TOUCHE: Consumerism on immigration – Wicked Local Carver

By Harry A. Shamir

Consumerism is more than just an economic philosophy, it is socio-economic. Even societal matters must conform to the laws of nature. Including the one that proclaims it is the customer's satisfaction that determines the value of any policy. Especially when the societal matters affect the number of people available for work, and for national security.

Our USA has always been a country of immigrants. Volunteering immigrants or forced immigrants, we have always desired and needed immigrants. The forcing thing we've learned to rue. Bullying is never the smart long-term approach to resolving any problem.

One hundred and sixty years after Emancipation we still suffer from the societal trauma caused by the utterly failed policy of slavism. Slavery was the wrong idea even in Roman times regardless of how grand the empire became - since it delayed by 2000 years the advent of the Industrial Revolution (IR). Remember that the IR came about since slave labor could not achieve the production needs required by the markets, not in quantity, not in complexity, and certainly not in quality. But it took a long time to discover this truth.

Today straight out slavery is out of fashion other than in the sex trade, and quite illegal. Wage slavism is not. Pay a person too little to live satisfactorily, and yes the employer saves some money, but in the end pays a lot more since a satisfied worker is far more productive. Wage slavism is very counterproductive, for the same reasons slavery itself is: it reduces to practically nil the buying power of the underpaid and sales suffer. Without buying power transactions are few and of low quality. The economy of the country suffers, and the employers' businesses stagnate. To compensate, munitions are manufactured and wars waged. One idiocy cascading after another.

The solution is actually to provide more satisfaction to the whole workforce, giving them the wherewithal to have many transactions all increasing yet more their levels of satisfaction from their acquisitions, creating a positive feedback spiral for once. One way to provide general greater satisfaction to the whole population is healthcare provided free by the government, thus freeing personal funds for other spending. Free to the individual, but paid for by the taxes levied upon the increasing profits created by the positive economic spiral.

Of course it is a law of nature that the economic equilibrium continues to exist, with crises avertable by policies obeying the laws of nature recognized in consumerism.

One such law is fundamental to capitalism: where there is demand and given time, competing agents will offer to supply. The "agents" are by definition, entrepreneurs. Conservative Adam Smith ideology lauds and applauds their initiatives. As does consumerism.

Except when warped by narrow interests and/or irrelevant ones.

One such irrelevant interest is the desire of sections of the populace to maintain the importance of their own ethnic group. Irrelevant since this is not the American Way, as we are all immigrants other than the Native Americans, today a minority about whom our conscience is paining. Which ethnic groups are making the most noise I shall not list here, the reader knows who they are. A warping interest is the attitude of that sector of our socio-political makeup, that fears an increase in the number of immigrating people who will vote for political parties representing the economic interests of the lower income communities. (How's that for evading names?). Often the narrow self interest and the warping interests coincide but not always.

Interestingly, we have in the US a strange situation. We have socio-economic groups that suffer from non-employment, that would be affected negatively from the immigration of working age people from Hispanic America. They would compete for the jobs at the lowest pay scale. Yet not all these groups are reacting the same way. The following are generalities: the African-American group is not opposed to Hispanic immigration, documented or not, and the European-American blue collar workers both employed and not, are opposed. The opposition has taken the form of a vote to instate President Trump, who promised to keep Hispanics out by virtue of the Wall.

Could it be that the Euro-Americans are reacting to the galloping change toward no need for more workers by dint of automation, by attempting to reduce competition for the few jobs that will be left? Could it be that the African-Americans are realizing the very same phenomenon and reacting by wishing to increase the number of people present whose jobs are displaced by automation? Why should they? One answer is that by having more voters included in the economy as non-wages-earning consumers, the political and economic strength of this group increases.

In agricultural work that includes picking strawberries and milking cows. Wisconsin and California producers rely on immigrants since no American is willing to work that hard for the low pay offered. Were the pay higher, it would lead to automation and fewer jobs, but product prices would rise, as capital is expensive. Ridding America of immigrants, especially willing wage-slavery undocumented workers, is an invitation to increase the population not-needed-for-employment. Perhaps that is a good thing in the long run.

These days, this period of the 21st Cent. is transitional, from industry and commerce that was labor intensive at semi-skilled levels, to a much reduced need for such workers in the mass production industries. Even people such asAndy Stern, former President of the Service Employees International Union, have recognized the fundamental facts cascading from automation, and argues that "American workers will need a universal basic income to survive in this post-work economy.

Of course that means all Americans deprived of employment opportunity, precisely what Consumerism In The Age Of Overpopulation describes, and whose problems it offers to solve.

Increased employment in maintenance occupations and boutique mfg, will absorb some of the unemployed, but far from all. Featherbedding will absorb some (dole by another name and tactic). Most will require the government provided "universal basic income."

The sooner the system will recognize and act upon these truths, the less we shall see our society and civilization torn apart by attempts to resolve our unemployment problems by resorting to war and munitions building. Do we really want to sacrifice our youth on the altar of partial-job-security?

As for immigrants, yes vet but not too long, and do recognize that it is the very people that overcame huge odds to make it here, that are the very ones we want to keep. The law is in the way? It iswe that create the law! Is current law counterproductive? Let's change it! That's politics. That's democracy.

Part 2 of this chapter uses consumerism to analyze the impact of immigration on the drugs scourge. Keep your attention on these pages sharp.

The author may contacted via Fencing_SaEF1@verizon.net, or from https://igg.me/at/TrExS.

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TOUCHE: Consumerism on immigration - Wicked Local Carver