Trump II

[Alan Klein]

Nice work, James.

Well, So I finally got some agreement.  It's a miracle.

Too reiterate"
"I didn't say chase down anyone except the American employers who hire illegals.  If you arrest and jail a couple of those employers for hiring illegals, other employers would stop hiring.  Illegal entry into the US would dry up.  You don't need to build a wall."

[Schewe]

I suspect that our late founder would have got rid of it a long, long time ago. Shame it persists in its unfortunate course.

Censorship would seek to deny those who feel the need to plead their gospel; good management would simply point them to an appropriate site where they could indulge themselves without causing gratuitous offence to others.

You are perfectly welcome to mind your own business Rob...

You even started your own thread which I've successfully avoided posting in because, we, it's meaningless to me.

But I knew Mike pretty well and I'm 100% sure Mike would not have shut down this thread, he wouldn't care what people may say about American politics as long as it was debated within the terms of service of LuLa. And so far, this thread is remarkable for the relatively high degree of civility–only once did Chris come in and warn posters that strike out of words isn't the same as not posting them in the first place.

I actually called Chris and apologized to him for having been involved in the strike out posts. He laughed...because, well, this whole thread should be taken with a degree of amusement and nobody should take themselves that seriously.

So, Rob, post or don't post, but kindly don't tell us what we should/shouldn't do in "our" thread...and I won't tell what to do in "your" thread, ok?

[Alan Klein]

Since when do people and 'material' equal WMDs

Perhaps when one is looking for an excuse to invade?

Cheers,
Bart

I remember the situation very clearly.  There were all sorts of trucks moving around from what looked like WMD sites.  So Saddam appeared to be moving the WMD;s around.  He also was playing coy.  It didn't want his enemies, especially Iran,  think he did not have WMD's and appear weak to them.  Remember, back in the 1980's, the Israelis sent jets and attacked and destroyed Iraq's nuclear plant that was making fissionable material for A bombs.  So he had a record of having WMD's.  So he kept making it seem like he had them by moving trucks, maybe empty trucks, around even though he didn't them and got rid of them previously.  He should have let inspectors into all the places they wanted to go instead of Saddam excluding certain areas and creating suspicion.  But he wanted the suspicion that he still had them. He kind of screwed himself because he convinced the world that he had WMD's.  So America invaded.    And hanged him. 

[Schewe]

Even if illegals were being paid what is being offered to Americans, and the wage would be equal to what an American would be paid if the illegal wasn't competing, the fact that there are more people applying, some of them illegals, means that Americans are losing jobs to illegals from other countries. 

Your perception of the issue doesn't actually line up with reality which doesn't surprise me because Trump doesn't really understand immigration either.

This is an Aug 2016 article from Forbes:
Illegal Immigrants Don't Lower Our Wages Or Take Our Jobs


Anti-immigration voters and candidates are on the wrong side of history and the wrong side of social science on this.

Immigration has taken center stage in the race for the Republican Presidential nomination. The conventional wisdom says illegal immigrants take American jobs and lower American wages.

That conventional wisdom is wrong.

According to an April 2015 symposium on the effects of illegal immigrants in the Southern Economic Journal, illegal immigrants actually raise wages for documented/native workers. Meanwhile, rules preventing illegal immigrants from getting driver's licenses raise our car insurance premiums and E-Verify requirements raise the cost of doing business and reduce employment.

Using data from Georgia, Julie Hotchkiss, Myriam Quispe-Agnoli, and Fernando Rios-Avila find that documented workers’ wages rise with increases in the share of undocumented workers in a worker’s county and employed by their employers. The biggest boosts are for workers in low- and medium-skill firms that hire a lot of undocumented immigrants with an even larger boost for workers in low-skill firms with a lot of undocumented workers in the county and industry.

Why? The law of comparative advantage says we get more productive when we have more trading partners, and the arrival of undocumented workers with limited English skills frees up low-skill American workers who can then specialize in tasks that require better English.

I'm not saying that undocumented workers don't present problems and that it would be better to have a better legal immigration program, but I think it's a sad political device to blame undocumented workers because, well, what are they gonna do about being blamed for unemployment? It's not like they are gonna vote anybody in or out of office–and please don't bring up Trump's irrational claim that millions of illegal aliens were responsible for him losing the popular vote.

It would be better to take a more academic and less political approach to solving the issues of undocumented workers and illegal immigration.

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

I remember the situation very clearly.  There were all sorts of trucks moving around from what looked like WMD sites.  So Saddam appeared to be moving the WMD;s around.  He also was playing coy.  It didn't want his enemies, especially Iran,  think he did not have WMD's and appear weak to them.

That's also exactly how I remember the situation. He faked having some bargaining chips with the West in order to have embargoes lifted, and he kept Iran at a distance.

Cheers,
Bart

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

I'm not saying that undocumented workers don't present problems and that it would be better to have a better legal immigration program, but I think it's a sad political device to blame undocumented workers because, well, what are they gonna do about being blamed for unemployment? It's not like they are gonna vote anybody in or out of office–and please don't bring up Trump's irrational claim that millions of illegal aliens were responsible for him losing the popular vote.

Indeed, and illegal workers have lower crime statistics because they prefer keeping a low profile.

It would be better to take a more academic and less political approach to solving the issues of undocumented workers and illegal immigration.

Yep.

Cheers,
Bart

[BobShaw]

Trump is dumb

... but this forum has 4 more pages overnight.
He also has billions and more people voted for him than voted for the other one (understandably)

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

...Or maybe the illegals are pricing themselves so low on the labour market that Americans are being crowded out....
Are there studies showing that the majority of illegals are working at less than the avg wage in the relevant sector?...

If you spent five minutes in the U.S. trying to hire someone to do a job, you wouldn't need studies to find out what is glaringly obvious (that they are willing to work for less).

[Peter McLennan]

Smartass no, smart, yes. Someone who is examining the facts, not those alternative ones. If only 1/3rd of the country would follow suite.

Precisely.

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Smartass no, smart, yes. Someone who is examining the facts, not those alternative ones. If only 1/3rd of the country would follow suite.

Yes, but getting more people to turn up for actual voting might also be a good start ...

But then it would be useful if it was made easier instead of harder.

U.S. judge throws out Texas voter ID law supported by Trump
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-texas-idUSKCN1B32O3

QUOTE   "(Reuters) - A federal court judge on Wednesday threw out a Texas voter identification law that was supported by the Trump administration, but the state's attorney general said his office would appeal the ruling.

The judge's ruling said changes to the law passed earlier this year by the state's Republican-controlled legislature that were meant to be less discriminatory than an earlier one did not accomplish that. "


Cheers,
Bart

[digitaldog]

Yes, but getting more people to turn up for actual voting might also be a good start ...

Amen to that. Like it's so difficult (well for some it's progressively getting more difficult, let's not go there, all that voter fraud nonsense).

[Alan Klein]

Your perception of the issue doesn't actually line up with reality which doesn't surprise me because Trump doesn't really understand immigration either.

This is an Aug 2016 article from Forbes:
Illegal Immigrants Don't Lower Our Wages Or Take Our Jobs


Anti-immigration voters and candidates are on the wrong side of history and the wrong side of social science on this.

I'm not saying that undocumented workers don't present problems and that it would be better to have a better legal immigration program, but I think it's a sad political device to blame undocumented workers because, well, what are they gonna do about being blamed for unemployment? It's not like they are gonna vote anybody in or out of office–and please don't bring up Trump's irrational claim that millions of illegal aliens were responsible for him losing the popular vote.

It would be better to take a more academic and less political approach to solving the issues of undocumented workers and illegal immigration.

That's an opinion from a contributor to Forbes. It is not a Forbes article that you're trying to present it as.  In any case, the opinion is silly.  I could come up with 500 articles that refute that opinion. 

Why do you think employers love illegals from Mexico? Do you think they have a fetish for Mexican men?   Well, maybe.   But I assure you it's mainly because they can pay less.  Duh.  Illegals put Americans out of work and drive wages down.  You don't need a PhD in economics to understand that. 

It's not only at the bottom end.  When tech firms hire Indian engineers for $65K and lay off American engineers who would have made $100K+, they're saving loads of money.  Meanwhile Americans are out of work or forced to take jobs at much lower wages then they would get without the Indian engineers.  It's so bad, that companies force existing employees who are Americans to train their Indian replacements.   The way they get them to do it to tell the Americans that if they do it successfully, they will get a 4 month severance pay check.  If they refuse, they'll be fired outright.  Imagine having to train your replacement?  It's disgusting.

Why would you, an American, support hurting Americans?  Why do you care more about foreigners than your own people?  This is why Trump won.  Because you, Hillary, Democrats, elite Republicans, Democrat supporting tech firms like Amazon, Apple, Google, etc. don't care about fellow Americans only their bottom line or the vote.   You still don't get why you lost.   You're still using smear tactics thinking you're going to win with them.  Meanwhile Trump is going around helping American workers.  I love it. 

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

... I'm just not understanding what Slobodan is asserting, since it's absolutely NOT illegal to verify eligibility...

I apologize. Looks like what I quoted from memory is outdated by now.

I was actively engaged in hiring in the 2004-2007 period. In 2008 and 2009 we were mostly firing. And in 2010 I was out too. I remember clearly that language in the employer instructions that I quoted.

However...

E-Verify (as per Wikipedia):

- is voluntary
- expanded in 2007 (when I stopped hiring)
- only about 600,000 employers use it (out of about 5 million to 20 million, depending on definition)
- As of September 2007, most of the federal government did not use the system when hiring employees
- Social Security Administration failed to perform required verifications of the Social Security numbers of 19 percent of its own new hires during an 18-month period, according to a January 2010 report
- only 16 states require use of E-Verify in some form
- only six states have laws requiring all or nearly all businesses to use E-Verify
- Three states require only public contractors to use E-Verify
- Three states have moved in the opposite direction, limiting or discouraging use of E-Verify: California (of course), Rhode Island, and Illinois

Now, note Illinois, the state I was in at the time: the state law initially prohibited Illinois employers from using E-verify. E-Verify is not required in Illinois now. In fact, Illinois is the only state that has tried to block the use of E-Verify by private employers.


In other words, I am not surprised that, working in Illinois, I could have encountered the language I initially quoted (from memory).

[Alan Klein]

That's also exactly how I remember the situation. He faked having some bargaining chips with the West in order to have embargoes lifted, and he kept Iran at a distance.

Cheers,
Bart

Yeah, But by fooling the world about his non-existent WMD's, he set himself up for an invasion.  In the end, he was a dope who got himself hung and his two sons shot dead.  Of course, he deserved it because he was a murderer.  His sons were no better.  Hopefully, some day, Iraq will be free and peaceful. 

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Using data from Georgia, Julie Hotchkiss, Myriam Quispe-Agnoli, and Fernando Rios-Avila find that documented workers’ wages rise with increases in the share of undocumented workers

For anyone with a basic statistical education, this statement itself is laughable - correlation does not imply causation. Would you be surprised to learn that at one time there was a strong correlation between the length of mini-skirts and inflation in England?

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

He also has billions and more people voted for him than voted for the other one (understandably)

Not true. Trump won the electoral college vote, but  Clinton won the popular vote.

[Alan Klein]

Not true. Trump won the electoral college vote, but  Clinton won the popular vote.

Well, more people in the Electoral College voted for him than Hillary.  I'm sure that's what Bob Shaw meant.

[Alan Klein]

I apologize. Looks like what I quoted from memory is outdated by now.

I was actively engaged in hiring in the 2004-2007 period. In 2008 and 2009 we were mostly firing. And in 2010 I was out too. I remember clearly that language in the employer instructions that I quoted.

However...

E-Verify (as per Wikipedia):

- is voluntary
- expanded in 2007 (when I stopped hiring)
- only about 600,000 employers use it (out of about 5 million to 20 million, depending on definition)
- As of September 2007, most of the federal government did not use the system when hiring employees
- Social Security Administration failed to perform required verifications of the Social Security numbers of 19 percent of its own new hires during an 18-month period, according to a January 2010 report
- only 16 states require use of E-Verify in some form
- only six states have laws requiring all or nearly all businesses to use E-Verify
- Three states require only public contractors to use E-Verify
- Three states have moved in the opposite direction, limiting or discouraging use of E-Verify: California (of course), Rhode Island, and Illinois

Now, note Illinois, the state I was in at the time: the state law initially prohibited Illinois employers from using E-verify. E-Verify is not required in Illinois now. In fact, Illinois is the only state that has tried to block the use of E-Verify by private employers.


In other words, I am not surprised that, working in Illinois, I could have encountered the language I initially quoted (from memory).

Democrat Illinois being screwed up like this is part of the reason the government there is going broke. 

[BobShaw]

Not true. Trump won the electoral college vote, but  Clinton won the popular vote.

Without pretending to understand the complex US election process, in summary, Trump won.
Elections are like tennis matches. no one cares who gets the most points, it is only which points.

[digitaldog]

Without pretending to understand the complex US election process, in summary, Trump won.
Elections are like tennis matches. no one cares who gets the most points, it is only which points.

He won the complex and kind of silly electoral college vote and most American's, myself included don't fully understand this odd and complex process. Where as, a popular vote is pretty easy to understand.
The other item to examine in this mess of an electoral system is something called gerrymandering!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/29/how-the-electoral-college-gerrymanders-the-presidential-vote/?utm_term=.3fc9f35107fd