Category Archives: jobs

A Difference in Philosophy

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British Prime Minister David Cameron is…discussing…the British requirements for continued membership in the European Union with the rest of the leadership of the EU. One of the points of contention is the degree of welfare participation migrants from mainland EU should receive while in Great Britain. Cameron wants to

curb[] welfare benefits for other EU citizens working in the UK for four years.

EU leaders have voiced strong opposition to his plan, saying it would breach the fundamental principle of free movement of people within the bloc.

The EU leaders’ objection, of course, is nonsense. A benefits freeze would leave migrants free to come and go as they please; the British position is a benefits freeze, not a movement restriction. The only thing being frozen would be the migrants’ ability to freeload off the British taxpayer.

Cameron also points out that a benefits freeze would help reduce migration to the UK. Well, duh. Reducing the incentives to come where the freeloading is easy certainly reduce the amount of movement in that direction.

The difference between Cameron and the European leaders is the difference between a measure of self-determination and individual responsibility on the one hand, and Government Knows Better on the other.

Hopefully, It’s a Start

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The Libre Initiative is a conservative organization funded by a donor network organized by the Koch brothers, that pair of Left-wing bêtes noire.

This organization is

[a]ctive in nine states, including Colorado, Nevada and Virginia, Libre, which means free in Spanish, is an effort to organize Latinos around free-market political ideas.

It’s also helping Hispanic immigrants learn English and

offering recent immigrants practical services such as English-language courses, tax-preparation seminars and driver’s license classes….

It’s helping these folks fit into their new nation.

They’ve been doing this sort of thing since 2011, and they represent an excellent start. But. This sort of thing needs to be greatly expanded, with lots of other Conservative organizations taking part, and it needs to be an ongoing effort, not just an election year ploy. The Libre Initiative clearly is more than a ploy. Where are the others?

A Thought on Immigration

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Greg Ip has a piece on demographics in Sunday’s Wall Street Journal.

Next year, the world’s advanced economies will reach a critical milestone. For the first time since 1950, their combined working-age population will decline…and by 2050 it will shrink 5%. The ranks of workers will also fall in key emerging markets, such as China and Russia. At the same time the share of these countries’ population over 65 will skyrocket.

There are two competing factors that dominate those statistics: people are living longer, in particular in retirement, and women are bearing fewer children over their lifetimes. As Ip put it,

[C]ompanies are running out of workers, customers, or both. In either case, economic growth suffers.

The solution to this, of course, is immigration. Blocking immigration because—pick a reason—means we won’t have the labor force we need for, among other things, saving our retirement safety net in substantially its current form or privatizing it.

We’ll have to get our immigration kit in order promptly, though, and be prepared actively to compete for them, much as our private enterprises already have to compete for employees.

By 2050, the world’s population will have grown 32%, but the working-age population (15 to 64 years old) will expand just 26%.

The competition will sharpen:

Among advanced countries, the working-age population will shrink 26% in South Korea, 28% in Japan, and 23% in both Germany and Italy….

That competition cannot be based on how many goodies our government can hand out; our existing and unaffordable Progressive/Democrat welfare state is the outcome of that. No, our competitive advantage is, and must be, centered as it always has been, on our individual liberties and the opportunities our freedoms create.

This is a national security matter, too. Absent a growing, vibrant labor force, we won’t have the economic wherewithal to fund a capable military establishment, much less equip it with the technology required to stay globally dominant—or even strong enough to defend us.

Certainly, we need to secure our borders, and we need to do an efficient, prompt job of vetting those we let in. And those we let in do need to either be satisfied with green cards/work permits, or they need to assimilate into American culture as part of their gaining citizenship.

But we must have those immigrants, just as we’ve needed—and gained—them at critical junctures throughout our history.

Political Experience

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As the terrorist threat becomes ever more apparent—Paris, for instance—political experience in a Presidential candidate would seem to be at a premium, according to political…pundits. I agree: given the US’ role in the world, even after President Barack Obama’s seven-year retreat, a retreat actively supported by the Democratic Party, political experience is highly important. Especially with the damage done by that retreat, political experience is highly important. So is an ability to learn policy issues and rationally to form policy and adjust it as empirical data flow in.

Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is often touted as unbeatable in the Democratic primary campaign—she is—and she’s just as often touted (a few too early polls notwithstanding) as virtually unbeatable in the general election. Her political experience is the support for that unbeatability.

Let’s see, then, what are some highlights of her political experience?

  • HillaryCare
  • Bimbo Eruptions
  • For the Iraq War before she was against it (sound familiar?)
  • Successfully passed three Senate bills: created a historic site, named a post office, named a stretch of highway
  • For Keystone XL before she was against it
  • Foreign government “contributions” to her (and her husband’s and daughter’s) Clinton Foundation while sitting in the Secretary of State’s chair
  • Communications security and classified material handling while sitting in the Secretary of State’s chair
  • Libya
  • Benghazi

Clinton has remained steadfast in all of these, save for her flip-flopping on Iraq and Keystone. Especially, she has remained steadfast on Obamacare (née HillaryCare), security matters, Libya, and Benghazi.

She should run on her political experience. The Republican Presidential candidate should run on her political experience.

Democrats, Pseudo-Science, and our Economy

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President Barack Obama stopped the Keystone XL pipeline (fortunately, it’s not permanent; a better informed President can undo this damage, but that’s for another post). Obama, supported by his Democrat confreres (though, as I said, it was his decision), offered these excuses for the stoppage:

the pipeline would create few jobs

Even taking that as accurate (thousands of jobs are not “few,” though), job creation in our present economy is not a thing to be dismissed as casually as this. Further, the John Kerry State Department’s analysis that the jobs created would amount to fewer than 0.1% of “the nation’s total employment” is fatuous on its face: other than Big Government, there are vanishingly few enterprises that don’t employ fewer than 0.1% of our nation’s total employment.

would fail to lower gasoline prices

Not initially, perhaps, as the current relative slowness of gasoline prices to fall in line with falling oil prices. However, the increased supply of oil and its associated easier delivery to refineries, can only increase the supply of gasoline relative to demand, and so the pipeline would, ultimately reduce the price of gasoline. Of course there are two sources of reduced prices, only one of which is easily visible. One is an absolute drop in price at the pump. The other, though, is easily ignored by Democrats: that’s the smaller rise in price as demand continues to outrun supply, even as that latter gap shrinks from the pipeline’s influence on supply.

exacerbate[e] climate change

Umm, no. Even were man a serious player in climate warming (this was the climatista panic-mongers’ claim; they don’t get to run away from it with a name change), the pipeline’s influence can’t be seen in the noise, given the PRC’s and India’s contribution to climate warming. However, the pseudo-science of “climate warming” is being more and more debunked—not only through exposure of all the falsified data and failed models, but with actual real data contradicting pseudo-scientists’ claims. There’s nothing present for the pipeline to influence, even minisculy.

No, canceling Keystone is nothing more than a continuation of Democrats’ pushing their crony green capitalists’ welfare, a functional if not purely intentional attack on our economy.