Brilliant economic theory!!

[cavalierlwt]

Wow, these guys have some nerve to try to pass this bullsh1t by us.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060104/ap_on_bi_ge/chamber_worker_shortage

Oh, ok, as workers retire, and salaries rise and openings appear, US workers *aren't* going to fill those gaps?
These people have no shame.

[SkiloDog2000]

why dont we get the lazy people on disability to fill the job slots?

[Ldsmith104]

whatever

[[ecgn] btt]

Why don't they take three of the five guys any county or city uses for any two man job.

[Gen. Ouch]

what your government should do is educate all the homeless you guys have and get them off the street. and he said the US's economy is growing, thats not what i hear.

[Alofwar]

We've got the same problem here, our crappy Labour (left wing, but now more to the centre) governments solution, WORK TILL YOUR 90, or at least thats what my generation will have to work to in order to retire on a pension. The retirement has been raised from 65 to 67. I'm a conservative see, (our right wing is alot different to yours) so i'm anti high immigration. I would much rather see lots of help wanted signs in shop windows, than the destruction of our culture and way of life. But you've got quite high umeployment, so as more retire more umemployed people can get work, despite what is said over here, umemployment is higher than many belive, because of plenty of false disability claims.

Half of those claiming disabilty are either lieing, or perfectly capable of working. It like those who say they would never join the army because they are conciencious objectors, You know, Cowards.

[SavageParrot]

Originally posted by Alofwar
our culture and way of life.

and what exactly is that. In 2000 years of population we have never had a stable population so why try to have one now.

I for one am quite happy for people to come over and do what are, lets face it, the crappy jobs that we don't want to do.

[Alofwar]

Actually our last major change in nationial identiy since 1066, thats nearly 1000 years.

I admit we need some immigration for people to do the jobs we don't want but not to the point where we're out numbered, our national language is English, but go to Birmingham and see if you still believe it. I am only worried because i know where it's gonna lead, fall of the monarchy, death of the British way of life, Islamic revoltion. Im not racist, it works both ways, i don't want to go into other countries and try to change their way of life.

[Gen. Ouch]

christ im glad to be canadian, you guys are way to conservative for me. im a liberal see, and i belive that the more immagrants the better, not because they do the crappy jobs but because they add to the culture of Canada, in recent year my opinion has been stressed abit, with all the asian and indian gangs and stuff but the mojority of people who immigrate here are valued members of the community, i just think we need to be more ready to deport people who act up, just last month some asian guys got deported for street racing and killing some kid.

[PudriK]

Originally posted by cavalierlwt
Wow, these guys have some nerve to try to pass this bullsh1t by us.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060104/ap_on_bi_ge/chamber_worker_shortage

Oh, ok, as workers retire, and salaries rise and openings appear, US workers *aren't* going to fill those gaps?
These people have no shame.

Uh, yes they will, but there won't be enough of them to fill all the gaps.

It's not bullshit. The reason for the worker shortage is the reduced numbers of younger people, due to lower birth rates. Ever read ANYTHING about the baby boomer problem?

I could link to references, but there are so many, and they are easy to find. Basically, the number of retirees per worker is going to increase, and this will create a burden on workers to provide the extra money (in form of taxes and direct support) to support these retirees.

Personally, I think we should stop making retirement at 65 an expectation. It used to be people ritered and died a few years later. Now people expect to live for a couple decades being supported by social security, medicare, and their savings (if they have any, and most people don't have enough).

Last numbers I recall, the current retiree to worker ratio is 1 to 5, but will got to 1 to 3 in a decade or so. If the economy is to continue growing, new workers will have to be found. Since we can't magically produce kids who are already teenagers and 20 yr olds now to take their place, they will have to come from immigration.

Instead, if current trends in immigrant-fear continue, we're more likely to see a slow down in the economy as the baby boomers retire... retirees spend less as consumers, and are no longer producers.

You would think after years of immigrant-bashing people would catch on... they said the same things about the Chinese, the Irish, and every other non-native group that has come to America. Immigrants are good, even the poor, uneducated ones. The smart thing is to set up laws that encourage immigrants to become citizens and integrate with society... instead, our policies of limiting immigration so restrictevly means that those immigrants that do come in are marginalized by their need to avoid detection.

I'm generally conservative, but the xenophobic provinicialism of most conservatives I find very short-sighted and ignorant.

PS Homeless in America usually suffer from psychological or substance-abuse problems. These have to be dealt with before, and if ever, they can become productive members of society. There are always going to be some people who can't take care of themselves, and it's up to society to figure out how to take care of them most humanely, and without encouraging laziness or putting too much a drain on the rest of soceity.

PPS Read a bullet in the latest issue of Reason magazine that a recent study by a couple economists showed that cities with more foreign immigration had larger increases in native-born American's salaries than those with less immigration. I'll see if I can find more details...

[SavageParrot]

Originally posted by Alofwar
Actually our last major change in nationial identiy since 1066, thats nearly 1000 years.

I admit we need some immigration for people to do the jobs we don't want but not to the point where we're out numbered, our national language is English, but go to Birmingham and see if you still believe it. I am only worried because i know where it's gonna lead, fall of the monarchy, death of the British way of life, Islamic revoltion. Im not racist, it works both ways, i don't want to go into other countries and try to change their way of life.

So william of Orange didn't invade in 1689 then? Personally I'd call landing 15,000 troops and throwing out the king an invasion but then maybe I am not au fait with the terminology

To imagine that the population is now or ever has been totally stationary is just bad history. In fact to presume that the population of the country as a whole is culturally homogenous is a pretty thin assumption in itself. Before the advent of cheap transport and long range communication most of the popluation was isolated from each other and extremely different culturally speaking. Try to find what cornish fishermen and london socialites have in common pre 1900 for example, they didn't even speak the same language but they were bothe naturally british. For a short period before intercontinental travel and comunication became widespread it is possibly fair to say that there was a rigidly defined 'English' character but even then England was not a state that exists. The state is Great Britain and as such it already encompasses 4 differnet cultures. With increased travel and the sharing of music, film and television the whole world has been moving culturally closer together, it's a natural process of difusion.

As for language English might be our national language now but in itself it is an amalgamation of norman french (itself a bastardisation of latin), anglo-saxo and norse; by it's very nature it's multicultural. The idea of culture is very subjective it constantly bends and adapts to fit surroundings. Trying to hold one's culture stationary is like trying to change the direction of the wind by screaming.

I could give 2 shits about the monarchy. The queen is an outdated figurehead who servers no purpose other than as decoration for state gatherings.

[Ldsmith104]

So let me get this straight you are complaining that the unemployment rate is going to drop:confused:

Supply and demand buddy less people to fill the job means better pay and working conditions.

And if some people would get off there lazy ass and work we could reduce some of this so-called shortage.

[cavalierlwt]

I assure you, they aren't talking about bringing in immigrants to work at Walmart and McDonalds. They are talking purely, 100% about engineers and programmers. There is *NO* shortage of engineers and programmers in the country. If we need a ton of them, then a ton of kids will go to school for it when they see high paying jobs on the horizon. The reason kids aren't going to school of engineering is because there is not a huge demand for engineers, and companies are outsourcing overseas. People aren't stupid.
I don't care about the outsourcing, I've accepted it. But I can' t stand when these guys sling bullshit to cover their ass. Let them just say the truth. Some baby boomers are retiring, and I want to replace them with cheap foreign labor.
As for the bigger baby boomers retiring picture, this has nothing to do with that. That is a Social Security issue, this guy is talking about engineers, not general labor (that's a whole other issue)
Don't believe the baby boomer hype.

[Alofwar]

I have heard of William of Orange, but he if he was a foreign invader he didnt suceed, the last time England was conquered was 1066, with the Normans. Im talking about "blood" when someone else invaded.
The first people to settle in Britain were Woads, then the Romans took over. Then the Saxons, then finally the Normans in 1066. Basically what happened all these times is, thier culture merged with ours and as with invasion in those times, their was alot of rape, and their people would move over here and there was even more cross culture breeding. Yes since the Norman invasion their has been lots British people having children with foreign people, but never on that kind of scale. Ok there wasn't that much with the Normans, they weren't so friskey and times had moved on a bit, but u get the point.

[PudriK]

Point to one statistic which shows that immigrant engineers work for less pay than native-born engineers? In my last office, (gov't mind you) all the engineers were on the same pay scale.

You are right, it is a supply and demand problem, but the other way around. There is not enough supply of native-born engineers, so the gaps are being filled by immigrants. This implies that there IS a shortage of NATIVE-BORN engineers and programmers.

Now, I suppose your argument is that if we did not let immigrants take those jobs, then companies would have to increase compensation, and that would attract more Americans to be engineers. Maybe true, but that means that the costs of engineering services would then have to rise to meet the increased salaries. I suppose you would prefer that, I would prefer an open market, and better US secondary education so that so many kids don't arrive at college unprepared for engineering and math courses. (I have several classmates who quit engineering because they couldn't handle the math... I'm inclinced to think if they were better prepared in HS they would have been fine.)

The Baby Boomer problem is not hype, and it goes way beyond social security. Sure, Soc Sec. is not going to go bankrupt, but benefits will have to be reduced, or taxes raised, to support the real changes in demographics, especially if immigration is curtailed. The change in demographic distributrion also affects Medicare and corporate pension plans as well, not to mention non-institutional family finances. And it also affects the job markets, including engineers. It's not an apocalyptic problem, for sure, that is hype, but it is a problem.

PS, Re-reading TFA, it beings "The United States faces a severe worker shortage in the near future..." They ARE NOT talking just about engineers.

PPS I'm sorry for all you people who fear your "master culture" is going to be watered-down by the darkies. What do you think they feel is happening in their nations, with our TV programs on satellite, our movies, our sodas and clothing, etc, invading their culture... do you really think we have it worse?

The principles I adhere to are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and ANY cultural tradition can be welcomed into that fold.

Whatever happened the idea of the Great American Melting Pot? Oh but they are different, they keep to themselves! BS... same thing was said about all the other immigrants to the US. Their kids go to American schools, listen to American music, watch American TV, hang out at American malls... and I for one welcome any new excitement their foreign cultures can bring in... new music, new styles.

At the same time we concern ourselves that we don't have enough foreign-language speakers to provide good intelligance and interpreters for our military, conservatives get all up-in-arms when anyone suggests adding another language besides English to our insititutions.

I'm ranting now...

I just don't understand how people who claim to be open-minded can be so xenophobic. Yes, certain cultural traditions of theocracy or super-resitrictive laws are not compatible with free democracy. But that doesn't mean people can't adapt their tradtions, and PLUS these traditions of restriction are a good coutner-balance to those who are excessively libertarian.