Your Lying Eyes

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29 November 2005

'Jobs Americans Won't Do'

This is a favorite catch-phrase of the open-borders crowd (and their Commandante Uno Bush) - immigrants are just trying to make a living doing jobs that Americans just won't do. The phrase conjures up an image of a nation of spoiled brats, unwilling to dirty their hands in uninspiring toil.
So what would be a good example of a job that an advanced society would collectively shun? How about plumbing - while laying pipe at a new construction site may be inoffesive enough, the kind of plumbing work that has gone on at my 4-score-year-old house takes a pretty strong stomach. Yet plumbers are almost without exception native-born. How do we get them to perform their foul duties? Well you know perfectly well how - we pay through the nose.
Plumbers generally have to be licensed and their ranks - at least in these parts - are strictly union. And so the plumbing profession relies on what economists refer to as 'barriers to entry' to keep out cheap labor. The licensing requirements ensure a certain minimum skill level for people to get paid for plumbing, as well as restrict the field of available plumbers. The result is that a job that would have to be on anyone's short list of ones you wouldn't want to do ends up being in fact a fairly desirable profession - that is in fact not all that easy to get into. Now I'm not proposing that we start licensing landscapers and short-order cooks for chrissake - just pointing out the obvious disingenuousness of the open-borders crowd.

6 Comments:

Blogger ziel said...

America *does* owe blacks in a way it doesn't owe illegal immigrants.
I agree, and I would much prefer employers were forced into hiring blacks by a labor shortage induced by reduced immigration. However, the few people I have talked to who hire Latinos shudder at the thought.

November 30, 2005 11:08 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Have you ever asked a plumber about finding good help? The ones I know say there IS a generation of young Americans that don't want to get their hands dirty. I hear the same thing from friends who are electrictions. Nobody wants to do hard work. Maybe its because they all see labor as immigrant work?

December 01, 2005 11:07 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

How have blacks been de-socialized over the last generation and a half?

December 01, 2005 12:32 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Okay, the lowering of the bar so that the reward is attainable without the discipline.

Question I have is, how long does this "debt" need to be paid off?

December 02, 2005 8:33 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Are you Art Ziel at liveuniver@aol.com You sound like something he would write about! Is this you Art? Just wondering if it truly is Art Ziel from Glendale, CA

December 22, 2005 4:18 PM  
Blogger ziel said...

No, I'm not Art Ziel from Glendale CA - though that's not a bad pseudonym. Perhaps I'll adopt it.

December 22, 2005 7:43 PM  

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