I believe you are wrong to assert that the people you excoriate are anti-immigrant. I think that is a straw man when what we are against is illegal immigrants and the idea we cannot police our borders. Our present administration's self-inflicted disaster is because they are indifferent to the question of illegal immigration and had no clue the messaging they are sending or are cynically exploiting the issue. Additionally,The dramatic rise in the low incomeSalaries in the last three years or so Can be directly attributed the slowdown in illegal immigration, a case study in the effects of policy.
The problem with Dr. Zubrin’s analysis is that he’s not looking at the issue in context. If it were a stand alone proposition he would have some good points but it’s not a stand alone proposition.
The immigration debate has to be considered as just one element of a larger discussion about the policies neoliberals in both political parties (including the establishment GOP) have embraced since the end of the Cold War.
The first thing that the elite hacks who have been calling the political shots for decades did was embrace unrestricted free trade as if it was received truth. It encouraged labor arbitrage that resulted in the deindustrialization of our nation’s heartland. Millions of manufacturing jobs disappeared and all that was left for the disposed workers was the opportunity to flip hamburgers in fast food joints.
The second thing the newly empowered members of the clerisy did was adopt a reverence for credentialism. The willingness to work hard or even demonstrate innate intelligence was subordinated to the importance of having a degree. Guess what, most Americans don’t have a college degree.
Let’s look at just one example; for most of American history journalism was a working class profession. Reporters were mostly cigar chewing working stiffs who were as comfortable in a pool hall as a newsroom. Over time, these jobs were no longer available without a college education and now for many outlets a graduate degree is required. Has the quality of journalism improved? For the answer, take a look at what’s happening at the New York Times.
Throughout most of the post war years, house painters, plumbers assistants and roofers were able to make a decent living. So decent in fact, that they could afford to send their kids to college and actually pay for it. Not any more.
Those construction jobs are now held mostly be immigrants (illegal and legal) who are willing and able to work for far less. The American roofers and house painters thrown out of work had their lives ruined. You know who benefited? The upper middle class who got to pay a little less to get their lawn cut or their homes remodeled. The idea that immigrants are merely filling agricultural jobs that Americans don’t want simply isn’t the whole story, Dr. Zubrin.
The author mentions that he was a delegate to a GOP state convention during the Reagan years. The establishment GOP was remarkably anti-trade Union. I’m old enough to remember the impact that Reagan’s dismissal of PATCO members had on the labor movement. The old establishment GOP that Dr. Zubrin wants to resurrect, desired nothing more than to emasculate the working class.
It’s not just the working class. How often do we read reports of Americans being fired and replaced by immigrants on H1-B visas? It seems to happen all the time. For elites in both political parties it’s a double whammy. American workers are replaced by those willing to earn less and for the immigrants, the H1-B program is a form of indentured servitude. For the Nancy Pelosi’s and Mitt Romney’s of the world that makes it “Miller-Time.”
Dr. Zubrin is right about one thing; American physicians make way too much; nothing contributes to our outrageous healthcare costs more than that. What he’s wrong about is that it’s our immigration policies are mostly to blame. The real culprit is the licensure requirements. The medical-industrial complex makes it virtually impossible for middle-aged or older foreign physicians to practice in the United States; this isn’t accidental; it’s deliberate. It’s just another example of the American clerisy protecting its own. The working class is expendable. The professionals, who our friends and neighbors; not so much.
Why stop at letting physicians into the country to reduce healthcare costs? Why not try the same thing with college professors? After all, the incredibly inflated costs of an elite college education are driven primarily by the sky high salaries of full time faculty. Rarely do these faculty members (at least at elite institutions) teach more than two courses a semester (that’s six hours a week). The rest of the time, they’re supposedly doing research. Outside of the sciences, this research is mostly (not entirely) unadulterated you know what.
How much could we reduce tuition if we replaced 25 percent of university faculty with foreign professors who would work for less and teach twice as many hours?
No one loved open borders more than woke university faculty. How much do you suppose they will like it if it was their jobs being lost instead of the job of some roofer in Ohio?
Dr. Zubrin, you have it exactly backward. It’s not that the GOP needs to abandon Trumpism; it’s that the Democratic Party needs to reacquaint itself with its inner-Trump.
The Democrats used to be the Party of working people. Democrats now despise working people with the white hot passion of a thousand suns. Why do Democrats hate the working class? It’s simple; the Party is now in bed with the Clerisy which worships at the wokest of woke altars.
As for the establishment GOP; the guardians of the ideology that you want to reestablish, Dr Zubrin, it’s always hated working people. There’s no reason to think that will change any time soon.
I get it, many cosmopolitan globalists are so dainty of disposition that they got the vapors every time Trump said something rude or nasty. And to be fair, many of the things Trump said about immigrants were repugnant and wrong.
But the debate about about immigration is far more nuanced than you presented, Dr. Zubrin.
Let me ask you one last question; I’m sure there were many immigrants at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and elsewhere who worked on the Mars lander. How many undocumented immigrants do you suppose worked there?
If JPL wouldn’t hire undocumented immigrants why is it right that you and I can hire them to cut our lawns?
I believe you are wrong to assert that the people you excoriate are anti-immigrant. I think that is a straw man when what we are against is illegal immigrants and the idea we cannot police our borders. Our present administration's self-inflicted disaster is because they are indifferent to the question of illegal immigration and had no clue the messaging they are sending or are cynically exploiting the issue. Additionally,The dramatic rise in the low incomeSalaries in the last three years or so Can be directly attributed the slowdown in illegal immigration, a case study in the effects of policy.
The problem with Dr. Zubrin’s analysis is that he’s not looking at the issue in context. If it were a stand alone proposition he would have some good points but it’s not a stand alone proposition.
The immigration debate has to be considered as just one element of a larger discussion about the policies neoliberals in both political parties (including the establishment GOP) have embraced since the end of the Cold War.
The first thing that the elite hacks who have been calling the political shots for decades did was embrace unrestricted free trade as if it was received truth. It encouraged labor arbitrage that resulted in the deindustrialization of our nation’s heartland. Millions of manufacturing jobs disappeared and all that was left for the disposed workers was the opportunity to flip hamburgers in fast food joints.
The second thing the newly empowered members of the clerisy did was adopt a reverence for credentialism. The willingness to work hard or even demonstrate innate intelligence was subordinated to the importance of having a degree. Guess what, most Americans don’t have a college degree.
Let’s look at just one example; for most of American history journalism was a working class profession. Reporters were mostly cigar chewing working stiffs who were as comfortable in a pool hall as a newsroom. Over time, these jobs were no longer available without a college education and now for many outlets a graduate degree is required. Has the quality of journalism improved? For the answer, take a look at what’s happening at the New York Times.
Throughout most of the post war years, house painters, plumbers assistants and roofers were able to make a decent living. So decent in fact, that they could afford to send their kids to college and actually pay for it. Not any more.
Those construction jobs are now held mostly be immigrants (illegal and legal) who are willing and able to work for far less. The American roofers and house painters thrown out of work had their lives ruined. You know who benefited? The upper middle class who got to pay a little less to get their lawn cut or their homes remodeled. The idea that immigrants are merely filling agricultural jobs that Americans don’t want simply isn’t the whole story, Dr. Zubrin.
The author mentions that he was a delegate to a GOP state convention during the Reagan years. The establishment GOP was remarkably anti-trade Union. I’m old enough to remember the impact that Reagan’s dismissal of PATCO members had on the labor movement. The old establishment GOP that Dr. Zubrin wants to resurrect, desired nothing more than to emasculate the working class.
It’s not just the working class. How often do we read reports of Americans being fired and replaced by immigrants on H1-B visas? It seems to happen all the time. For elites in both political parties it’s a double whammy. American workers are replaced by those willing to earn less and for the immigrants, the H1-B program is a form of indentured servitude. For the Nancy Pelosi’s and Mitt Romney’s of the world that makes it “Miller-Time.”
Dr. Zubrin is right about one thing; American physicians make way too much; nothing contributes to our outrageous healthcare costs more than that. What he’s wrong about is that it’s our immigration policies are mostly to blame. The real culprit is the licensure requirements. The medical-industrial complex makes it virtually impossible for middle-aged or older foreign physicians to practice in the United States; this isn’t accidental; it’s deliberate. It’s just another example of the American clerisy protecting its own. The working class is expendable. The professionals, who our friends and neighbors; not so much.
Why stop at letting physicians into the country to reduce healthcare costs? Why not try the same thing with college professors? After all, the incredibly inflated costs of an elite college education are driven primarily by the sky high salaries of full time faculty. Rarely do these faculty members (at least at elite institutions) teach more than two courses a semester (that’s six hours a week). The rest of the time, they’re supposedly doing research. Outside of the sciences, this research is mostly (not entirely) unadulterated you know what.
How much could we reduce tuition if we replaced 25 percent of university faculty with foreign professors who would work for less and teach twice as many hours?
No one loved open borders more than woke university faculty. How much do you suppose they will like it if it was their jobs being lost instead of the job of some roofer in Ohio?
Dr. Zubrin, you have it exactly backward. It’s not that the GOP needs to abandon Trumpism; it’s that the Democratic Party needs to reacquaint itself with its inner-Trump.
The Democrats used to be the Party of working people. Democrats now despise working people with the white hot passion of a thousand suns. Why do Democrats hate the working class? It’s simple; the Party is now in bed with the Clerisy which worships at the wokest of woke altars.
As for the establishment GOP; the guardians of the ideology that you want to reestablish, Dr Zubrin, it’s always hated working people. There’s no reason to think that will change any time soon.
I get it, many cosmopolitan globalists are so dainty of disposition that they got the vapors every time Trump said something rude or nasty. And to be fair, many of the things Trump said about immigrants were repugnant and wrong.
But the debate about about immigration is far more nuanced than you presented, Dr. Zubrin.
Let me ask you one last question; I’m sure there were many immigrants at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and elsewhere who worked on the Mars lander. How many undocumented immigrants do you suppose worked there?
If JPL wouldn’t hire undocumented immigrants why is it right that you and I can hire them to cut our lawns?