Worked for a tech giant, where one year we worked with Indian outsourcing companies. They obtained H1B visas, for software testing managers, sent over a couple of hundred of them, for 6 months, learned over the shoulders of the US staff, then went back and trained their own army of testers, so the company could outsource the work at 1/3 the labor rates. So, we set up an immigration system that only helps outsource US-based labor to a non-US market (where those salaries will rebound around and around and stimulate the local economies). Meanwhile, conservative politicians bemoan the attraction of foreign expertise into our local economies, by threatening to further tighten immigration. My point, there are too many people who have no idea how economics works, acting as paid mouths for the global investor class. Labor and local investors should have regulatory strength and should be tuning our trade and tax policies to stimulate local investment as a price for opportunity to sell in the local market.

The hell with WTO and open markets. The global conglomerates will use global free trade to pay salaries somewhere else so they can drain American consumers on the sales end. The biggest question you’ve always asked, that matters more fundamentally than anything else, is what will all of the people do if we remove their means of participating in the mainstream economy? The ability for the citizenry to competitively sell their labor, to fuel the production side of the economy, must be protected by market-shielding laws and regulations. The global investment class and their global conglomerates have stacked the rules in their favor. Between the Occupy movement and the simple fact that the US economy is breaking, the rules need to be rewritten. Damn, sorry to rant. Never stop telling us how it is.

The Roman noblemen (who were also Senators — sounds familiar?) kept squeezing the commoners with taxes and kept reducing their liberties, until the “free men” were really nothing more than serfs — and finally the citizens had no choice but to “drop out” of the system just to survive. The Roman Empire ate itself.

There’s a lesson here, about unchecked greed.

(Sorry, Fred: I couldn’t pass up so golden an opportunity.)

Although Newt — if his bulk isn’t due to being literally as well as figuratively full of it — might be nicely marbled …

–
-Alan

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-lear-occupy-the-new-year-20111230,0,1814372.story