The punch line should be the title: The loser consequences for the Democratic Party from moving away from the working class as the base to finance capital as the principle audience
The essay started off good, it identified the problem, but then when it came to rectifying the problem the issue is avoided and esoteric job guarantees.
The reason employers can replace half the construction workers in greater Denver is because they have people right here willing to work for half pay. It's been happening for 40 years, and no promises by Democrats are believable.
In order for the Democratic Party to win back the working class vote they will have to support the working class, not with words, but with policy. Stop importing low wage non American workers, stop the illegal hiring, stop inviting illegal workers into labor unions. Democrats have to decide if they support the American worker or not.
When I was working at Boeings doing machinery maintenance, there was a grocery workers' strike. After work I joined a picket line at a neighborhood store. I gave a ration of crap to one guy crossing the line and same when he returned to his car, which had a Boeings parking sticker. I really laid it on about union solidarity. He yelled back he didn't need no union because he was an experienced worker and that's why he got paid good. By his thick southern accent and MS state plate I knew he was among the bunch the company had recruited from the deep South. I asked why then did he have to come north for a job paying the much higher union wages that working people fought so hard to have?!
Point is the problem isn't just illegals. As for inviting them into unions, that's a solution--no more undercutting wages. I'd even bet that like what happened when minorities and women came into the trades, they'd be strongly pro-union because they appreciate the opportunity. Unlikely this is much of a factor anyway since to qualify for permanent jobs, workers have to have valid ID, green cards showing they're allowed to work in this country, and Social Security numbers. And where exploitive employers do hire illegals, snowball's chance in hell those are union jobs.
Labor is subject to the laws of supply and demand. Ways of decreasing demand include labor saving machines and equipment, sending labor intensives businesses overseas where the labor costs a fraction of what it does here.
The flip side is to increase supply, more workers. If you have 100 people applying for a job where they need 150 workers, wages increase. If you have 1,000 workers applying for 10 jobs wages go down, the company knows that the best thing they can do is fire people and hire cheaper ones.
Meat cutting used to be a solid middle class job. Buy a house, and a car, wife need not work, send the kids to college, retirement. They busted the unions. Private union membership is decreasing. Why not, unions give your job to illegal scabs.
My wife belongs to SEIU as a nurse, a job requiring a background check on citizenship before you even can go to school. Other SEIU unions are different. 15% of union member nationwide were born elsewhere. Naturalized citizens are American no matter where they were born. Similarly with some green cards but not the asylum ones, or TPS.
I have voluntarily walked picket lines on SEIU and Teamsters, I like unions. I also like illegal immigrants as people, I've worked beside them for years, but protecting American jobs is where I draw the line. Unions can decide to support American workers, or not.
Your points are good. But why should we think of ourselves as just another commodity or accept being treated as just a cost of doing business? This system is still 70% consumer driven. Not to mention we're the actual producers, not the financial manipulators who are extractors from both inventive entrepreneurs and labor output. Why not have an econ system that benefits the majority?
BTW, supply and demand curves may look valid, but they're assertions based on beliefs of current neolib (technically, neoclassical) econ theorists and not on empirical evidence. Among those assumptions are: The Market (their infallible deity) knows best and the only real human motivation is individual personal gain. Each acts as if in a direct barter system with perfect information and equal access; knowing where every possible supply is and where no person has an advantage. Furthermore, there is no time dimension, so what could equilibrium mean? It's an assumption a stable constant is the norm whereas in any healthy living system dynamic change is--and it's non-linear.
Leopold and a number of other Substack leftists are never going to say that.
The Dems are fully committed to the working class of the entire world being turned into a homogenized beige slurry at the beckon call of their corporate masters, thus the people saying they are committed to the working class who never critique mass migration reveal themselves to be frauds
The punch line should be the title: The loser consequences for the Democratic Party from moving away from the working class as the base to finance capital as the principle audience
The essay started off good, it identified the problem, but then when it came to rectifying the problem the issue is avoided and esoteric job guarantees.
The reason employers can replace half the construction workers in greater Denver is because they have people right here willing to work for half pay. It's been happening for 40 years, and no promises by Democrats are believable.
In order for the Democratic Party to win back the working class vote they will have to support the working class, not with words, but with policy. Stop importing low wage non American workers, stop the illegal hiring, stop inviting illegal workers into labor unions. Democrats have to decide if they support the American worker or not.
When I was working at Boeings doing machinery maintenance, there was a grocery workers' strike. After work I joined a picket line at a neighborhood store. I gave a ration of crap to one guy crossing the line and same when he returned to his car, which had a Boeings parking sticker. I really laid it on about union solidarity. He yelled back he didn't need no union because he was an experienced worker and that's why he got paid good. By his thick southern accent and MS state plate I knew he was among the bunch the company had recruited from the deep South. I asked why then did he have to come north for a job paying the much higher union wages that working people fought so hard to have?!
Point is the problem isn't just illegals. As for inviting them into unions, that's a solution--no more undercutting wages. I'd even bet that like what happened when minorities and women came into the trades, they'd be strongly pro-union because they appreciate the opportunity. Unlikely this is much of a factor anyway since to qualify for permanent jobs, workers have to have valid ID, green cards showing they're allowed to work in this country, and Social Security numbers. And where exploitive employers do hire illegals, snowball's chance in hell those are union jobs.
Labor is subject to the laws of supply and demand. Ways of decreasing demand include labor saving machines and equipment, sending labor intensives businesses overseas where the labor costs a fraction of what it does here.
The flip side is to increase supply, more workers. If you have 100 people applying for a job where they need 150 workers, wages increase. If you have 1,000 workers applying for 10 jobs wages go down, the company knows that the best thing they can do is fire people and hire cheaper ones.
Meat cutting used to be a solid middle class job. Buy a house, and a car, wife need not work, send the kids to college, retirement. They busted the unions. Private union membership is decreasing. Why not, unions give your job to illegal scabs.
My wife belongs to SEIU as a nurse, a job requiring a background check on citizenship before you even can go to school. Other SEIU unions are different. 15% of union member nationwide were born elsewhere. Naturalized citizens are American no matter where they were born. Similarly with some green cards but not the asylum ones, or TPS.
I have voluntarily walked picket lines on SEIU and Teamsters, I like unions. I also like illegal immigrants as people, I've worked beside them for years, but protecting American jobs is where I draw the line. Unions can decide to support American workers, or not.
Your points are good. But why should we think of ourselves as just another commodity or accept being treated as just a cost of doing business? This system is still 70% consumer driven. Not to mention we're the actual producers, not the financial manipulators who are extractors from both inventive entrepreneurs and labor output. Why not have an econ system that benefits the majority?
BTW, supply and demand curves may look valid, but they're assertions based on beliefs of current neolib (technically, neoclassical) econ theorists and not on empirical evidence. Among those assumptions are: The Market (their infallible deity) knows best and the only real human motivation is individual personal gain. Each acts as if in a direct barter system with perfect information and equal access; knowing where every possible supply is and where no person has an advantage. Furthermore, there is no time dimension, so what could equilibrium mean? It's an assumption a stable constant is the norm whereas in any healthy living system dynamic change is--and it's non-linear.
Leopold and a number of other Substack leftists are never going to say that.
The Dems are fully committed to the working class of the entire world being turned into a homogenized beige slurry at the beckon call of their corporate masters, thus the people saying they are committed to the working class who never critique mass migration reveal themselves to be frauds