At the very least, a natural shift must take place—and be evident—from a credit-fueled, consumption-based economy, to one founded on savings, investment and production.

But, what do you know, the GDP statistic is consumption-driven: it measures the kind of economic Brownian motion of which less is required. “This statistic is constructed in accordance with the view that what drives an economy is not the production of wealth but rather its consumption,” confirms (Austrian) economist Frank Shostak. “What matters here is demand for final goods and services. Since consumer outlays are the largest part of overall demand, it is commonly held that consumer demand sets in motion economic growth.”

The prevailing “theory” of John Maynard Keynes “is not economics, but a statist political theory. Keynes’s political creed guaranteed a hand-in-glove relationship between the state and its stooge economists. Most of what Keynes advocated entails giving the state enormous … powers.”

Essential in this scheme of things is semantic obscurantism. “A Jobless Recovery” is exactly that.

So when you hear that “employers cut 467,000 jobs in June, far more than expected, and the jobless rate hit a 26-year high of 9.5 percent”; and that “wages shrank to their lowest in nearly a year,” consider these vital indicators of a moribund economy.

Update II: Medicine In The Missionary Position

Government, Healthcare, Hillary Clinton, Labor, Political Economy, Propaganda, Regulation, Socialism

During the recent ABC News Obama Health Care infomercial, Obama promised that his systems would work as the Mayo Clinic does, “where experts had figured out the most effective treatments and eliminated waste and unnecessary procedures.”

The key to Mayo, and many such private not-for-profits, is not its experts. Mayo clinic operates efficiently because it is a private clinic, where a mission and market forces are at play; and where entrepreneurs are still strongly motivated to make greater profits and avoid losses, so as to plow them back into an organization in which they are invested.

What’s the government’s mission? To get Americans into the missionary position?

Moreover, the institute of private property ensures that we have prices. Prices are like a compass: pegged to supply and demand they ensure the correct allocation of resources. Conversely, in a nationalized system there are no prices because there is no private property. Absent such knowledge, misallocation of capital is inevitable.

In freeing up medicine it is important, among other steps, to prohibit the American Medical Association from acting like a medieval guild, or a cartel, in curtailing freer entry into the medical profession, and thus reducing supply and pushing up prices.

The sick-making reality is that sixty-two percent of Americans support a so-called government insurance plan. Contrast that with the country that rejected Hilary Clinton’s Health Security Act (HAS) in 1993, lock-stock-and-barrel.

More on medicine in the missionary position in tonight’s WND column.

Update I: Roger, there are ample good products on the market for catastrophic insurance. We once had one. For the rest, we paid for our own very occasional routine visits, and because we paid cash, as you point out, it was always cheaper than the insurance price the doctors set. It’s sheer nonsense to say government must supply anything at all. I am always appalled by the lack of appreciation Americans show the marvelous markets. Not a day goes by when I don’t hear ads on the boob tube for affordable insurance. The last one I listened to was a $6 per-day offer for pretty comprehensive coverage. The problem is that the average immoral idiocrat believes that I should be taxed to pay for his care; the doctor ought to be enslaved in his service; and he ought to be able to spend the $6 on a six pack.

Keep your powder dry. There’s more to come tonight.

Update II (June 26): I appreciate the response in the Comments Section from the American Medical Association. However, in cahoots with the state, professional organizations, acting like trade unions, very often do act to protect their members by inadvertently limiting entry into the profession. Strong support for state licensure is one example.
The AMA draws up lists of approved schools and hospitals vis-a-vis internships, not so? It is instructive to note that lists of AMA and state-approved medical schools coincide. The AMA lays down the standards of practice and admission; the state enforces them, to mutual advantage.
It is this symbiotic, rent-seeking relationship that the AMA would have to relinquished for the sake of a proliferation of providers and products.
(Friedman, Milton. Capitalism and Freedom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982, in Block et al.)

Barry Goldwater On Coercive, Compulsory Unions

Business, Economy, Labor, Regulation, Socialism

“If a union has the power to enforce uniform conditions of employment throughout the nation its power is comparable to that of a Socialist government.” (Barry Goldwater, The Conscience of a Conservative, 1990, p. 50.)

Almost.

Can you say legacy costs? In light of the liquidation of GM, rechristened “Government Motors,” we’d do well to remember that the crap cars the company made were also uncompetitive because of “pension liabilities and huge health-care costs that added hundreds of dollars to the cost of each vehicle.” This rather crucial information was buried in an article at The Economist, like an afterthought.