What Jobs Won’t Americans Do?

Jobs Won’t Americans Do?
One reason we’re supposed to rejoice at the pitter-patter of illegal feet is that foreigners are only coming here to “do jobs Americans won’t do.” It’s one of those basic assumptions upon which the argument in favor of forgetting we have borders, a culture and laws rests, and even President Bush mentioned this “truth” while speaking about immigration reform recently. And, undoubtedly, there are certain immutable laws of economics.

Only, this isn’t one of them.

The next time someone mindlessly parrots this mantra, just ask, “What jobs would those be?” As you’ll soon learn, the answer doesn’t really matter, but sometimes we’re shamed by didacts who oh-so-sternly say that illegals are the people who “pick our fruit for us.” So, fruit picking – something that must be in league with being a rat catcher in Victorian London or Wile E. Coyote’s stunt double – is as good an example as any.

One amusing aspect of the fruit picking fiction is that millions of people in our country engage in this activity as a form of recreation. Why, there are folks who embark upon autumn ventures to the hinterlands to pick apples and consider it a fun family outing. But I digress.

I have to ask, if I paid you $800 an hour to pick fruit, would you do it? Except for the silk and satin set, I have a feeling most would beat a path to my orchard. And this brings us to what is a true law of economics.

There are no jobs Americans won’t do. There are only wages Americans won’t work for.

And this relates to a fact of contemporary American life: immigrants, illegal or otherwise, depress wages. Oh, some would dispute this? Well, they’re wrong and I intend to prove it.

There’s another universal, unchangeable law of economics called “supply and demand,” and most of us understand it. Regardless of what product or service is at issue, if demand increases relative to supply, prices increase; if supply increases relative to demand, prices drop. And this phenomenon is relevant here. Why?

Quite simply because, like it or not, within the context of a free market system, workers are commodities whose value is determined by supply and demand. For example, a skilled neurosurgeon doesn’t make a half a million dollars a year because what he does is so important. If that were the case, he’d earn more than people who hit, kick and throw balls around and sign autographs. No, his income is a function of his rarity; create 100 million more just like him and his salary will become relatively paltry.

More @ http://tinyurl.com/ggkpv Pardon My English

This is a long article with many comments following. However the author of the article is echoing what I have said over and over again. Stop Federal subsidy's, pay a decent wage, and let the market find its own level. You can see what happens when we allow a cartel in the shape of the oil industry to meet in collusion and set prices. And with the illegals we see what happens when profit is allowed to rule all and then that rule is applied to national policy.

No government agency at any level should be supporting any policy just because business/industry wants/expects that to happen. Government is supposed to be for 'all the people' and not just a 'small cabal of special interest groups.'