Currency Manipulation Hurts America Workers

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Monday June 29, 2015 · 5:02 PM PDT

2015/06/29 · 17:02

The Trans-Pacific Partnership will have three signatory nations (Japan, Malaysia, and Singapore) that are flagrant currency manipulators, yet that trade agreement completely fails to address the issue. In 2013 the United States had a current account deficit of $400 billion (U.S. Department of Commerce, 2015). Of that total, $183 billion of the deficit was with China (The World Bank). The current account is the difference between the goods and services that the U.S. imports and those that we export, plus the difference between investment income paid to people in the U.S. from foreign countries and that paid to people in other countries from the U.S., plus miscellaneous other transfers, such as taxes paid across the border. The deficit with China is most obviously manifested in all the manufactured products on American store shelves “Made in China.” In 2014, the trade deficit with China in goods (excluding the other elements of the current account), was $343 billion. The goods deficit with China has exceeded $200 billion since 2005 (U.S. Census Bureau).

Current account deficits and surpluses between nations are not supposed to be large or persistent.

IowaPopulist

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Monday January 10, 2011 · 11:10 AM PST

2011/01/10 · 11:10

The Fairness Doctrine, implemented in 1949, required broadcast media (radio and TV) to present issues of public importance, and in an honest, equitable and balanced way. The media generally met that regulatory requirement by relatively objective reporting of the facts, with little expression of opinion. One can express a point of view by choosing which facts to present, but the requirement of balance at least constrained that. The easiest way to avoid the regulators was to stick to facts and hew to a centrist presentation of the news that would not produce irate letters to the FCC from either left or right. This imposed a certain political conformity, which is obnoxious, but institutions like Fox News and right-wing talk radio were not practical. All of that changed when Ronald Reagan abolished the Fairness Doctrine in 1987.

In those earlier days there were other forces that exerted a moderating political influence. There were only 3 TV networks, which were, by practical business necessity, non-partisan, which meant that they were blandly centrist in their political reporting, but they also made an effort to be objective and balanced in their coverage.

IowaPopulist

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Sunday November 14, 2010 · 12:01 PM PST

2010/11/14 · 12:01

Employment statistics reported by the Pew Hispanic Center (Kochhar et al., 2010) indicate that American businesses are using the recession and the recovery to replace non-immigrant workers with immigrants.

Early in the recession, immigrants accounted for 18.8% of job losses, slightly more than their 15.5% representation in the labor force. However, as the economy has started to recover, employment of immigrants has increased, even as employment of non-immigrants has continued to decrease. From the 2nd quarter of 2008 (2/2008) to the 2nd quarter of 2009 (2/2009), non-immigrant workers lost 4.5 million jobs and immigrants lost 1.1 million. During the economic recovery, from 2/2009 to 2/2010 non-immigrants lost another 1.2 million jobs, while immigrants actually gained 0.7 million jobs, erasing 62% of their job losses from the previous year.

IowaPopulist

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Tuesday June 01, 2010 · 1:15 PM PDT

2010/06/01 · 13:15

I will set aside the contentious question of amnesty, and address instead the large increase in legal immigration in the Senate proposal and the deleterious effect it would have on employment and career opportunities for Americans at all levels of education, in addition to accelerating our already high rate of population increase.

The Conceptual Proposal for Immigration Reform (2010) recently circulated by Senators Reid, Schumer and Menendez would increase legal immigration rates by 1) Automatically issuing green cards to any foreign student with an advanced technical degree from a U.S. university who possesses a U.S. job offer, 2) Creation of a new H-2C visa for "less-skilled" workers that leads to permanent residence, 3) Increasing visas for foreign doctors, nurses and physical therapists, 4) Expedited clearing of the family preference waiting list, and 5) "recapture of immigrant visas lost to bureaucratic delay." All of these measures will both increase population growth and decrease employment and career opportunities for Americans. I will elaborate on the implication of the first four of those programs.

IowaPopulist

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Monday March 22, 2010 · 12:16 PM PDT

2010/03/22 · 12:16

I suggest a second budget reconciliation bill that would move implementation of all provisions of the HCR law from 2014 to 2011. That would require nothing more than a small temporary income tax increase on the wealthiest Americans. In addition to saving tens of thousands of lives and preventing millions of bankruptcies, that action would eliminate by far the greatest political liability of this excellent law.

IowaPopulist

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Tuesday January 26, 2010 · 2:19 PM PST

2010/01/26 · 14:19

In his editorial on Health Care Reform in the recent issue of the AARP Bulletin Jim Toedtman wisely quotes Niccolo Machiavelli.

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new.

Machiavelli may have been a bit cynical and disillusioned when he wrote "The Prince", but most people don’t know that he was actually a liberal fighter for freedom and democracy, a thing that could get you killed in those days. President Obama and Democrats in Congress surely appreciate the wisdom of Machiavelli’s words. But, I hope they also understand the importance to the American people of delivering what they have brought nearly to term.

IowaPopulist

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Sunday January 24, 2010 · 12:33 PM PST

2010/01/24 · 12:33

By allowing corporations to express their right to free speech in their preferred and time honored way the Supreme Court has opened the door on a new day. No unhealthy smoke-filled rooms, traded favors, back-room deals. Instead we will have the true democracy of the marketplace: open, transparent, practically stark, staring naked.

Members of Congress will proffer their votes on E-Bay, where the invisible hand of the market will transform Congress into an engine of efficient allocation. The dead hand of government rules and regulations will be replaced by the enlightened forces of free enterprise, and taxes will fall preferentially, as they should, on those the market has found least worthy and valuable.

IowaPopulist

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Monday October 26, 2009 · 2:02 PM PDT

2009/10/26 · 14:02

I would hate to see decisions on immigration reform made on the basis of what is "good for the economy," good for business interests, or the wallets of economically comfortable Americans. In previous diaries I documented how our current high rate of immigration is driving a large increase in population and adversely effecting low-income American workers. I hope these issues, along with compassionate, humanitarian concern for illegal immigrants will be the basis for our decisions.

However, in our corporate-owned media, and even on Daily Kos, the assumed economic benefits of immigration are often given as a strong reason for both amnesty and continued high rates of immigration. Clearly, green cards for people with Stanford doctorates in electrical engineering are good for the economy, but it is also generally assumed that we benefit economically from the massive influx of unskilled immigrants, both legal and illegal. I would like to examine that assumption, because bad policy results from unsound arguments.

IowaPopulist

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Sunday October 18, 2009 · 12:41 PM PDT

2009/10/18 · 12:41

We are in the worst recession since the Great Depression, yet legal immigration continues at high levels and is adding to unemployment, because immigration policy remains on autopilot. Our economy has been shedding jobs for almost two years, yet permanent immigrants in fiscal 2008 (the last year for which I have data, DHS Yearbook) numbered 1.1 million. That is a near-record-high level of legal immigration and 76% of the new immigrants were at least 20 years old. Camarota and Jensenius (2009) report that we issued visas in fiscal 2008 for 130,183 H-1B temporary workers, most of whom have at least a bachelor’s degree. There were 84,078 L visas issued for temporary workers as intercompany transfers. To qualify for an L visa an employee must have worked for the company only 1 year continuously sometime in the last 3 years. Because numbers are completely uncontrolled, the L visa has become a convenient way for multinational companies to beat the H-1B quotas. L visas can be extended for 5 to 7 years, and H-1 visas for 6 years.

IowaPopulist

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Saturday September 05, 2009 · 1:02 PM PDT

2009/09/05 · 13:02

We liberals sometimes have a disturbing tendency to ignore unpleasant truths when they conflict with our agendas. On no issue is our perception more blinkered than on immigration. Rather than formulating policy by weighing all the facts we often regard only the benefits of our proposed policies, while ignoring the harm they do. Our current high immigration rates and lax enforcement have clear beneficiaries, but the price for their good fortune is being paid by the poorest, most vulnerable Americans, people who no longer seem to have a voice or advocates in the Democratic party. In this diary I wish to describe more than prescribe. There are many possible ways forward on immigration reform, but I hope we follow a path that acknowledges all the realities.

IowaPopulist

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Monday August 24, 2009 · 1:44 PM PDT

2009/08/24 · 13:44

Under the current immigration law and enforcement regime, the United States is experiencing a higher rate of immigration, legal plus illegal, than ever before, and that is driving a large increase in population. In 2005 our population was 296 million. Passel and Cohn (2008 – full references at the end) forecast an increase to 438 million in 2050 (the Census Bureau (2008) predicts 439 million). Of the 48% increase from 2005 to 2050, 82% will be due to immigrants who arrive during that period and the descendants of those immigrants. And, our increasingly crowded nation is already the third most populous on earth.

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Currency Manipulation Hurts America Workers

Fairness Doctrine and Political Violence

Employers Are Replacing Non-Immigrants With Immigrants

Opportunity Costs of Comprehensive Immigration Reform

Tax the rich to Move HCR from 2014 to 2011

Machiavelli on Health Care Reform

Supreme Court Decision Will Rationalize Congress

The High Cost of Cheap Immigrant Labor

Effect of Continuing High Immigration Rate During the Recession

Effect of Immigration on Low-Income American Workers

Immigration is driving rapid U.S. population increase