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FEATURED LETTER |
| Since the United States has been exporting jobs and
importing labor, most families need two paychecks to
maintain a middle-class lifestyle. What's next? A return to child labor? -SUN-TIMES LIBRARY |
We need better wages, fewer immigrants |
| Globalization and open bor- ders. Free trade and endless immigration. That is the mantra that has been chanted at Americans for the past few genera- tions as the way to strengthen our nation and economy. Free trade is supposed to make our industries more efficient because of foreign competition, and immigrants are supposed to work jobs Americans don't want. It sounds fine in the- ory, but let's look at how well it works in practice: In the late 1950's, America produced all of its manufactured goods and had plenty to spare for export. Protected by tariffs, our indus- trial workers enjoyed a pay scale high enough to support a family with a single paycheck, and be- cause of low immigration-- 178,000 a year vs. 1.5 million an- nually today--employers were forced to be innovative and pro- vide generous benefit packages. Then our trade protections were lowered and our borders opened. The American consumer electron- |
It looks like simply having adults work won't be enough.... It looks like child labor will be necessary ics industry, once the best on Earth, no longer exists. The American steel industry is reeling, and our auto industry struggles to maintain market share. These hundreds of thousands of high- paying union jobs are now over- seas--the end result of forcing Americans to compete with lower- paid foreigners. Mass immigration has done its damage as well. Many fields, such as housekeeping, janitorial serv- ices and meatpacking used to be decent-paying union postions. Then employers used massive amounts of immigrant labor from Third World nations to break the |
union and reduce pay and elimi- nate benefits. For the last three generations we have exported jobs and im- ported labor, with catastrophic re- sults. My grandparents' genera- tion was able to maintain a middle-class lifestyle with one parent working. Free trade and immigration forced my parents' generation to have both adults working outside the house. An in- creasing number of Americans high school graduates are unable to at- tend college, according to recent news reports--not because of a lack of financial aid, but because they are needed in th labor force to help with the family finances. It looks like simply having adults work won't be enough for my generation. It looks like child labor will be necessary. Ridicu- lous? That is what my grandfather would have said if someone had told him that two incomes would be necessary for his children to own a house. - Gerald Shinn
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