65 to 70% of the US economy relies on consumer spending - historically in the post WWII era workers and consumers are the same people ,i.e., depress worker wages and you also depress consumer spending . In the US we've been hollowing out our economy since the 1980's .
Glenn: "If you want to get ahead you have to be in the upper right tail of the distribution. . . . The idea that if I'm going to have a good job, I've got to spend 12 or 15 years working 60 hour weeks with my nose to the grindstone, might be very hard for people to accept, and the idea that if I don't do that this guy over here coming from South East Asia is going to get the job."
1. Here Glenn seems to be anthropomorphizing the American economy or GDP. What exactly do average Americans gain by having the best tech sector in the world when the wealth generated by that sector pools in the elite investor class? You could say good technology. But outside of biomedicine, has the US really produced anything that's made day to day life significantly better in the last 20 years? In fact, it seems much of the tech sector is designed to capture the attention of app users for .1 seconds longer than competitors in order to sell ad space.
2. On the point regarding "60 hour weeks": Why exactly do Americans have the unique responsibility to compete with every person in the world for a job, when the vast majority of the planet simply competes with their co-nationals, or at most with others in their general region? Because Americans of previous generations have worked to make this continent such a wonderful place to live when compared to Bangladesh?
3. It's also not just about "working 60 hours weeks." It's about compensation for that work. An Indian coming from India has a much different decision matrix than a talented lower middle class American. The opportunity to live in America alone is enough for many Indians to work those hours, while the lower middle class American already lives there. Of course the Indian will be willing to work the same job/hours for less pay. On the same note, the Indian H1B immigrant will also likely be happy to live in quarters an American would not tolerate. Three generations under one roof is not something to aspire to for Americans - but, for Indians, if that roof is in America, it's quite the upgrade from Bangalore.
John: "...in one generation, they'll become American."
1. Why is that something to be assumed? Previous waves of mass immigration to the U.S. came from Europe and had the task of integrating into an American society shaped by Anglos. But here we're discussing Indians, a comparatively clannish, severely hierarchical and non-Christian society. Saying that "immigrants get things done" because he likes a song from a popular play seems like a neat way of skirting the obvious questions here.
2. This clearly isn't the "same old story." Never before has there been a debate in an American state legislature about whether or not to outlaw caste discrimination, as there was in California about a year ago.
Let me see if I've got this right...It's not fair that Americans have to be as good, skilled, and competitive as other people of the world. Is that about right?
If I need my car repaired, I'll take it to the best mechanic that charges the least money. If I made it about their race or nationality, that would make me a racist or a xenophobe. But I make it about their qualifications. That makes me rational and practical.
Don't blame Musk. Instead, ask yourself why America can't supply the skilled, competitive employees that he, and other employers, need. It's a question that many people don't want to have to consider. So they make excuses instead. Avoiding the reality is what got us into this mess in the first place, and it will only get worse, until people face reality.
I think high skilled immigration is a strong positive for this country, but I think the slighting of American workers by Musk and Ramaswamy is over the top and inaccurate.
High skilled immigration is good not because American workers are bad, but because high skilled workers create the need for more like them, regardless of where they are from.
I want to agree with you, but I can't. I am a retired businessman, and the one insurmountable challenge thru a 40 year career was finding people with basic job skills. I was willing to train relative to the work that needed to be done. But I needed trainable people who showed up every day.
Think of our 'educational system'. Students are taught to be sensitive, they are taught rights, and they are taught that employers are mean greedy people who need not be treated with respect and consideration. Guess how that has turned out.
and unreliables were consistently less than 10% of the work force . But I compensated them well and respected my workers i n my 50 years of experience .
Isn't 10% high? Why would you hire loafers and unreliables? I tried real hard to NOT hire them.
You say 'managed'. Did you hire your employees? Did the losses they incurred come out of your pocket? Were you selling a product in which customer satisfaction and competitive price are essential? In what business does a 10% rate of employee loafers and unrealiables not wreck the bottom line? What were the other employees' reactions to being forced to do the loafer's work?
Au contraire. I am good at it. Like, just now I accurately guessed that, while you've managed something, you've never truly been personally responsible for productivity and profitability.
And I'm not trying to be entertaining. Are you? I'm trying to be rational. I'd say I've succeeded at that.
Concerns about the use of H-1B visas are a subplot in a much larger debate about the falling share of Americans achieving the American Dream, defined as doing at least as well, financially, as their parents.
Raj Chetty and other researchers established a while ago that the odds of earning more at age 30 than one's parents did at the same age, adjusted for inflation, fell from 90% for those born in 1940 to 50% for those born in 1980:
What was an almost sure thing became a coin flip in 40 years. What Chetty and his collaborators referred to as "The Fading American Dream" has led to widespread economic anxiety and the rise of populism.
The key drivers of the fading American Dream are globalization, automation, and immigration.
Immigration is front and center today because immigrants account for 18-19% of America's labor force and over 14% of the population, the highest level since the late 1800's:
The immigrant share of the labor force has been growing while the share of native-born Americans, especially men, has been falling. Here's an excerpt from a NY Post article that illustrates the point:
The American labor force is becoming less American.
Newly-released data from the Center for Immigration Studies is sounding the alarm on the declining US labor force, by showing fewer native-born Americans are joining the workforce — with men representing the largest decline seen in decades.
“The share of working-age (16 to 64) U.S.-born men not in the labor force increased from 11 percent in April 1960 to 17 percent in April 2000, and to 22 percent in April 2024,” the analysis found.
“Among ‘prime-age’ U.S.-born men (25 to 54), the group most likely to work, the share not in the labor force was 4 percent in April 1960, 9 percent in 2000 and 12 percent in 2024.”
The study concluded 43 million men and women — born in the US and aged 16 to 64 — were not working as of last April, which is 8.5 million more than in 2000.
These trends fuel economic anxiety and feed the populism that comes with it. So does automation. Concerns about the use of labor-saving forms of automation were a major sticking point in the just resolved negotiations between the International Longshoreman's Association (ILA) and the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX):
Indicative of how big a force populism has become, both Biden and Trump sided with the ILA on the automation issue.
Last, but not least, there's evidence that shows American adults are less literate and numerate than they were in 2012. The just released Program for International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) results illustrate the point:
These worrisome trends are taking place despite massive growth in K-12 spending. Per pupil spending, adjusted for inflation (constant 2022-23 dollars), was $6,474 in 1969-70 vs. $17,495 in 2020-21:
To make a long story short, the debate about H-1B visas is a symptom of justifiable economic anxiety. The key questions are why are Americans falling behind and what can we do about it? Two primary narratives have emerged:
1. The system is rigged against average Americans in ways that favor elites
2. American culture needs to change in ways that embrace education and emphasize the importance of hard work
There are elements of truth in both narratives, so a nuanced approach is needed. American politics are so polarized and dysfunctional, however, that this is unlikely. Politicians will embrace the rigged system narrative even though it's obvious that many Americans aren't competitive with their global peers despite massive increases in K-12 spending.
Immigration is front and center today because immigrants account for 18-19% of America's labor force and over 14% of the population, the highest level since the late 1800's:
Yep the Bill Clinton NAFTA effect :
NAFTA is widely criticized for significantly damaging the Mexican economy, particularly its agricultural sector, by causing a massive loss of jobs in rural areas due to intense competition from heavily subsidized US agricultural products like corn, effectively driving many small Mexican farmers out of business and contributing to rural migration to urban centers in search of work; this displacement led to depressed wages and increased poverty in certain regions of Mexico.
Key points about NAFTA's negative impact on Mexico:
Agricultural devastation:
The removal of tariffs under NAFTA allowed heavily subsidized US corn to flood the Mexican market, significantly undercutting local Mexican corn production and leading to large-scale job losses in the agricultural sector.
Rural exodus:
Millions of Mexican farmers were forced to abandon their land due to economic hardship, leading to a major migration wave towards urban areas, often with limited employment opportunities.
Wage depression:
The influx of cheap labor from displaced rural workers put downward pressure on wages in the manufacturing sector, particularly in areas where factories relocated to Mexico to take advantage of lower costs.
Informal economy growth:
Many displaced workers were forced to find work in the informal economy, which lacks social security and benefits.
Important considerations:
Some argue that NAFTA did have positive impacts on the Mexican economy
by increasing overall trade and attracting foreign investment in manufacturing sectors.
The 1995 Mexican Peso Crisis:
While NAFTA is often blamed for the crisis, many economists argue that pre-existing economic vulnerabilities and poor financial policies played a bigger role.
Bad economies always bring out the worst in societies ,the US crash (Panic ) of the 1880's-1890's begot Plessy V Ferguson . Germany's post WWI Versailles economy begot WWII and the Holocaust and America's post 1980 war on the middle class had lead to renewed repression targeting Blacks and Browns again ,blaming immigration and DEI for our shitty lower wage job market . The real problem is the rapacious -"private equity" scoundrels with their hands in everyone's pockets
65 to 70% of the US economy relies on consumer spending - historically in the post WWII era workers and consumers are the same people ,i.e., depress worker wages and you also depress consumer spending . In the US we've been hollowing out our economy since the 1980's .
Household incomes have grown only modestly in this century, and household wealth has not returned to its pre-recession level. Economic inequality, whether measured through the gaps in income or wealth between richer and poorer households, continues to widen. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequality/
Let's pick this apart:
Glenn: "If you want to get ahead you have to be in the upper right tail of the distribution. . . . The idea that if I'm going to have a good job, I've got to spend 12 or 15 years working 60 hour weeks with my nose to the grindstone, might be very hard for people to accept, and the idea that if I don't do that this guy over here coming from South East Asia is going to get the job."
1. Here Glenn seems to be anthropomorphizing the American economy or GDP. What exactly do average Americans gain by having the best tech sector in the world when the wealth generated by that sector pools in the elite investor class? You could say good technology. But outside of biomedicine, has the US really produced anything that's made day to day life significantly better in the last 20 years? In fact, it seems much of the tech sector is designed to capture the attention of app users for .1 seconds longer than competitors in order to sell ad space.
2. On the point regarding "60 hour weeks": Why exactly do Americans have the unique responsibility to compete with every person in the world for a job, when the vast majority of the planet simply competes with their co-nationals, or at most with others in their general region? Because Americans of previous generations have worked to make this continent such a wonderful place to live when compared to Bangladesh?
3. It's also not just about "working 60 hours weeks." It's about compensation for that work. An Indian coming from India has a much different decision matrix than a talented lower middle class American. The opportunity to live in America alone is enough for many Indians to work those hours, while the lower middle class American already lives there. Of course the Indian will be willing to work the same job/hours for less pay. On the same note, the Indian H1B immigrant will also likely be happy to live in quarters an American would not tolerate. Three generations under one roof is not something to aspire to for Americans - but, for Indians, if that roof is in America, it's quite the upgrade from Bangalore.
John: "...in one generation, they'll become American."
1. Why is that something to be assumed? Previous waves of mass immigration to the U.S. came from Europe and had the task of integrating into an American society shaped by Anglos. But here we're discussing Indians, a comparatively clannish, severely hierarchical and non-Christian society. Saying that "immigrants get things done" because he likes a song from a popular play seems like a neat way of skirting the obvious questions here.
2. This clearly isn't the "same old story." Never before has there been a debate in an American state legislature about whether or not to outlaw caste discrimination, as there was in California about a year ago.
It's called "labor arbitrage" and it's as old as wage and slave labor and posited by and for the advantage of the owners of capital https://www.techtarget.com/searchcio/definition/labor-arbitrage
Let me see if I've got this right...It's not fair that Americans have to be as good, skilled, and competitive as other people of the world. Is that about right?
If I need my car repaired, I'll take it to the best mechanic that charges the least money. If I made it about their race or nationality, that would make me a racist or a xenophobe. But I make it about their qualifications. That makes me rational and practical.
Don't blame Musk. Instead, ask yourself why America can't supply the skilled, competitive employees that he, and other employers, need. It's a question that many people don't want to have to consider. So they make excuses instead. Avoiding the reality is what got us into this mess in the first place, and it will only get worse, until people face reality.
I think high skilled immigration is a strong positive for this country, but I think the slighting of American workers by Musk and Ramaswamy is over the top and inaccurate.
High skilled immigration is good not because American workers are bad, but because high skilled workers create the need for more like them, regardless of where they are from.
I want to agree with you, but I can't. I am a retired businessman, and the one insurmountable challenge thru a 40 year career was finding people with basic job skills. I was willing to train relative to the work that needed to be done. But I needed trainable people who showed up every day.
Think of our 'educational system'. Students are taught to be sensitive, they are taught rights, and they are taught that employers are mean greedy people who need not be treated with respect and consideration. Guess how that has turned out.
Wow ! I can hear the violins :-(
I've manged hundreds of people and the loafers
and unreliables were consistently less than 10% of the work force . But I compensated them well and respected my workers i n my 50 years of experience .
Isn't 10% high? Why would you hire loafers and unreliables? I tried real hard to NOT hire them.
You say 'managed'. Did you hire your employees? Did the losses they incurred come out of your pocket? Were you selling a product in which customer satisfaction and competitive price are essential? In what business does a 10% rate of employee loafers and unrealiables not wreck the bottom line? What were the other employees' reactions to being forced to do the loafer's work?
Stop trying to troll - you aren't good at it or even entertaining .
Au contraire. I am good at it. Like, just now I accurately guessed that, while you've managed something, you've never truly been personally responsible for productivity and profitability.
And I'm not trying to be entertaining. Are you? I'm trying to be rational. I'd say I've succeeded at that.
Concerns about the use of H-1B visas are a subplot in a much larger debate about the falling share of Americans achieving the American Dream, defined as doing at least as well, financially, as their parents.
Raj Chetty and other researchers established a while ago that the odds of earning more at age 30 than one's parents did at the same age, adjusted for inflation, fell from 90% for those born in 1940 to 50% for those born in 1980:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aal4617
What was an almost sure thing became a coin flip in 40 years. What Chetty and his collaborators referred to as "The Fading American Dream" has led to widespread economic anxiety and the rise of populism.
The key drivers of the fading American Dream are globalization, automation, and immigration.
Immigration is front and center today because immigrants account for 18-19% of America's labor force and over 14% of the population, the highest level since the late 1800's:
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/forbrn.pdf
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/09/27/u-s-immigrant-population-in-2023-saw-largest-increase-in-more-than-20-years/
The immigrant share of the labor force has been growing while the share of native-born Americans, especially men, has been falling. Here's an excerpt from a NY Post article that illustrates the point:
https://nypost.com/2024/12/21/us-news/native-born-us-workforce-totals-dipped-as-immigrant-labor-figures-rose-report/
The American labor force is becoming less American.
Newly-released data from the Center for Immigration Studies is sounding the alarm on the declining US labor force, by showing fewer native-born Americans are joining the workforce — with men representing the largest decline seen in decades.
“The share of working-age (16 to 64) U.S.-born men not in the labor force increased from 11 percent in April 1960 to 17 percent in April 2000, and to 22 percent in April 2024,” the analysis found.
“Among ‘prime-age’ U.S.-born men (25 to 54), the group most likely to work, the share not in the labor force was 4 percent in April 1960, 9 percent in 2000 and 12 percent in 2024.”
The study concluded 43 million men and women — born in the US and aged 16 to 64 — were not working as of last April, which is 8.5 million more than in 2000.
These trends fuel economic anxiety and feed the populism that comes with it. So does automation. Concerns about the use of labor-saving forms of automation were a major sticking point in the just resolved negotiations between the International Longshoreman's Association (ILA) and the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX):
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/01/08/business/us-dockworkers-port-employers-agreement/index.html
Indicative of how big a force populism has become, both Biden and Trump sided with the ILA on the automation issue.
Last, but not least, there's evidence that shows American adults are less literate and numerate than they were in 2012. The just released Program for International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) results illustrate the point:
https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/2023/national_results.asp
These worrisome trends are taking place despite massive growth in K-12 spending. Per pupil spending, adjusted for inflation (constant 2022-23 dollars), was $6,474 in 1969-70 vs. $17,495 in 2020-21:
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d23/tables/dt23_236.70.asp
Total K-12 expenditures were $927 billion in 2020-21:
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmb
To make a long story short, the debate about H-1B visas is a symptom of justifiable economic anxiety. The key questions are why are Americans falling behind and what can we do about it? Two primary narratives have emerged:
1. The system is rigged against average Americans in ways that favor elites
2. American culture needs to change in ways that embrace education and emphasize the importance of hard work
There are elements of truth in both narratives, so a nuanced approach is needed. American politics are so polarized and dysfunctional, however, that this is unlikely. Politicians will embrace the rigged system narrative even though it's obvious that many Americans aren't competitive with their global peers despite massive increases in K-12 spending.
Immigration is front and center today because immigrants account for 18-19% of America's labor force and over 14% of the population, the highest level since the late 1800's:
Yep the Bill Clinton NAFTA effect :
NAFTA is widely criticized for significantly damaging the Mexican economy, particularly its agricultural sector, by causing a massive loss of jobs in rural areas due to intense competition from heavily subsidized US agricultural products like corn, effectively driving many small Mexican farmers out of business and contributing to rural migration to urban centers in search of work; this displacement led to depressed wages and increased poverty in certain regions of Mexico.
Key points about NAFTA's negative impact on Mexico:
Agricultural devastation:
The removal of tariffs under NAFTA allowed heavily subsidized US corn to flood the Mexican market, significantly undercutting local Mexican corn production and leading to large-scale job losses in the agricultural sector.
Rural exodus:
Millions of Mexican farmers were forced to abandon their land due to economic hardship, leading to a major migration wave towards urban areas, often with limited employment opportunities.
Wage depression:
The influx of cheap labor from displaced rural workers put downward pressure on wages in the manufacturing sector, particularly in areas where factories relocated to Mexico to take advantage of lower costs.
Informal economy growth:
Many displaced workers were forced to find work in the informal economy, which lacks social security and benefits.
Important considerations:
Some argue that NAFTA did have positive impacts on the Mexican economy
by increasing overall trade and attracting foreign investment in manufacturing sectors.
The 1995 Mexican Peso Crisis:
While NAFTA is often blamed for the crisis, many economists argue that pre-existing economic vulnerabilities and poor financial policies played a bigger role.
I haven't read this yet but.... when you have a dismal school system that focuses on dei as opposed to quality education,. this is what you get
You just Trolling right ? Because if that actually your best analysis our schools are even worse than you suggest .
Bad economies always bring out the worst in societies ,the US crash (Panic ) of the 1880's-1890's begot Plessy V Ferguson . Germany's post WWI Versailles economy begot WWII and the Holocaust and America's post 1980 war on the middle class had lead to renewed repression targeting Blacks and Browns again ,blaming immigration and DEI for our shitty lower wage job market . The real problem is the rapacious -"private equity" scoundrels with their hands in everyone's pockets