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Immigration
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In the last post on content this seems to be the feature discussed. If you can, and I realize not all of us can be disciplined enough, keep the emotional rhetoric out of it and keep it to the facts of cause and effect on your business and neighborhood.
I will start. According to an NBER study nearly 20% of all agricultural labor in the United States is performed by illegal aliens while 13% of construction jobs are filled by illegals. In some places this can spike in certain seasons.
I know in my area around half of all construction workers are Hispanic. I do not know how many are illegal. I do know that just a rough guess on my part is that 60% speak English. It is not a rare day when it's obvious that two decades have passed between my Spanish in school and trying to communicate with the only person I can find on a jobsite. I also deliver to an area where there seems to be a huge set of immigrants from former USSR "states". So it is an issue I see everyday.
My general thoughts are that if illegal immigrants are deported the market will adjust to worker wage demands and the new product cost. If deportation is done in sync with turning off the welfare spigot you'd have a more motivated resident work force.
Some "studies"- somehow those studies always seem to produce the result that whoever was paying them to study wanted- show that deportation will put a drag on the US economy to the tune of .5% for every 1 million workers who leaves. My common sense, non funded study, thinking goes that a hungry motivated work force at home that is getting paid far better and also not being a drag on government (not to mention the loss of the drag from welfare services paid to illegals) in welfare will actually improve GDP. Much like Brexit, Trump, etc went against what everyone was telling us was going to happen but in fact has been positive economically.
I do understand there is a social side to this. It actually touches my family personally. I do understand that there will be hardship faced by some as they are returned to their own countries. I would have mores sympathy (remember this touches my own family) if they didn't know what they were doing was illegal to begin with and that also knowing that in almost all cases their home countries have much stricter immigration laws and penalties than ours does.
But I do believe in the long run this is not cruelty to return them to their own country but actually niceness. As we see more everyday in our country that the melting pot idea we were sold over the last 100 years is not all it is cracked up to be. Someone I read states it as follows Diversity + proximity = war. I'm not a racist fellow. The best neighbor we had growing up was Hispanic. I have had both hispanics and blacks marry into my family and thought very highly of them. I live on an Indian Reservation.
But my eyes and mind do work and if I can step back and just accurately see what folks do I come to this conclusion. We generally segregate ourselves by color, religion and politics. When we don't there is conflict. We see this rising daily. In the long run we will have to segregrate somewhat.
This will play out as secessions and new states eventually. What many see as cruelty I actually see as generosity. Not only are we treating those here illegally better than their home countries would treat someone in there country illegally but we are postponing war.
I know this, especially the last half, is controversial and not PC. In a perfect world we would all just get along- on this I agree. But we come from different backgrounds, different cultures, with different beliefs and expectations and when we begin to impose ours on others, which is what happens when you do not have a majority of a like group ruling themselves there will be conflict and bloodshed.
Those are the economic and social reasons I support what is currently being done to make our borders secure and to also send those here illegally home.
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FamilyMan,
Those were all the very same arguments Hitler advanced in the 1930's.
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Gees Tim already with the Hitler talk...
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Perplex cabinetmaker,
That is not only patently false but it is the exact same type of false arguement that stirs up the tensions we are speaking about.
If you have a problem with case being made state why so, to call everyone Hitler is crazy and quite frankly it has lost any power to persuade me or make me cower. Hitler was an evil man who did unspeakable evil. I am not him. Nor are my ideas even in the same hemisphere as his.
I am not asking you to kill anybody. In fact I am asking you to return them to their homeland, to their heritage- which they tell me everyday that they are proud of and that I must accept and honor- usually above my own!
Why wouldn't they want to go back to such a great place? Especially when human history teaches us that diversity+proximity=war. That even the most liberal person on earth sees that even the most liberal of cities people of the same congregate together for the most part and when they don't there are battles- ideological, political and eventually physical. I can enjoy and even respect those many cultures and think highly of the people-which I do- but that doesn't mean I want their values and culture enforced on me and neither do they want mine onto them.
I'm not telling you how it should be, I am simply telling you how it is. I would love to travel to Jupiter, or have six pack abs while only having to watch TV- but neither is reality. Reality shows us time and time again what I have stated.
If you want to challenge my ideas please feel free but do it but Hitler just doesn't cut it any longer.
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You asked...
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Pat,
That is funny! Yep, that's how I'd have to do it! Thanks!
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FamilyMan,
The thing to remember about social upheaval is there is not exact thunderclap that we can all point to and say "our country is now run by fascists". This stuff takes some time. It's like boiling a frog in a pot of water. At first the warm water is soothing.
Step1 in this process is to discredit the press. Step 2 is to declare your tribe the chosen ones.
Lets get back to Pat's preference for data.
How many of "them" tell you each day how proud they are of their culture and heritage and that you must accept and honor theirs, usually above your own?
Is this like 2 people every day or 5 people every month? Is this based on measurable data or the movie in your head?
Demographics tell us that pro-life Latina populations will soon be in the majority. What happens to your arguments about dominant culture then?
Much better, I think, to deal with things the way they are or are going to be than how you wish they were. It may be fun to practice with the militia on weekends but history tells us secession didn't work out so well for the south the last time we tried that.
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Perplexed cabinetmaker,
First, would you stick with one name? You aren't fooling anyone and it makes you look deceptive at best and dishonest at worst. That is the perception, if that is not the case, then I would recommend you stick to one name.
What you describe is exactly how people on my side of the line have felt for sometime now sir, you just did not realize it because you were on the other side. It took a long while but slowly one by one we woke up and realized the water was indeed boiling.
I find it terribly ironic from someone who has already stated that you believe I am Hitlerish that you could believe I and people like me believe we have been living under a fascist regime before the current administration. If you don't toe the liberal talking points on politics, race, gender you are run out of town, your family, life and employment threatened. I know because it has happened to me. My beliefs are what was considered normal for 1950's America- in fact I'm far more progessive then 1950's America and yet my family has been stalked and threatened over a period of months by dozens of people.
You are oblivious to this because you toe the line. Pretend for a month to not believe the things you believe and see how progressive, accepting & tolerant your friends, neighbors and government really are and then get back to me.
Demographics change, just as they are now. They are subject to many factors and can turn tomorrow. I want to state again simply because of the times we live in and how things can be twisted. I have no problem with people of any color who want to come to America legally, who want to work hard, respect their neighbor and follow the Constitution. All races of people can be good people and bad people can come in any tint. All races have differences- some genetic, some cultural. I just want laws and the Constitution to be honored and to be not so PC that we can discuss the reality that yes we are indeed different and in a great many cases do want very different things. Either that means small government that does not force one belief upon another or that means imposing ones will on another or drawing lines on a map. Since those lines are already there why do we not honor those lines. And if that fails then we must draw new lines.
I am all for small government or honoring existing lines or drawing new lines. I try to live at peace with my neighbor therefore I could live with any of those three options. But at the trajectory we are going the only option is war. I do not want that. Because I am not Hitler.
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Step 1: Delegitimize the free press.
Step 2: Declare your tribe the chosen one
Step 3: Declare those you disagree with to be dishonest
Step 4: Create a state run newspaper
Step 5: Order brown shirts
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Step 1 is in process:
White house denied New York Times and CNN access to white house briefing that other news agencies could attend.
This is First Amendment stuff.
FamilyMan? Any thoughts on this?
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If we don't get rid of foreigners and put our own to work this country will go irretrievably down the toilet... if it hasn't already!
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IT workers for the insurance companies in my area is a perfect example. They either send most of their money back to India or stay and bring in ten of their relatives adding to our population problem. Either way they are parasites.
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Joel,
Much, if not most, of all manufacturing in America is dependent on global supply chains and global markets.
How much manufacturing do you think we can get done without having the rest of the world buy our product or supply components that we ultimately re-sell back to them?
Lets assume we kick out everybody that doesn't look like us. Where are the jobs going to come from? A lot of the companies that hire IT workers sell their product to people in other countries. Most of the farmers in our country export their crops to other nations. The global market for airplanes is what keeps Boeing Airplane company alive.
Where are the jobs going to come from?
Are we going to start trading Apples for Chickens? You better move to Wenatchee or you're not going to have any apples to trade. I hear there are some openings coming up in the fields.
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IDC I have watched the American dream evaporate over the last 20 years. My prescription is to close off and fix our domestic problems and let the rest of the world fend for themselves for a change. Good thing I am not the president huh:)
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Business as usual will sink us I promise you
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Joel,
That's why Trump hand picked his crew from Goldman Sachs. If anybody knows the ins & outs of the swamp it's these guys.
Blaming immigrants for our problems is a pretty forward transaction. They are an easy target to identify. They are everybody that doesn't look like us.
If you can get the voters to take their eye off the ball they will applaud you because you're gonna "make America great" again. It will be 1950 all over again.
Who wouldn't like that?
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Everybody wants to have a high headed philosophical debate. This s*t is real and the train is off it's tracks. The only reason we are not in a state of martial law and rioting in the streets is the feds are printing money to feed and shelter the poor 30% of us. How long can that go on for?
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Joel,
You put in plain english what I have been trying to say and you are right to connect it to the money printing/debt bubble.
cabmaker lives in Seattle where Microsoft, Expedia and Amazon money make it hard for him to realize what 90% of America is going through- not just financially but socially. Money will cover up some socials ills for awhile which is why he does not see it, even if he does not agree with it.
cabmaker, Americans trust the MSM less then they do Congress. What you call the freepress is no longer free. It has been bought and paid for by government and corporation money- it lies and manipulates everything. Or as the MSNBC journalist said earlier this week, "it is their job to tell Americans exactly what to think." I trust the lone journalist blogging more then I do CNN, NYT or FOX. This administration is so much more transperant than the previous, it is night and day difference. He is not closing down the free press, the press has more access to the president then ever- just bought and paid for press do not have exclusivity anymore and their poor little feelings are hurt.
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FamilyMan,
You still need a free press, even if you don't agree with them, even if you think they have been bought and paid for by the most evil corporations in the world.
The reason General Flynn stepped down as National Security Director was because the free press stayed on top of his connections with Russia. We cannot have a foreign government having anything at all to do with our democratic elections.
Trump knew all about these connections last December but it was only the doggedness of the free press that made him surrender that selection. Eventually congress will subpoena Trump's tax returns and then we will find out who he owes money to and who he is beholden to. There is a reason he fought like hell to keep this connection in the dark.
The people who have their boot on your neck is the banks. Your man hand picked his team from Goldman Sachs.
Is this what you thought he meant by "draining the swamp"?
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Joel said, "IT workers for the insurance companies in my area is a perfect example. They either send most of their money back to India or stay and bring in ten of their relatives adding to our population problem. Either way they are parasites.".
I totally agree with you. You must also find out who gave them jobs here and the reason for giving. It is the greed of many big American businesses and their investors to increase their profits at the cost of honest, innocent American people. The abuse of H1B visa would not have been there if those companies are not so greedy. They seem to have no interest in improving the American educational system to meet the demand for IT workers. Politicians might have given them tacit support.
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 Member |
CNN is still able to obtain their " breaking news " the same way they always have, through Crystal Balls, Dart Boards and Ouija Boards.
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Robert,
Without CNN General Flynn would still be working for the Russians. Trump wouldn't have let Flynn go unless there was treasonous behavior that could be proved and he didn't do this until the free press made it untenable to not do so.
With CNN and their compatriots we will eventually bring pressure to bear on Congress to subpoena Trump's tax returns so we finally get a chance to see who he is working for.
You know, the same tax returns he told us he would release.
You don't want the Russians to have a seat at the table during our elections. We need to investigate their role in the last one.
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Member |
Family Man, you write clearly here, and I appreciate you sharing your point of view.
Am I correctly understanding that you felt your core values and culture were under attack during the Obama presidency (and maybe before)?
I did not notice a change in my little world, going from Bush to Obama, but I live in a very rural part of the country, and I guess I keep to myself more than most. I don't see any difference in my opportunities now (under Trump), than I did under Obama or Bush. It's always been up to my brain, and my efforts how well I do or don't. No one else.
But the last thread made me think, and I do think there was a certain sense of a permanent victory on the left side during the Obama years. The political correctness was out of control. Diversity was aggressively pushed. I can understand the anger on the right side. Government (on both L & R) has become way too intrusive, trying to legislate morality, and/or force pc on us.
I agree with some of Trump's agenda:
I would like our Allies to more fairly share the cost (and manpower) of defense.
I would like our immigration laws enforced.
A relative is dating a Canadian gal w/ a green card. She paid a lot of money for the privilege of working here. What's good for her is good for the rest.
While I can agree with some of Trump's agenda, I find his behavior and tactics repulsive and un-American:
He started the Nazi comparisons with his description of our intelligence officers. Un-American.
His attacks on the press (and judges, and department stores) are unprecedented. Reagan never went there.
He's an advertising genius, who cleverly saw an opportunity and switched from supporting Planned Parenthood (and the Clintons!!) to leading the understandable opposition to the left wing overreaches of the Obama years.
I would never sign a contract to supply cabinets to a Trump enterprise, I like getting my final check too much. Never have and never will get involved with anyone who runs to the courts.
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Cabmaker,
Where was your outrage when any news agency that didn't agree Obama wasn't the greatest thing ever wasn't allowed into the press room, let alone some later nothing meeting? Your panties are in knot not about the press but because you are losing. You knew long before us that it was a battle but now that we've come to realize that and the battle has shifted you are worried? Sorry, I have no sympathy. The stakes are too high. When they become honest reporters I will be show your reporters far more sympathy and ask they be included in the ice cream after the game meeting. Which is more than you did for honest reporters when your side was winning.
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Trump manifests the same consistent inconsistency of the right-to-lifers. To them every child's life is important...... until you are born. After that it depends.
I don't think there is a man on this forum that wouldn't beat someone to an inch of his life if he grabbed their wife or daughter by the Pus--y like Trump bragged about to Billy Bush on the Hollywood bus. For some reason, however, this is just locker room talk.
It's a set of standards that evolves according to the moment and situation. Rhetorical standards are easier to be compliant with than real ones.
We could all buy handmade shirts if we wanted to really keep the clothing industry in America but for some reason the ones at Walmart seem like a better value. That's probably the reason the Trump clothing lines are all made in China.
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Member |
News sources...
This past week, I've made a sustained effort to look at the Washington Post and Breitbart. Genuinely curious about what each had to say.
In general, I would say that the Post has more critical commentary towards Trump than positive. But, they feature Ed Rogers and Marc Thiessen on there opinion page, and they are aggressively pro-Trump. Will and Krauthammer are obviously right leaning as well.
Breitbart, on the other hand, reads like a propaganda release, rather than a legitimate newspaper (cue the derision, but I believe in such a thing). There is no liberal equivalent to a Rogers or Thiessen there.
The only TV news I will watch is the PBS news hour. If you haven't seen it, I urge anyone to watch it for a week-absolutely unbiased. After a brief summary of th days' major stories, they cover at most 4 stories in depth. They get one person from each side of an issue, and they let them share their views. No interrupting, no drama, no outrage.
Vice President Pence and Counsellor Conway have been on the program in the last few weeks, and they were each interviewed courteously, and allowed to state their cases, no interrupting.
This program is not fake news, period
To me, Trump's attacks attacks on the press and intelligence officials are obvious pre-emptive strikes. Clearly there is something behind all this Russian crap, and he is getting ahead of the story. He is an advertising genius, as I stated earlier....
Trump is our legitimate President, and I sincerely wish him success for my own selfish sake.
But, by Christ, can't the guy conduct himself like we'd expect a dinner guest in our homes to behave?
He could enact every bit of his agenda quicker and easier if he quit behaving like a big city NY A-hole.
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AltFactsNo,
I appreciate your well thought response. Yes, I have not only felt very under attack but have been under attack. And I tried keeping to myself. It did not work.
I want to share with you something. I detailed earlier coming under attack and how the facts and story are told when your enemies are doing the reporting. I never realized how far the narrative can be from actual reality until I lived through it. We all have faults- Trump more than many- but you are discounting three things.
First, the story you have been told has been told by his enemies. How have the power, time and money to not only dig up all the dirty details but to portray them as wish. Imagine if your worst enemies could do this? People that hate you. Let me tell you, even your good qualities become bad and your mistakes- you become Hitler.
Second, men do change. He is an old man and is looking at the end of his life in the next decade to decade and half. I am not saying he is an angel but he is not the man he was and he certainly is not the man the MSM has portrayed.
Lastly, the very reason he was elected is because he has the balls to say the things he says. A "nice" man simply could not wade through the muck and have gotten done what need to be done. The situation required a warrior- a warrior can be crude- because he is about war. But we have tried to elect nice men that are refined and we continue to lose ground. I thought for the first two decades of my adult life as you did and would have judged him the same- did for the first three months of the campaign. But I realized that I was the problem. I expected someone who was a cross between a professor/minister/CEO- who was smart, moral, wise and driven to go in and accomplish this among the biggest, greediest, cold blooded sociopaths our country can produce.
But I was wrong. We needed a warrior. We needed someone who was an Alpha. Who maybe was even once one of them.
Men change. I bet on that and I like very much what I see so far.
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FamilyMan,
Two real simple questions:
1) Do you think the Russians interfered in our presidential election?
2) Do you think this should be investigated?
Both of these questions lend themselves to a YES or NO answer. I would like to know how you feel about this without pivoting. Just a simple YES or NO.
Or maybe if you want to re-direct tell us why this is not a simple YES/NO question. This would give us more insight into how you form your interpretations of the world.
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1) No
2) No. But if my answer to 1 was Yes then it would change this but only if the investigation was performed by an uncompromised and unconverged agency. I do not believe we yet have one, our government is corrupt to the core right now. To me it simply does not matter due to this circumstance-my efforts are only concentrated on winning back our country. Squawk all you want about Russia, Americans aren't buying it- me included.
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Member |
Family Man,
Extremely well written and argued. That should be required reading for Washington Post subscribers, and college liberals.
Your warrior comments ring true to the businessman in me. At certain points in time, as a business owner, you can not be a stereotypically "nice guy". The goal isn't to make friends, it's to deliver what I promised, and just as or more importantly to demand that the other side delivers what they promised. My behavior has shocked my wife a few times, but when it's my money, and my house, and my shop on the line...
No one should underestimate Trump's capacity to get things done. We were told his primary campaign was in disarray and he had no chance. Then his general election campaign was F'ed up and he had no chance. Then the transition, then the first month.
I may not like his tactics, but the guy obviously has a plan(s), and the energy and forcefulness to implement it.
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FamilyMan,
Many in Congress, both Republicans & Democrats, think the Russian connection with Trump's campaign should be investigated. I would guess they are closer to some of the information than we are out here in the hinterlands.
Why do you not care about treason?
Isn't this part of patriot creed?
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cabmaker,
I think you mistakenly think I'm behind Trump because he is a republican or that by saying republicans in congress believe...
I dislike the neocon's and "conservatives" as much as I dislike the Democrats. I think they are just as bought, just as corrupt, just as tied to the deep state and need to be drained from the swamp just as bad. You will never win an arguement with me saying I should agree with John McCain or Paul Ryan. The only reason they will vote with Trump is because America is holding their feet to the fire- the minute we give them a chance to break loose they will. I for one will not let up.
I believe there was treason committed by dozens and maybe hundreds connected to our government in the last election. Just not by the Trump team- but I would not put it past the Ryans or McCains to of had- but certainly not for Trump.
I'm done talking about it. You've heard what I think and why. Address some of the points made by others or get ignored- at least by me. I'm done answering your questions, showing you respect and giving you my time & thoughts to your points, while having none of that returned. You address none of the points and concerns those here are sharing with you. In the last three posts you've asked the same questions and I've answered you repeatedly- in every way possible.
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FamilyMan,
Trump himself has admitted that the Russians meddled in our election. It took him forever to admit that and he used every dodge you have to keep from admitting it. Eventually the evidence from EVERY intelligence agency arrived at the very same conclusion so he had no where else to hide and finally admitted it.
His choice for National Security Advisor lasted exactly 24 days. General Flynn was forced to resign because of his relationship with the Russians.
All of this points to the need for an investigation and the best you can come up with is you don't think we should have an investigation because you don't trust the investigators.
Facts are stubborn things. You can bob & weave like Muhammed Ali but the facts are still there. The only thing we disagree on is how to interpret the facts.
As a freedom & liberty loving man I would think you should welcome any investigation of Russian influence in our elections. I think you should hold your man's feet in the fire and insist that he release the tax returns that he said he would (several times).
Sunshine is the most powerful disinfectant there is. If he has nothing to hide then he should prove that.
The rest of your trope about "we need a warrior in office" is based on too many comic books. We need a statesman. Not a buffoon. We need someone who has read a book.
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Member |
I post with my real name, i look to those who don't as aggitators with hidden agendas . No matter what side you post on. I am a Navy Vet, For a period of time I surrendered my rights under the constitution of the United States and was governed by the "UCMJ" (Uniform Code of Military Justice) This removed some basic freedoms for the period of time My contract with the United States was agreed to. some uninformed may say "Do Wha" well it is pretty simple it meant basically under Article 34 of the UCMJ I did what i was told with out fail.
I listen to sooo many who spew what freedom and democracy or a republic of democracy is,, i think in my Head while they do this " What an uniformed dumb a$$" you see i look at an understanding of freedom from the perspective of what freedom is not, Until you have seen that you will never comprehend what freedom is. so enjoy it while you can. Me i am sticking with the defenders not the antagonist.
Some years ago i had a Mexican National who was my finisher, He provided me with the necessary documents at the time and SS, Medicare and related taxes were deducted and paid in on his behalf, He had a girlfriend who got pregnant and decided to return to mexico as he wanted his child born in mexico, he wanted to work as long as he could three weeks before the child was due it decide to come early two days before they were driving home to mexico, the child was born in the US, once she and the child were able to travel he asked me to go with him to the hospital to pay the bill for services,
At the hospital we spent a good six hours simply trying to get an invoice to pay,, What a cluster ugk that was. We left without any results. at that point we had no way on knowing when or if they would send an invoice. two days later he gave me 2000.00 to pay the bill (we had been told to expect 2-5 k) and he left , later that day the invoice came in the mail it was for 3600.00. I called him by that time they were in Alabama somewhere, he turned around and returned to Columbia to pay this invoice in full and did so. he was grateful for our country and showed us that in every day he was here, at no time did he ask for or recieve any refunds or services for the taxes he paid in.
before he left he hired and trained his replacement, "Pedro" stayed with us another two years and in 2009 it was becoming obvious that the immigration issue was going to grow and the sentiment amongst those who had no contact with a mexican worker was going to undermine the need for the immigrant worker with no knowledge of the jobs they did for us.
On discovery that Pedro's Visa had expired we decided to hire an Immigration lawyer and correct this. In 2007 if you wanted to hire an immgration lawyer you telephoned one in Atlanta and always always got a voice mail.. Eventually one called back, his advice, send Pedro back to mexico, pay him $ 4500.00 (UP FRONT) and he would file papers top bring him back across, lots of phone calls lots of documents and affidavits.
We did not succeed in bringing back one Damn Good Finisher, Pedro Unlike all the US born attemptees came to work on time, did a great job and never asked for more than his share for his hard work. Basically our efforts to bring him back fell on deaf ears
At this point My best guess is many of you are not old enough or been in business long enough to remember in the late 90's when the AGC and other trade organizations were sending memos telling GC's home builders and trade we should learn to speak Spanish as this was going to be our workers native language, you see the push to send american kids to college at the high school level was in full swing. School districts saw the cost savings of dismantling Shop and trade craft programs at the public education level. New math, computer sciences were up coming needs I mean really who needs some on the change a tire, do landscaping and God forbid Finish your cabinetry to that special color and glazing your wife want sooo much. I mean really God forbid The people was the mode.
We Imported the Mexicans, We turned a blind eye to immigration laws, the new standard was our fault NOT Theirs...
At this point with the migration of Mexicans back to Mexico We are left with Crack addicts and drunks White and Black, Idiots with Social Egos of entitlement who worked harder at tricking the system into workers comp claims or Unemployment. yea i know many of you are in bigger markets and had a bigger pools to draw from but for us in Smaller Cities and rural had little to work with in the way of labor who wanted a trade career.
In 2008 with the recession approaching We stopped doing residential work and switched to all commercial, i looked for some ways to put us ahead of the curve and 3d work and CNC in a small shop became the answer, Now we have frown and i have had to seek more automation, Employees with the pool of deadbeats who want to be famous or Rich within the first 90 days of employment and No Hard working Immigrants who will do the job will work hard and pay their far share, what do we do we automate, now the bitchin about job loss will eventually go from lack of jobs in manufacturing to bitchin about the option of automation. either bring back Vocational schools at the high school level in a big and committed way or bring us immigrants.
You see Immigrants built this country, I am a decendent of Irish Immigrants, so are all of you in some form, we need to correct immigration and reforms are needed, but i still feel some screening and if an employer is willing to vouch for a worker then a path to work should be provided.
Heres a cute story.
One day (Mid 07) I was asked to meet a pool guy a GC at a clients house,, this client was in his late 20s he had made him some fake chump in the sub prime business and years later i saw this house foreclosed, what he wanted us to do was dig up his 6 month old pool and move 20 feet more to the left behind his house on the lake,, you see when they built the house they centered the pool based on the house,
NOOOO, But now his man cave at the pool level all on the left side of the house at the pool level ,, he wanted to look out over his waterfall pool and have it centered in his new view. this meant pool, pool house, and landscaping.
While we were meeting with him there were some Mexican Landscapers working on his neighbors yard, gasoline tools and mowers were buzzing away, at on point too loud for us to hear each other in the meeting, Client got up went to the edge of the yard and cussed out the Mexicans in a language i am not allowed to repeat here (It was Vile). they stopped listened and as soon as he finished they went right back to work.
He came back and looked at us and said "I just cannot wait till they get rid of them Uck!n Mexicans, The pool guy then said well who do you think they will get to do this when they are gone, Client then said shoot they will just get the ODdang (Highly racial expression for an American race) to do these jobs.
The GC then came up with a lame reason to end the meeting, (Went right over the clients head) and we all gathered at the street befor leaving. The GC said to Us "I am never coming back here again" we all nodded yes and left.......
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Warrior is the wrong word, that implies a certain nobility.
Trump is a street fighter in the Roy Cohn tradition. Hit first, knee to the nuts, knife in the back. Good stuff if you support him to the hilt...
Trump will effect lots of change, but he's making a big mistake if he wants LASTING change. He was elected and is expected to govern within a system, and is ignorant (willfully or otherwise) about how to proceed. So he returns to his Trump Towers, Trump University ways and governs with bluster, exaggeration, and advertising ("beautiful health care" WTF).
His executive orders will be overturned as easily as Obama's overreaches when the inevitable shift back left comes. it may come as soon as 2018.
Trump supporters should be urging him to legislate within the system if they want LASTING change.
On trade and tariff issues (and probably immigration somewhat) Trump and Sanders should be natural allies. But to work with Sanders, Trump would have to stop the grandstanding and work with others. I'm sure there are Democrats with blue collar constituencies who would do work on trade with him.
As Family Man said, Trump really isn't a Republican, and they will have a messy breakup at some point. The cynical and opportunistic Republicans think they're using Trump to get their agenda, but I think they underestimate him like everyone else.
The funniest thing from the "transition" was watching Romney abandon his dignity trying for the Sec State position. anyone with a lick of sense knew he had no chance with Trump.
Cabmaker-you're wrong using buffoon. He's one smart mo'fo...
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James,
You have a severe beef with the founding fathers of this country then for they often did not write under their real names. Three years ago I would have agreed with you, but I am learned better, by learning my history and seeing what using the internet under your real name can do. There is a time and a place for your real name- to stand up and be counted. But on the internet where thousands of miles and a screen hide the truth regardless a man must be taken on the truth of his words. Charachter-which is the only reason to use your name and to give weight to your argument- cannot be measured through a screen.
I thank you for your service to our country sir.
I do believe you are making several mistakes in your reasoning, however well intentioned you are. We can agree on one thing- our government has been at fault for the situation we are in today. And another thing we can agree on is that there are a lot of very good, hardworking illegal immigrants in our country.
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AltFactsNo,
I believe that you are under rating how the rigged the system is to not change. There is no changing it when you have half the country against you and 85% of a corrupt, bought and deep state tied Congress, House, Supreme Court and every three letter agency out there.
There is no working within the system- because this system is not even the system. It is not the system our Founders gave us and it is not the system we had even 50 years ago.
You are asking him to do brain surgery but what is needed is massive ER trauma where you have a patient that had stage 4 cancer that was also in a 60 mph head on crash. He's tying off organs and dropping pints of blood in him and trying to get compound fractures fixed all the while the hospital staff is actively trying to sabotage him because the patient is the guy who was hired to "restructure" the hospital.
There is no pretty or gentlemenly way to do this within the system. His style might not be yours or mine but his aggressiveness and crudeness is exactly what the situation calls for and the only tools he has on hand. And if he can drain enough of the swamp and get enough justices in- not to mention the Americans who have grown a back bone since he has been elected and are standing up for the first time in a long time. I wouldn't underrate how long the change can last.
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At least we can all agree that not a single iota of antipathy towards the Latinas in our country has anything at all to do with racism.
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The valuable commodity here is the culture.
It is a culture of exchange.
What destroys that culture is co-opting people into a culture of public transfers.
The immigration process is a cruel joke. Reagan passed amnesty in 1986 which many claim was a disaster. Reagan should have fixed the real problem instead of granting amnesty.
We are a nation of immigrants, but every nation in the world is a nation of immigrants. With heavy public transfers available to the immigrants there is huge abuse. The fact is that 1/3 of the welfare in the US goes to Calif with 1/8 of the population.
Mexicans are like anyone else some are great some are "not so much". The parents may have an awesome work ethic, but the kids quickly are co-opted into the entitlement culture.
The enemy here is public transfers. 1/3 of the budget every year is borrowed, that has amounted to 20 trillion dollars in debt.
The truth is we will never pay off that debt. Economies grow because of demographics. The US is in good shape because of Latino immigrants that have reproduced. The dollar is the strongest currency in the world, but only because of yesterday's culture of free exchange. (BTW Trump is dead wrong about tariffs)
A basic economic truth is that countries enjoy a higher standard of living because of investment in capital goods (machinery) Although cabinet making employees figures to shrink by 2% over the coming years. The industry figures to grow, albeit it may come in new ways such as manufactured housing becoming the main stream.
Thomas Sowell speaks of the Japanese with no natural resources grew and prospered and thrived if they emigrated to the US. The Mexicans with abundant natural resources did not prosper and when they emigrated to the US if they prospered (which many have) it was because of the US culture.
The culture is the valuable commodity here.
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Pat,
On this you are dead wrong.
2/3rds of all public welfare goes to corporations and by extension the shareholders in those corporations.
Every time congress earmarks pork for a Sikorsky helicopter that the Pentagon did not ask for we have a transfer of public welfare. There is a whole lot more dollars given to corporations like this than those brown skinned welfare queens.
ANY transfer of dollars from the government to the public is welfare. ANY transfer of dollars from the public to the government is a tax.
The bankers who get first dollar from the feds because we want to stimulate the economy are recipients of welfare. Any time a church does not pay property taxes they are recipients of welfare.
ANY dollars that flow FROM the government is a public transfer of welfare.
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Tim
Yup, if you got rid of corporate subsidies the budget would be balanced. The best government money can buy.
With the public transfers the Ds are buying votes.
I'm against all of it, both sides of the aisle in fact the Rs are worse than the Ds.
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Well said,, I am no fan of the 501 c scams in this country, I gave 100K to a 501 c and it has turned into one og the most uckkkked up tax cases, i have had to sue them now for 9 years, anyone who thinks Cancer will be cured donating money to pink is dead wrong,,,, wanna change things cut off government and tax free money to cancer 501c's and it will be likkety split
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Governor Brown spent 20 Billion dollars of tax payer and borrowed money on illegals last year and absolutely nothing on the Orville Dam. They've known for years that the spillway was in dire need of repair yet did nothing.
Why California is spending billions of dollars on a Bullet Train to nowhere amazes even the silliest of Liberals.
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Tim
You are not considering the how vital private property is.
Put the narrative away it is a WASTE of time.
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Actually the money does evaporate ,in the form of remittances to Mexico....or as you would call it the country of Latino.
Look up remittances to Mexico ....I dare ya.
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Sorry cabmaker, Ive thought long and hard enough already about how the Great State of Confusion has urinated away money they have and money they don't have. If any Wood Shop or Cabinet Shop operated in the same vane.....they would cease to exist.
Reason # 15 that prompted me to retire from a trade I spent 35 passionate years in. It was real nice of the powers that be; to ban me from buying a full Gallon of material but allowed me to buy four single quarts of the same product.
Stufreekingpidity is now the norm
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Robert,
How many cabinet shops do you think there are that still build things their work using inches & fractions of inches when there is this thing called the metric system?
And you want to call cabinet shops efficient?
Quick now, how much is (16 7/8 + 13/16) divided by 3?
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To underline my point
View higher quality, full size image (650 X 503)
View higher quality, full size image (960 X 720)
View higher quality, full size image (960 X 720)
The context of the charts
cabmaker, Columbus sailed the Oceans Blue back in 1492. Your response to my last posting makes about as much sense as this posting does.
My Airplane lands in Realityville. I'm a realist who understands that one and one equals two, and I'm open minded enough to acknowledge that four quarters and four quarters also equal two.
Go ahead, keep disputing what a calendar says; I'm outta here. Best 2U....Robert
Robert,
I realize now that was a little subtle.
My point was that before people start to bash the government for being inefficient they should first look at their own enterprise.
Anybody that has ever converted from imperial inches to millimeters will tell you how easy the transition was and how much simpler their math is to navigate. There is a reason the rest of the world uses the metric system and probably a reason most cabinet makers use inches.
We work in an math based environment. It somehow seems more efficient to work with simple integers rather than feet and inches and fractions of inches. There is no reason to first have to search for a common denominator before you can even start your math equation.
But it is quite easy to just bitch about how inefficient government workers are.
It is also much easier to hold on to narratives.
There's a cabinet shop in Orange that puts out something like a thousand cabinets a shift .They do their own finishing and make their own doors........and you think your efficient ???
BTW remittances to Mexico last year tops 24 billion dollars NOT including cash.
I do not get the part about what one does with their money,, Legal, Illegal, why would it bother anyone what they do with the money once earned taxes paid, (best scenario) I worked abroad for 8 years after my Completing My Navy service and never thought twice about sending my money back to the states, are we not free to do with it as we choose.
REALLY????
When they TAKE public services to augment income .......REALLY???
They ,unlike citizens get free health care.
The ones i have known over the years did not live on or receive public assistance,, I am not trying to advocate and Illegal system. I do strongly feel we created the problem they just followed suit.
I will study this a bit
cabmaker,
The metric system is your best example??
You are talking "inefficiencies" of gov't workers, and your opponents want to burn the entire system to the ground.
Inefficiencies......are you John Podesta or Harry Reid?
If the personal attacks here were left out and We all played like American adults and Cabinetmakers ( leave the troll part to FB) some credibility might just rise in the discussion.
It has always been my understanding that while 1/2 of all immigrants receive some form of public assistance it is 1/2 of legal immigrants, illegals stay far away from public records and like cash. yes their children qualify for schools and assistance.
Eventually some industries and agriculture are gonna need these employees, i am just at a loss as to why we take the primarily alt right method of correction verses the one that will produce personal responsibility and income.
Our freedoms will always come with cost. Some public assistance will be needed even for the white and black American populations, What we spend on this is miniscule to what we allow to not be collected in 501 c abuse, military waste and corporate graft. Eventually we will be sooo private the post Office will be privately owned Now you wanna surrender your freedom so easy just wait till the basics of assembly, freedom of communication and speech are gone and in private controlled hands. this Immigration thingy is gonna seem like the least of your problems.
OK James
Since I'm the web illiterate why don't ya break down the maths for me.
How the hell does someone making 15 an hour pay for a nice car ,insurance registration,gas,repairs,rent,food ,health care,etc.etc and still have enough left over to send home a large portion of their income ????
Oh wait I get it .......They use the metric system.
BTW even thirty years ago it cost a citizen whole lot more than $4500 to have a trouble free delivery of a child.
Robert,
I am curious where you get your facts regarding national politics? What papers, programs, or websites? If you'll share them I'll look with as an open a mind as possible.
I will say that Trump's mathematics and plainly spoken English is not as accurate as our 1+1 example.
He frequently says one thing, and his cabinet members go overseas and say 180 degrees the opposite.
He wants "damaging leaks" stopped, but says in the next sentence that the leaks are "fake news". How can something fake cause damage?
He said he would immediately repeal the ACA and replace with a "beautiful plan". No one has replaced anything yet, and there is no tangible evidence of the beautiful new plan. The emperors new clothes is an appropriate metaphor so far.
We all know here how much easier it is to demo something, versus building.
Trouble is, whatever he dismantles will have to be rebuilt, and economic, political, and defense systems are infinitely more complicated than cabinet boxes.
Obama already stupidly (if passively) began diminishing US influence overseas, leaving voids that will be filled. Rest assured that voids and systems will be filled, unpredictably and perhaps not benignly. And it will be up to us to deal with these messes in the future. The oceans aren't wide anymore.
I can see his appeal, if you believe like Family Man, that the patient is on the table with cancer and a car wreck, that describes the worst.
I see the patient as obese,lazy, and wanting to climb a mountain. The patient wants the gastric bypass surgery, the easy way out.
Just imagine if you will, a cabinet shop in your area that was offering up free Cabinets. Free design, free materials, free finishing, free delivery and of course, free installation.
Now imagine if you will, that the other Cabinet Shops who were trying to reek out a living by charging a fair price, were ordered to fork over monies to the Cabinet Shop that was designing, building,finishing, delivering and installing those freebies.
BTW James ,I'm not trolling ya.I'm aka splatterman,aka RC from waaaaaayback.
We all know your heart is in the right place ,it's your head that worries us.LOL
Look I sense you are really angry at something, now this is the net so I am not gonna pretend to be able to see thru a screen just like you doing the best i can to contribute (I hope).
I can tell from this statement
"How the hell does someone making 15 an hour pay for a nice car ,insurance registration,gas,repairs,rent,food ,health care,etc.etc and still have enough left over to send home a large portion of their income ????"
that you may not be close or have worked with mexicans,, many ( I had a real loser recently and had to run him off) are far more family oriented than we are, they pool money cook most all they eat and are pretty dang frugal. our kids and workers on the other hand are not looking with the mentality to build something, their mentality is to buy something. Pedro built his family a house in Vera cruz with the money he made here.
the entire bill was 5985.00 for the child birth at what was then RMC Columbia, Alejandro paid 1500 up front. she was there 23 hours. and the baby was really Beautiful. i am gonna get back to shop drawing today, we are swamped and the meat of this discussion went south a long bunch of post back.. good luck to all and pray for Trump that suckers gonn need it..
PS how many of you have ever actually met or worked for him ?
James, living within ones means is wise, no?
RC
What is the name of the company in Orange, Furniture Traditions ?
James
It is/has decimated the trades.
Robert I wish i had learned that much sooner in life,, I did one deal in the Virgin Islands in the 80s netted 1.5 mil,, i was 30. it was gone by the time i was 37. been a cabinetmaker ever since.....
James
My wife and both of my children are Mexican citizens.
I'm one of the few gringos working on every job-site I install at.
The neighborhood where I've lived for thirty years is now predominately Mexicans.I know how they live.
Now GET OFF MY LAWN.....LOL
I believe its RSI ?
Might actually be Anaheim ???? they've moved and have had various names over the years ,or so I've heard.
There's other large operations in Ontario ,massive sweatshops ,hundred plus employee.
That is a lot of cabinets. Furniture Traditions is of similiar size.
It amazes me that these sort of operations exist in Calif.
They must distribute through retail outlets? In the old days the big shops sold to tracts.
REALLY???
In a self proclaimed sanctuary state of entitlements.Really ???
I'm thinking the only reason Musk didn't build his gigafactory here ,is he needed lots of sand to put out the inevitable lipo fire.
Wut?
You think that Furniture Traditions or RSI are from entitlements? Not hardly.
You are as bad as Tim on the memes
I will grant you that Musk is the subsidy king, as in Tesla would not exist if not for entitlements.
The reason he located in Nv is because they gave him the most concessions.
" Over the next 20 years, Tesla could take in nearly $1.3 billion in tax benefits for building its Gigafactory in Nevada"
Nevada concessions
You misunderstood ........as usual. Low wages and a huge pool of cheap labor drawn in by the entitlement Sanctuary state.
Good point.
BTW you were talking about Musk in the previous post...
I know ,I jump around allot.I just assume others see the connections I do.I do the same thing in the shop.LOL
Musk knows how to PLAY the field in all his enterprises.If he pulls off his new LIpo it could be huge ,then again the Chinese are willing to take a decade of losses to own an industry as they did with solar. If I can find the link I'll post it.
Owning an industry, through mercantilism I guess?
That is a fools errand. Technology changes so fast that there is no owning of an industry save having a core competency. Look at how fracking has lowered the price of oil, who ever thought that we would have 50 dollar per barrel oil?
OTOH the US exports inflation by having the reserve currency status, so it is a two way street regarding China.
Like this for instance
Most of you need to take a vacation, go to New York, and take the Ellis Island tour.
Back in the day, there were no quotas, immigration was pretty much open, and most immigrants were from Europe and entered through Ellis Island. The color of your skin , nor your religion mattered. Your finances and health did. Immigrants were brought in by steam ship, and were pre screened by the steam ship companies because if the immigrant failed the health exam, or failed to have a sponsor or the cost of a ticket out of New York, the steam ship company was responsible for returning the immigrant to where they came from. They explain this in detail on the tour, and my great grand parents came through Ellis.
There was no public welfare system. You made it on your own or with the aid of your family and friends. No welfare, no free health care, no section 8 housing.
Southern California is teaming with illegals living on the taxpayers. $25 billion in California alone. We can not wipe out poverty on the taxpayers dime.
Most of the immigrants on the job sites I work at are now legal, but came in illegally. They freely admit they pay no income tax. They all send large sums on money back to their families in Mexico or further south.
Cut the hand outs, and the problem will solve itself. The US us a very expensive place to live if you are on the lower end of the wage scale and your government assistance is cut off....they will leave on their own. We go so far as to provide social security payments to immigrants who have never worked a day in this country. No wonder we are going broke.
Sea444,
Would you be talking about corporate welfare here?
Who do you think is more heavily subsidized? Corporations or people sitting on their sofas watching daytime TV?
Tim
It is BOTH, and as Rick pointed out the corporations benefit from the cheaper wages, because of what Sea444 states, he has it right.
Both ends of the spectrum benefit, the guys that are getting slaughtered are in the middle.
Pat,
I agree with you. I get my hackles up when people start beating up on the poor. There are so many instances where money buys privilege that its hard to account for all the welfare transfers that occur. This is somewhat because the poor have no money therefore no advocacy.
EVERY dollar that flows from the government is a welfare transfer. EVERY dollar that flows to the government is a tax. Every time a landlord depreciates a building for tax purposes because (wink wink) the real estate is going down in value he is receiving a welfare payment. Every time a church doesn't have to pay property taxes on it's holdings the congregation is receiving a welfare payment.
Private schools are theoretically funded by the parents except that tuition never covers the cost of that education. These schools rely on parents to kick in additional "donations" that for tax purposes are deductible. The portion of taxes saved are borne by everybody else in the community. The parent gets to feel like a self-reliant patriot but everybody else subsidizes them.
Even Ayn Rand, who made her living ranting against the welfare state, made sure to get her share when she was eligible.
Beating up on immigrants is easy and it makes us all feel good and moral about ourselves. At least some good comes out of it.
It is useful to look at the actual data on this.
Those parents are most likely paying property taxes which goes to pay for schools. What is worse is that bonds are often passed whose sole purpose is to pay for teachers pensions.
OTOH the mortgage interest deduction is
The average person will receive 7 times the benefits, from medicare than they paid in.
OTOH a big part of the reason the cost of healthcare keeps going up is because of the increased money supply to that industry through medicare and medicaid.
1/3 of the budget is borrowed. That money comes from an increase in the money supply. The US does not feel the inflation because we export inflation. This because of the reserve currency status and a strong dollar.
The point is that everyone is coopted to a greater or lesser degree by "free money".
You are right that parents who send their children to private school also pay property taxes. There is, however, a very high correlation between property values and the quality of local public schools. In this respect it is the quality of those schools that increases the value of those homes.
The cost of a bottle of good bourbon is half tax. It's those hillbillies that distill their own whiskey that really get a free ride. Particularly when you factor in that the rest of us have to pay for fire suppression in the forests around their homes.
I'm not going to do the back and forth with you.
Suffice to say that everyone is coopted into the free money.
There are always unintended consequences they always come when the market is sidestepped.
Pat,
I am not disagreeing with or trying to refute you. I'm just trying to to put a face to the name of welfare.
A lot of people in this country and on this forum rant a lot about how welfare recipients are taking food out of our children's mouths and that they should somehow aspire to be more self-reliant like we are. The welfare angle is the primary argument advanced against immigrants though I somehow think this has at least something to do with other, harder to admit, bias.
As you pointed out, everybody receives a subsidy of some form or another. The people who live out in the boonies pay the same amount to mail a first class envelope as people in city do. Nevermind that it costs more to collect that mail than the postage on it, it's just another entitlement like every other.
Pat,
Simple word of advice. Don't use screen shots of Fox News to convince anyone other than right wingers of anything.
It's the equivalent of me using NOAA charts to convince some yahoo that Climate Change has already happened.
Adam
That is an ad hominem association.
I posted the link to the context on the same post.
Did you bother to look at it?
Here is the context again
Pat,
I wasn't trying to attack you in any way. Just pointing out that with so many people hating Fox News (including myself) they won't bother to read the information based on that reporting.
I did see the link and I read the report. Like most of these studies there are opinions based on information which are made out to be facts. Statistics read good and bad based on your perspective.
There are many differences between the EU and the US. One of the primary differences is welfare. In the US it is a negative word. In the EU it is a positive word.
The EU judges itself by a bottom up prospective. How many poor people do we have? Is everyone protected under our healthcare system? How many people have food & water? Do we provide livable wages?
In the US we have a top down prospective. How many Billionaires do we have? We even try to convince ourselves that we are all in the middle class. We try our best to ignore or strangle our poor financially and geographically to make them disappear.
The question is do you judge a country by how much money the wealthy guy makes or by how little the poor guy makes?
Personally, I don't care if some dude has a billion dollars. I care if I see some guy living out of his car. I've got a way better chance of being at the bottom someday than ever making it to the top.
Adam brings up a good point about how statistics tend to be interpreted from one's particular vantage point. Fox News, for example, calls itself "Fair & Balanced" but continues to employ that partisan hack Sean Hannity. To be sure, there are hacks on both sides of the aisle.
As pointed out by Adam, our heroes are billionaires. Trump essentially ran on just that platform and his supporters concluded therefore that he was just the man for them. This makes no more sense to me than poor white men fighting to preserve the confederacy, a paradigm that had them competing with slave labor in the marketplace. They interpreted arithmetic differently than I would have thought.
Everyone is familiar with George Orwell's book "1984". He also wrote about the english perspective on poverty called "Down and Out in Paris & London".
The first part of his book is about his experiences as a plongeur in the finest restaurants in France. (A plongeur is the lowest man on the totem pole). According to Orwell the most expensive meals on the menu had the most amount of cooks spitting in the soup. Waiters dressed in finer clothing than the diners would hover nearby an offer to put pepper on your salad.
England at the time had a prohibition against begging. They had a terrible unemployment level but panhandling was illegal. To get around this it was acceptable to confront someone out for a stroll to see if they wanted to buy some matches. Buying matches, they reasoned, was really no different than begging but at least you were providing a public service as part of the transaction.
Orwell went on to compare the service provided by the well dressed waiter to matches being offered for sale by the hobo. They were both just beggars. One of them dressed nicer.
Same data, different interpretation.
Tim and Adam,
IMO the better way to look at this is what is the potential for improving ones lot.
Poverty is a circumstance choosing to remain there is a decision.
With increased subsidies both at the top and at the bottom gives an incentive to remain/get on the dole.
The reality is that people move in and out of the different income quintiles, none faster than at the top only slightly faster than the lowest quintile.
The valuable quality in an economy is income mobility. Europe has less of this because of greater regulations that prevent entrepreneurs from creating new jobs.
Pat,
The days of Horatio Alger are behind us.
Wall Street Journal has run a bunch of articles lately about just this topic. It used to be you could bootstrap a software company out of your garage. Today it doesn't just take a billion dollars to get started it takes tens of billions.
Many of us on the wood web bootstrapped our way into a cabinetshop. We started when you could fit all the capital you needed into the back of a pickup truck. Today if you don't have a $100K CNC you're going to compete with someone who does and that $100K CNC is probably part of a million dollar facility. This is a far cry from the $12 Montgomery Ward table saw I bought from the Salvation Army when I first started.
You are right, however, that if all you got is mental capital then that is all you got to leverage. Much better to be able to get successful the old fashioned way.........inherit the money.
We pound on the poor a lot because they are simply bad money managers. It's probably a whole lot easier to be a good money manager when you have enough money. Try doing this if you are born poor in Detroit.
Huh. Who knew that Horatio Alger was behind us?
I started with nothing and ate more than my share of peanut butter sandwiches. I actually love the stuff.
This is obviously anecdotal, but in 1979 I had an idea.
Just me, an idea, a pad of paper and a calculator, sitting at a table recording my calculation results longhand.
No IBM PC, they were still a few years away, even though I started writing BASIC computer code in 1968, back in high school.
My idea was about how to trade volatile markets (e.g. gold and silver) while keeping risk under control.
It worked well. In about 18 months, I built a sales force, marketed my idea and executed my plan on behalf of my customers.
My customers made around $50 million, which meant that I made around $10 million in performance fees.
And those profits weren't made for plutocrats. Some doctors and dentists, many farmers, lots and lots of small business guys and many, many other totally non-notable people who could put together $25K to open an account.
I retired.
Had nothing to do with inheriting anything or the inability to leverage "mental capital" which you don't seem to think is worth much (as intelligent as you seem to be.)
I knew nobody in the commodity futures industry, I had no "in" or any advantage of any kind, other than my idea, which happened to work.
A lot of people have good ideas, software or otherwise, every day, a few of them get developed. And it doesn't take a billion dollars, never mind ten billion, that's just ridiculous, the WSJ notwithstanding.
And who is this "we" you speak of as in who pounds on the poor a lot?
I only pound on our government for making the poor dependent and keeping them poor and dependent, instead of helping people to climb out of poverty..
I'm sure you'll recall (or maybe not) what LBJ said back when trying to pass his "Great Society" welfare bills in 1965 (HIS WORDS, NOT MINE): "I'll have those niggers voting Democratic for the next 200 years." And there you have it, his plan in a nutshell. Give money to a citizen and you have a voter for life if you can keep him dependent. And so the Democrats have, more or less, for the last 50+ years.
If you have a question about "Detroit poor" maybe neurosurgeon and HUD Secretary Ben Carson would be a good guy to ask about that. He's certainly an exception to the rule.
He was 13 in 1965 (he's almost exactly my age) when his mother moved back to Detroit. He went to high school in Detroit and he climbed out of "Detroit poor" to his great and everlasting credit.
Ben Carson is much, much more of a Horatio Alger-type figure than I am. I just figured out how to make a buck in the markets.
Carson actually made a contribution to medical science as a neurosurgeon. I'd call that a super-bootstrap, coming out of Detroit.
This gets into a simple philosophy of being cause or effect.
Asking for a subsidy is effect. Creating a business and jobs is Cause.
Horatio Algiers is as dead as there are subsidies and overreaching regulations. Horatio Algiers is as alive as there is liberty to better yourself and through that process better your customers.
Tim you are a good example of Horatio Algiers. You were a fisherman that gets tired of fishing for reasons I can't remember, then you decide to become a cabinetmaker, and discover lean manufacturing, and weathered the worst downturn the housing industry has seen since the 1930s.
Why would you want to deny someone else that opportunity?
Illegal Immigration down by 40%
Read all about it
Pat,
You frequently post macro and microeconomics theories that look pretty good on paper but only work in a vacuum. You back these ideas up with powerpoint style graphs and links to more evidence.
Your "better way to look at things statement" is usually followed by the if they worked harder blah, blah, blah.
It would be true if everyone had the opportunity to work harder. What if all the jobs that pay better than yours are filled. What if you suddenly got ill had your healthcare taken away(if you had it in the first place). Then you cannot work harder. In the US we kick them to the curb, give them a few bucks, and call them lazy for not working harder.
We don't get to choose our social economic situation. We are all born into it.
I was lucky enough to be born into a truly middle class family in a nice town. I fell into an informal apprenticeship at a truly high end arch woodworking shop. My grandparents gave me my college money of $20K to buy my first set of machines. In reality I had very little to do with it, beyond working hard.
We could have been born in Syria and on a sinking boat(which is currently working harder) in the Med. We could have been born in poverty in a violent neighborhood in Mexico or some slum in East LA.
We might be jumping the fence and looking for a better job, because the US doesn't bother to allow many legal Mexicans.
As for poor people and illegals receiving more welfare and lower taxes. If you pay someone $7/hr or less you need to give them another $5 to barely pay their bills. The other option would be to pay them $12/hr. If its available you could then get another $12/hr job to save some coin and get ahead.
California subsidizes the illegals to work in the Ag industry, in order to keep the prices in the grocery store low. They can only afford to pay a guy $5/hr cash so we get cheap strawberries.
Pat, What was your economic background as a youngster before you worked your ass off as a self employed cabinet guy?
Adam
When I was a kid I sold seeds door to door through the American seed company, I had a newspaper route, I mowed neighbors lawns, etc
The seed company went under because they fronted you the seeds. We would then send in the cash and they would send us a prize. The kids today quit sending in the cash so the model no longer worked.
The lawn mowing is now done by Mexican immigrants, I would guess many of them illegals. Even if a kid today was motivated to mow lawns there is no opportunity to do it.
Immigrants are subsidized, which is why Calif is a magnet for them. It is also part of the reason the trades have been taken over by illegal/legal immigrants.
Even if you wanted to take in every immigrant in the world you could not, the math doesn't work. Look at the short video explaining this.
The simple truth is that if you reward welfare you get more people on welfare, if you reward innovation you get innovation.
A simple mind experiment, what are the most favored places to live in the world.
These are also the top 5 countries on the freedom index. Meaning the least amount of regulations. The US is now 17th on that list and dropping. When I first started looking at this index the US was 10th on the list.
Keeping with Tim's Horatio Algiers theme check out this guy's story, Gary Vaynerchuk. He was the kid of an immigrant who had a string of lemonade stands as a kid. His father worked two jobs and later bought a liquor store. Which got Gary interested in wine, he started an online wine company that grew to 60 million dollars a year.
The only reason the US is what the US is today, is because Horatio Algiers was allowed to innovate and try new things.
It is called comparative advantage it is the very life blood of the economy. Check out the video on comparative advantage. Here:
http://www.ted.com/talks/matt_ridley_when_ideas_have_sex
Why the math doesn't work on immigrants
Charlie Rose had an interview one time with Malcolm Gladwell (resident New Yorker Magazine Smartguy) where they discussed what made some people more successful than others and what made some people more curious than others. The interview pivoted pretty much around the relative contributions of luck & preparation.
The Beatles, for example, had a tremendous amount of luck in being selected to perform on the Ed Sullivan show. There were a bunch of English boy bands at the time but they were the chosen ones. They could not have harvested this opportunity without having first had the preparation that came from being the house band in a german whorehouse for six years prior to Ed Sullivan show. When opportunity struck they were ready.
Paul Allen and Bill Gates had the luck to live within walking distance of a computer that had open time for a couple of hours each morning. Gladwell pointed out that when he was their age he could have walked for a month in any direction and never came across a computer with available access time. Gates & Allen, to be sure, had a curiosity about computers but they also had the good fortune to be born to parents who could afford to send them to a private high school that actually had a computer for their students to experiment on. I am roughly the same age as Bill Gates. The schools I went to did not have computers either. The only options available for me were to be a fisherman or build cabinets. (Pat already had the door to door seed selling locked up.)
So some of this good fortune attributes to work ethic and some of it to just plain lucky sperm.
Preparation is a big part. Sometimes the preparation has much to do with what your grandparents passed to your parents. This can take the form of money or motivation. In one of the last election cycles there was this meme floating around called "you didn't build that". This is true. The self-made bazillionaire railroad tycoon didn't exactly drive any spikes into the ground himself. He wouldn't have had the opportunity to direct others to do this for him without the direct involvement of the government. He may have risked capital but it was someone else's capital. The majority of Bill Gate's employees started out with publicly financed education. His employees drive to work on publicly financed roads. etc.
The man who wrote Chordal's letters also published a book about artillery called "The Battery Commander". This book was published around 1918. The first chapter touches on the contribution of your ancestors to your current success.
I don't have time for this.
You have made the same argument for years. As have I.
I would recommend using Occum's Razor and seeing who is making more assumptions.
An interesting observation about Chordal's writings is how they evolved over the 40 years he produced them. His first letters were published when he was about 30 years old. The Battery Commander was published shortly before his death at 70 years of age.
His observation that you needed to go back a few generations to solve these problems is pithy.
I personally think you have to go back much farther, perhaps to before when we were still tree lemurs breeding in the pond. As the world started to warm up and the ice age disappeared some of our ancestors kind of liked the warm water too much. Gradually the verdant forests started to ferment and we ended up with a whole crop of relatives who suffer today from alcohol fetal syndrome. Something has to explain all the dumb in the universe and this explanation sounds as good as any other. How else to explain poor white men fighting during the civil war to preserve a system that had them competing with slave labor?
This stuff is generational. The scary part is that it only takes a couple of generations to completely change over social mores. About six months ago the Pope had a message for kids in Mexico. He essentially said " Stay in School, don't take drugs & don't cut people's heads off".
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) was more or less a contemporary of Chordal. He was born about 20 years earlier and died in 1910. My father was born in 1913 so the span between Twain's tenure and mine is about three generations.
I am currently reading the first volume of Twain's autobiography. I came across an interesting passage about how a nation is inculcated to a way of thinking.
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(I think it was called cognitive dissonance by the economist.)
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You don't seem to understand the nature or arguments of your opponents. Nothing subtle about your example, don't pat your intellect on the back. Just weak and irrelevant.
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OK 1+1 equals 2..
I have no doubt that Trump can dismantle (at least temporarily) a significant part of "government", as well as significantly disrupt the existing "world order".
Sorry buddy, hit the gym and push away from the table.
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also welfare.
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The thinking used to be that companies would grow and grow until they got fat and complacent enough that a more nimble entrepreneur could take a niche away from them. Not so much today.
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I'm guessing they are Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Australia, Switzerland.
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It is an interesting read, especially the very last part.
Click the link below to download the file included with this post.
battery_commander.pdf
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This was probably not a necessary admonishment three generations ago but certainly is today.
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