[CLUE-Talk] Proposed HR 2688 -- Wondering about opinions on H-1B visas

[Sean LeBlanc]

On 07-23 13:39, G. Richard Raab wrote:
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> On Wednesday 23 July 2003 12:10 pm, Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier wrote:
> > On Wed, 2003-07-23 at 11:48, Gary Threlkeld wrote:
> >
> 
> ....
> 
> > Laying off workers and hiring cheap replacements overseas may work to
> > drive up profits in the short term, but when all those people who are
> > laid off can no longer afford products produced by those companies it
> > starts a pretty ugly cycle.
> >
> > I'm not an economist, but it seems pretty obvious to me that sending
> > huge amounts of work overseas is not going to have a pleasant impact on
> > the bottom line for U.S. companies down the road.
> >
> > Zonker
> 
> Look, folks, don't get so caught up in all this stuff. This is simply 
> free-enterprise at its best. The real issue here is that you know that long 
> term the jobs are going. You need to start planning for it and start 
> createing you own sets of companies.

You know, I wonder more and more about this very topic every day. *Is* the
current globalism model really free enterprise in the full sense?  Yeah,
trade and capital is encouraged to be more and more fluid these days and can
flow ever more easily across national borders. But labor is not encouraged,
and in practical terms, cannot flow at all. Is that a free market?  Seems
to me that only 2/3 of the equation is there. 

I think that until and unless labor is truly free to flow like capital and
trade, then protectionism should be considered. I know that sounds like
heresy coming from a Libertarian, but it doesn't seem that the current
globalism is really free, either. If I don't like the damage the labor
market here takes due to the strength of the dollar and living standards,
etc., I cannot (easily) uproot and move to India.

*snip*

-- 
Sean LeBlanc:seanleblanc at americanisp.net  
http://users.americanisp.net/~seanleblanc/
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