Economic Treason

What Kind of Country Destroys the Job Market for Its Own Citizens?

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

07/17/05 "Counterpunch.org" - - The June payroll jobs report did not receive much attention due to the July 4 holiday, but the depressing 21st century job performance of the US economy continues unabated.


o Only 144,000 private sector jobs were created, each one of which was in domestic services.

o 56,000 jobs were created in professional and business services, about half of which are in administrative and waste services.

o 38,000 jobs were created in education and health services, almost all of which are in health care and social assistance.

o 19,000 jobs were created in leisure and hospitality, almost all of which are waitresses and bartenders.

o Membership associations and organizations created 10,000 jobs and repair and maintenance created 4,000 jobs.

o Financial activities created 16,000 jobs.

This most certainly is not the labor market profile of a first world country, much less a superpower.

Where are the jobs for this year's crop of engineering and science graduates?

US manufacturing lost another 24,000 jobs in June.

A country that doesn't manufacture doesn't need many engineers. And the few engineering jobs available go to foreigners.

Readers have sent me employment listings from US software development firms. The listings are discriminatory against American citizens. One ad from a company in New Jersey that is a developer for many companies, including Oracle, specifies that the applicant must have a TN visa.

A TN or Trade Nafta visa is what is given to Mexicans and Canadians, who are willing to work in the US at below prevailing wages.

Another ad from a software consulting company based in Omaha, Nebraska, specifies it wants software engineers who are H-1B transferees. What this means is that the firm is advertising for foreigners already in the US who have H-1B work visas.

The reason the US firms specify that they have employment opportunities only for foreigners who hold work visas is because the foreigners will work for less than the prevailing US salary.

Gentle reader, when you read allegations that there is a shortage of engineers in America, necessitating the importation of foreigners to do the work, you are reading a bald faced lie. If there were a shortage of American engineers, employers would not word their job listings to read that no American need apply and that they are offering jobs only to foreigners holding work visas.

What kind of country gives preference to foreigners over its own engineering graduates?

What kind of country destroys the job market for its own citizens?

How much longer will parents shell out $100,000 for a college education for a son or daughter who end up employed as a bartender, waitress, or temp?


Paul Craig Roberts has held a number of academic appointments and has contributed to numerous scholarly publications. He served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. His graduate economics education was at the University of Virginia, the University of California at Berkeley, and Oxford University. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com

Link: http://www.informationclearinghouse.inf ... le9501.htm

Catherine

Q:What Kind of Country Destroys the Job Market for Its Own Citizens?

OK... I'll give it a go. Since you've asked.

A: Perhaps it's a country that's lost its way, abandoned the ideals that it was founded upon, has become a country that worships at the altar of unfettered free market capitalism, lets transnational corporations write government policy, cares only about feeding and satiating the driving greed of a tiny fraction of its ultra wealthy aristocratic hereditary plutocrats to the exclusion of everything else and no longer has the interests and needs of the majority of its citizens as a priority?

Mind you, that's just a wild guess.

Am I close?

A government that loses sight of the needs of the common citizen, of the masses, is lost. Any way you look at it though, it's treason.

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minor edits for title and grammar

Send your excellent answer to the author, please, Seamus.

Yes, I definitely think we got our answer, Carolyn.

Catherine

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