Saying that the rich create jobs is like saying...

[Deep13]

...that ticks create blood.

The rich are only wealthy because of what workers have produced for them. They take what workers make and pay them the smallest possible amount. In this way, workers are taxed twice: once by the bosses and once by government.

[dkf]

1. An excess supply of labor is what allows them to pay so little.

It beats me why we don't acknowledge illegal immigration keeps wages low.

[Fumesucker]

2. It's not illegal immigration per se that's the problem.

It's the fact that lots of businesses *hire* illegal immigrants..

I like they way you put the onus on the immigrants and not on the Americans who (usually knowingly) hire them.

I know someone who knowingly works illegals and yet complains bitterly about illegal immigration. :crazy:

[dkf]

4. Hey I like the idea of fining businesses that hire illegal Immigrants $20,000 a person.

I'm just surprised that people don't seem to realize 11,000,000 extra workers has an impact on wages.

[Fumesucker]

6. The *only* reason we have "11,000,00 extra workers" is because Americans hire them.

I'm sure it's all the poor Americans that hire the undocumented workers, rich people would never do such a thing.

[dkf]

9. I agree that many rich Americans would much prefer hiring an illegal immigrant at below minimum wage

Especially if they can get away with it.

Hey if there were only one illegal immigrant in the country I wouldn't mind. But so many employers using so many illegal immigrants is a downward pressure on wages which suits corporations just fine. It's only the average American schmuck that suffers.

[dkf]

12. I would support criminal penalties for hiring illegal immigrants.

I have no problem with that.

[madokie]

13. Oklahoma passed a law making it easier for the the officials to fine the employers

and its had a big impact on the number of non local workers you see on job sites, in fact you hardly ever see any anymore where before the new law the non locals were taking all the manual labor jobs. I'm a concrete finisher or was when I was still working and it was heart breaking to see my buddies being laid off and illegal immigrants taking their places for a lot less pay. My buddies are back working but some of them lost their homes and vehicles while we had the open borders we had during the dick and w's administration. The part of me that is non Native came over here through legal immigration and I'm all for that. Our illegal immigrant population here in Oklahoma has been going down these last two years to where its really not an issue now like it was there for a while. I don't blame the ones who feel they must come here I blame our and their politicians for creating the climate that made it necessary for them to feel they had to cross the border illegally to find work.

[dkf]

14. Too bad they didn't do it when we still needed a lot of construction.

That should have set your friends up for life with a decent nest egg but that opportunity is lost forever. I hope your buddies are able to find enough work in this crappy economy.

[madokie]

24. Some are barely getting by still

others have had to change professions.

You're right about its a shame they didn't do this a few years earlier.

[Deep13]

3. The supply is high because jobs have been moved out of the country...

...in addition to having a permanent outcaste class in this country.

[dkf]

7. Yes we have moved many jobs out of the country. So the ones that we have kept

Are even more necessary to our people who have no where else to go.

[hobbit709]

5. BS, there wasn't a problem until all the jobs left.

and now they want to pay minimum wages for formerly high dollar jobs.

[dkf]

10. Exactly. But the jobs that could go went and the jobs that stayed have an extra 11,000,000 workers

To fill them. Ergo downward pressure on wages.

[madokie]

11. Some of us know that

some thinks we're racist when we bring it up when nothing could be further from the truth. Last week I had to go to the city and on the way there I went past road construction where they were widening I-44 going through Tulsa and I looked and all I seen were what appeared to be local joes doing the work. 3 years ago they were widening a different section of I-44 going through Tulsa and all the workers appeared to be non locals. Me being a concrete finisher I notice concrete work and driving over the section that was completed three years ago the work was inferior to the work that is being done now. A lot of high walls because they've used up their right of way so instead of the side of the highway being mowed now its high walls of concrete with the road going all the way to the high walls and what is being done today if far superior to the work that was done a few years ago. Straighter lines make for better looking concrete work.
The local foundry shut down and reopened a few months later with non local workers non union where it was union before. It took management about a month to realize that this wasn't working so the non locals were given their walking papers and the previous workers were rehired. I can go on and on but the gist of what I'm getting at is that yes illegal immigration workers lower the wages for everyone else while doing not as good of work as the locals can and were doing. I'm disabled so I no longer am in the work force but I do care about my brothers and sisters who during the open borders years of the dick and w pResidency the non locals were getting the jobs when my brothers and sisters were loosing their homes and barely getting by because they demand a more fair wage but were denied that because the companies could hire others for far lesser wages driving the wages of everyone else down. Legal immigration I'm all for it but coming across the border illegally not so much. I find that for the most part a lot of the reasons that some feel they have to come here illegally is due to our own policies towards their home countries and that's where we need to start the work to correct all this. I don't blame the illegal immigrants I blame our and their politicians who make it so they feel they have no other choice.

[RaleighNCDUer]

22. You want to end illegal immigration - SCRAP NAFTA.

The reason people come here for work is because our half-assed trade policies have devastated their own economies.

When someone is starving he's not going to wait in line to get into the country.

[dkf]

By looking at China, don't you think Mexico missed some sort of boat?

Why are they booming when the shopping costs are so much higher? That tells me it's the Mexican Government that never got it's act together.

[RaleighNCDUer]

29. Out NAFTA agreements wouond up with us dumping US agericultural

products on the market in Mexico - which put millions of Mexican farmers out of work, being unable to compete with American agribusiness. So what do they do? They come here, to work for American agribusiness, making it even MORE profitable, further degrading the Mexican farmers' ability to compete.

And WTF does China have to do with NAFTA?

[dkf]

30. China didn't even have the benefits of Nafta yet they have managed to put together

The most successful anti poverty program ever.

They took their people from agriculture into manufacturing.

[RaleighNCDUer]

31. WTF? The BENEFITS of NAFTA?

NAFTA devastated the Mexican economy, and didn't do ours any favors either. It helped a few rich guys get much richer.

And again, what does China have to do with it? The fact that China introduced factory slavery has nothing to do with NAFTA.

North American Free Trade Agreement. I don't see China in that, anywhere.

[dkf]

28. By looking at China, don't you think Mexico missed some sort of boat?

Why are they booming when the shopping costs are so much higher? That tells me it's the Mexican Government that never got it's act together.

[Mnemosyne]

37. Hell yes, you got it on the nose. n/t

[uponit7771]

8. POST OF THE MORNING

[Deep13]

15. Thanks.

:hi:

[Courtesy Flush]

16. I have another take on it

Many of the rich ARE employees. They're CEOs and other highly paid peope in management. Their salaries do not in any way go toward hiring others. We hear the old trope about how the rich are the risk takers and employers, but many are just very highly paid people. Their only risk was maybe getting student loans to get their MBA.

I don't begrudge them their success or their salary, but they owe taxes, just like the janitor.

[Deep13]

18. I'm talking about the 1% that own half of this country.

Most of them don't have student loans because they were born rich. Top CEOs ostensibly work for corporations, but really the corporations work for them. As management, they decide to pay themselves gigantic salaries and other benefits while reducing labor costs everywhere they can. They would rather tank the company than give up anything.

[formercia]

17. What creates jobs is money in circulation

When people spend, it creates wages for others, regardless if it'd the janitor or the CEO.

People don't get rich by spending money. They get rich by taking it out of circulation. Give them more tax breaks and they will just take more money out of circulation, thus reducing wages and jobs.

The best way to get money in circulation is to tax the rich and give the break to the lower paid workers and poor. They will put that money right back into circulation, thus creating more jobs and more tax revenue.

The GOP argument is exactly opposite to the facts.

[Deep13]

20. Yes. Here's another possible approach.

To prevent top management from looting companies, what if we have a maxium wage rule? The highest paid employee cannot make more than 20x what the lowest paid employee makes. And it would have to be based on total compensation rather than just wages.

[jpljr77]

19. Contrarian view: workers only have jobs because of innovation.

You posted:

The rich are only wealthy because of what workers have produced for them.

Workers are hired because there is a job to do with a company already in place. Workers didn't create the product/service they produce.

This is, of course, the basis of Randian philosophy, to which I am vehemently opposed. The supply-siders take this kernel of an idea and extrapolate it out all the way to a bizarre conclusion. But there should at least be a little recognition that there would be no workers without innovation and innovators. It's an inter-dependent system that both sides seem to have forgotten.

[Deep13]

21. Henry Ford invented the assembly line...

...and then his workers made him rich using it. So even if an entrepreneur came up with the idea and took the initial risk, his workers still created the wealth. Anyway, we are not talking about small business owners here. We are talking about the largely inherited aristocracy that risks nothing and as far as I can tell contributes nothing.

[jpljr77]

23. But that's not what you said.

You said, "The rich are only wealthy because of what workers have produced for them." You're talking about the industrially rich. You're talking about the old "management vs. labor" paradigm of manufacturing. In that, there truth to what I said, that workers wouldn't be workers if not for the innovation of the "rich," (like in the Ford example you gave).

We are talking about the largely inherited aristocracy that risks nothing and as far as I can tell contributes nothing.

Now you're talking about the super-rich, the financially rich. This is a new class, created in the 80s under Reagan. These are hedge fund managers who makes billions (literally) each year and don't contribute anything. They really don't create jobs...at all. And they pay their taxes under a completely different structure that allows them to claim capital gains and get away with baseline -- baseline -- tax rates of between 15 and 20%. Their effective rates are actually lower.

On them, I completely agree with you.

[svsuman23]

25. they buy things with their money to keep people working and the economy??

Maybe?
:shrug:

[Deep13]

27. Actually not.

The rich don't stay rich by spending a lot of money. Well they do spend what for us is a lot, but they sit on much more of it. One problem with this "recovery" is that so much money that is under the control of the ruling class is just sitting there not doing anything. Requiring them to pay more in taxes and in wages would get those resources out of the vaults and into the economy.

With more resources freed up, people could be providing services for each other instead of hoping for a job servicing the needs of the rich.To put it another way, instead of wasting labor building another yacht or waxing the Ferrari, that same labor could be teaching school, fixing streets or providing health care for the uninsured.

[bigmonkey]

35. If a pirate stole all the money in your local area

would you then have to do anything he said because of the economy?

[hifiguy]

26. I believe it was Abraham Lincoln

(that well-known Commie socialist) who opined that "labor precedes capital and is deserving of much the greater consideration" because without labor, capital would not exist.

[Viking 1]

32. So true

Recced.

[fascisthunter]

33. Also, Consumers Create Demand when they have enough money

this theory that the rich create jobs is a myth.

Oh, and our tax payed infrastructure makes it all possible. Nobody uses the Commons more than business interests, therefore they should pay for it.

[calimary]

34. DAMN, Deep13! That one is a KEEPER! Mind if I steal it and spread it around?

"Saying the rich create jobs is like saying that ticks create blood."

SPECTACULAR!!!! Fabulous negative mental image that links up with the whole concept! Not even frank luntz is THAT skilled! Freakin' BRILLIANT!!!!

Holy cannoli! That one absolutely ROCKS! I salute you!!!

:patriot: :yourock: :headbang: :applause: :fistbump: :thumbsup:

[Fool Count]

36. A better analogy is that it is like saying that slaveowners

provide livelihood for their slaves.